The Quiet Storm by Raeanne Thayne

"The Big Secret" is another one of those romance conventions. I think they can work, but too many authors keep them hidden for far too long. After a while, the reader gets bored and frustrated, waiting for the reveal. Secrets can be a great conflict, but not if the author drags it out until the last page!

The Quiet Storm by Raeanne Thayne (SIM 1218)
(2003, Contemporary Series) 3/20/08
Grade: 3

The police assumed that Tina committed suicide, but heiress Elizabeth Quinn is sure her dear friend wouldn’t have left her deaf son behind. She turns to detective Beau Riley for answers - and finds more than she expected. But could Beau ever accept a woman with the limitations that she has struggled with all her life?

There were a lot of good things about this book. The characters were well drawn, with good chemistry between them. The mystery was important without taking over the story. And Elizabeth’s struggles with her speech problems were poignant and well drawn. The problem was that the book hit a wall in the middle of the book, and for the next 100 pages or so, it just spun its wheels. Keeping Elizabeth’s speech problem a secret until almost the end of the book was a major problem - it left the characters just repeating the same “misunderstandings” for far too long. As much as I liked the characters, I came very close to giving up during that dry middle section.

I felt cheated that we never got a nice, meaty scene between the hero and heroine, where they discuss her speech problem and what it's meant to her. That kind of emotional interaction is what I look for in a romance!