Item: A Quiet Kind of Thunder
Rating: 4.00
Author: shelfleigh

by Sara Barnard

Steffi doesn't talk.
Rhys can't hear.
They understand each other perfectly.
Love isn't always a lightning strike. Sometimes it's the rumbling roll of thunder . . .

From the bestselling author of Beautiful Broken Things, Sara Barnard's A Quiet Kind of Thunder is stunning love story about the times when a whisper is as good as a shout.

Steffi has been a selective mute for most of her life - she's been silent for so long that she feels completely invisible. But Rhys, the new boy at school, sees her. He's deaf, and her knowledge of basic sign language means that she's assigned to look after him. To Rhys it doesn't matter that Steffi doesn't talk and, as they find ways to communicate, Steffi finds that she does have a voice, and that she's falling in love with the one person who makes her feel brave enough to use it.

Steffi, a selective mute for most of her life, befriends the new deaf kid at her school in this sweet realistic romance.

I picked this up from the library when it caught my eye in August. It’s one of those books I picked up to skim, but I ended up reading and enjoying it. Both Steffi and Rhys are complex characters dealing with issues not typically found in young adult literature. I haven’t read any novels with a selective mute and very few with a hearing impairment. The story is really interesting because you get to see these two people living and thriving despite their particular limitations. Their romance is realistic and authentic, if not that memorable. I find the characters themselves to be more interesting than their romance. The plot felt a little unfocused, but the ending is more defined that I thought it would be.

tl;dr Interesting characters mixed with a realistic, if somewhat boring, romance make this a cute read for contemporary romance fans.

A Quiet Kind of Thunder

by Sara Barnard

Reviewed by Leigha on Aug 28, 2018

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