Some Quiet Place
   by: Kelsey Sutton

Publication Date: July 8, 2013
Publisher: Flux
Genre: Paranormal
Age Group: Young Adult
Source: e-ARC provided from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Page Count: 350 pages
Order Links: Amazon| B&N
My Rating: 4/5 stars

I can’t weep. I can’t fear. I’ve grown talented at pretending.

Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself.

Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her?

                                                   -goodreads.com description

This is going to be quite a challenging review to write as I do not want to give anything away. Kelsey Sutton has brought us a beautiful novel about a girl who has the ability to see Emotions and Elements (who can take human shape), but is not able to feel any of them.

Our main character, Elizabeth, lives in the small town of Edson and feels nothing. We discover that she was in a car accident when she was 4, but miraculously survived. However, she has not been the same ever since.  She is devoid of all emotions and has been this way for as long as she can remember. She lives with a mother who thinks her unnatural, and with a father who feels the same, but is also an abusive alcoholic. Elizabeth is visited the most frequently by Fear, who tries over and over again to make her feel, but to no avail.

This story is not filled with non-stop action; instead it is the mystery of the why Elizabeth is the way she is, and the intrigue behind discovering what it all means that propels you through this book. I couldn’t put it down because I wanted answers! I wanted to know why she couldn’t feel emotions, but why she could see them. I wanted to know why Fear had this strange attachment to her. I wanted to know why she kept painting pictures and dreaming of people she didn’t remember and how they were connected to her life.

I will be honest, I was not happy with the treatment of one character in particular. I understand why it played out that way, but it still broke my heart for that one person because they did not deserve to be strung along and then tossed aside in the manner that they were. Again, having that character interaction was a necessary element to the unraveling of the story, but still. Hmph.

Fear, is such an enigma to me. At first he seems like he is hanging around her only to goad and taunt her, by trying to make her feel fear by projecting horrifying images to her. But somewhere, things shift and we see a very different person/Emotion. It’s interesting to see Fear show interest in Elizabeth and possibly start to feel something more for her. We don’t typically associate fear with love.

For lovers of the paranormal, this book is definitely worth checking out.