Breaking the Silence by Diane Chamberlain

In recent years Diane Chamberlain has become one of my Go To authors, so when Breaking the Silence appeared in Amazon’s Twelve Days of Christmas Kindle promotion I snapped it up.

In the opening pages of the book Laura Brandon loses her father, and his dying wish is that she looks after a woman she has never heard of. Back home Laura tells her husband Ray about her father’s strange instructions, and he pleads with her not to pursue it any further. Torn between pleasing her father and her husband Laura leaves her five year old daughter in Ray’s care and goes to the Nursing Home to visit Sarah who is suffering from the early onset of Alzheimers and has never heard of Laura’s father. As Laura returns home more confused than ever she finds her husband dead from a gunshot wound, and her five year old daughter mute.

As always Diane has woven a complex tale that didn’t fail to keep me guessing all the way through, as the story of Sarah Tolley was revealed piece by piece. Diane moves the story seamlessly between the present day – where Laura Brandon has to deal not only with the suicide of her husband, but with the sudden muteness of her daughter – and the past – as Sarah Tolley tells Laura about Saint Margaret’s hospital and the dramatic events that resulted in the loss of her husband and her daughter.

At the heart of the story is the psychiatric hospital Saint Margaret’s, where Sarah discovers that instead of looking after his patients the award-winning Doctor P is using them as guinea pigs in shocking experiments designed to result in mind control. As far fetched as that might sound the US government really did fund such experiments in the 1950s and it’s quite shocking to think that people were hospitalised against their will and lobotomised as part of an experiment.

Breaking the Silence is one of those books where you think you’ve figured out the plot, only to realise that the author has lead you up the garden path on purpose, just to keep you guessing. Diane hasn’t disappointed with this one and I’d highly recommend that you treat yourself to a copy if you haven’t read it already.

—SPOILER ALERT—

I was intrigued by Laura’s relationship with Sarah and as each piece of the puzzle was revealed I guessed that the two of them were related, and that Laura’s pendant held the key. I was right on some level, but I never would have guessed that Laura was Sarah’s daughter. And the twist with Gilbert threw me for a loop entirely!

Some people might consider the relationship between Dylan and Laura to be quite trite, but I was actually rooting for them to end up together, after discovering that her whole life has been built on a lie it’s good that she gets to end up with one of the good guys.

There was just one question that was left unanswered for me at the end of the book, if Sarah’s Alzheimers is so bad that she doesn’t even recognise her own husband all those years later, how on earth did she recognise Stuart and mistake him for Gilbert?

And I suppose the other one was: I understand why Emma stopped talking, but what made her start again? Did Sarah say something to her after they ran away, or was it because of the experience that Dylan shared with her in the park? Or did she really just need time to work things through in her own head and realise that she really wasn’t to blame for Ray’s death?