Blog Tour Review: The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Stainscliffe

The Silence Between Breaths by Cath Staincliffe
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

EIGHT STRANGERS - ONE DEADLY SECRET

17th April 2015

Mid morning on a normal day in Manchester,passengers are boarding the 10.35 train to Euston Station in London.Innocently going about their business bound for work,assignations,reunions,holidays or fresh starts,with no idea that one of their number has a deadly secret that is going to change many of their lives forever and send shock waves rippling across the country.

This book is like one of the disaster movies from the seventies,you know the ones were you spend the first half getting to know the main characters before whatever the movie is about happens.The book is basically split into three parts,in the first part you learn about who the passengers are,then the second part is about the tragedy on the Train and the survivors escaping and then the third part is about how the survivors are coping with their injuries and grief.The story is told in alternating chapters by some of the passengers and by Naz who was a cleaner on the Train,you also read the thoughts and feelings of the person who caused the tragedy.interspersed throughout the book are chapters that are voiced by the sister of the deadly passenger who saves a lot of lives and gets no recognition for her bravery.

The story starts off quite slowly,it takes until you are over 50% in before anything happens then you have the exciting chapters about the survivors trying to escape the wreckage,then the story slows down again after the survivors have been rescued.Being a fan of action and danger I enjoyed the middle section of the book the most.The train wreck,scattered body parts,cries for help,flames and smoke were so realistically described that the reader could easily close their eyes and picture it in their head.

Considering the world that we live in today the story is very topical and reading the thoughts of the villain was quite scary considering there is a lot of people all over the world that think and feel the same way.If I'm honest the book would have been more thrilling if it had not been so obvious who the villain was,if there had been a few red herrings and a second suspect and it hadn't been so obvious what was going to happen but that's just my opinion.The stories of the passengers who were mostly likeable apart from a couple who were definitely not very likeable were interesting enough to hold the readers attention and although it does take a bit of time to get going I did enjoy the book and wanted to know how the story would end.