superbly suspenseful: deadly silence by rebecca zanetti

deadly silence is a romantic thriller by rebecca zanetti that further explores the world she created in her sin brothers series. i haven't actually read that series, but it isn't essential to because the characters are new and while the situation the characters are in the middle of is informed by things that were happening in the original series, you catch up as you go along and don't really feel like you are at a loss. or at least you are no more at a loss than the characters in the novel, so it's all good.

ryker jones had a terrible childhood. but in the midst of the hell that was his childhood he forged an unbreakable bond with two other boys, his blood brothers, heath and denver. together they've escaped their past, but that doesn't mean that their past isn't trying to catch up to them. they've spent their adult lives searching for the lost, searching for something they're not even sure they can find, answers they may never be prepared to handle.

even worse, everything is going crazy. the serial killer case they've been working on shows no signs of breaking open, meanwhile more red-headed girls are turning up dead. a teenage hacker has somehow burrowed through all their security and is asking them to dig into someone from their shared past. and the woman ryker has become involved with, zara, is in danger—something that tugs at his protective instincts and the heart he has tried to keep from becoming attached to anything to protect not only himself, but everything in the world he could lose.

while this is suspenseful and the characters at different points find themselves in mortal danger, this isn't unnecessarily graphic. and there is a fair amount of steaminess between the two leads, so i almost just categorized this as seriously romantic. but it's more than just a romance.

ryker and zara go through a lot and at the end the only thing that's tied up in a neat bow is their relationship. which totally works for me. i'm intrigued enough by everything else that i will be checking out the next novels in the series.

**deadly silence will publish on october 4, 2016. i received an advance reader copy courtesy of netgalley/forever (grand central publishing) in exchange for my honest review.