The climatic installment of Rivers’s A Legacy of Silence series offers a gripping page-turner as psychologist Kate Medina continues her efforts to expose and bring down a powerful sex-trafficking ring entrenched in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Medina, still working as a psychologist, shares a warm relationship with returning character Tilly, her sister, a nurse examiner who works with survivors of sexual assault in Las Cruces, an hour's drive away. When Tilly gets kidnapped by the same gang who had targeted Kate previously for meddling with their “enterprise,” Kate reaches out to an old friend for help and endeavors to unravel a web of dark secrets—and at last end that silence.Ripple Effect centers on Kate’s page-turning pursuit of the truth, a tense journey of shocks, confrontations, and and bursts of crisp action. Rivers, as always, delves deeply into the hearts and lives of her cast, especially the once-estranged Kate and Tilly. Rivers displays engaging emotional acuity as the women grapple with sisterhood, “a past riddled with grief,” and the harrowing events of the earlier books. Kate, meanwhile, is engaged to her high school best friend, FBI agent Roman Aguilar, but the ghosts of past relationships and trauma loom over them. Tilly grapples with the lingering grief and her complicated feelings for a friend. These women, bound by their wrenching experiences, find solace in confiding in each other, learning to "look beyond their trauma—to see people as they were and as they could be.”
Each boasting a singular voice, Rivers’s characters—even a villain like Ruth Flores—are fiercely strong, ready to fight and speak their truths, but also vulnerable, prey to relatable fear and guilt. The conspiracy feels grounded in real life, and Rivers again deftly evokes desert life, where “hard, fierce winds … kicked up dirt and pollen and made the air so hard to breathe.” The thrill of this compelling series is seeing Kate and co. risk it all to protect women in a world so harsh.
Takeaway: Bracing series finale pitting sisters against New Mexico sex traffickers.
Comparable Titles: Ann Turner’s Out of the Ice, Carolyn Arnold.
Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
