Silence

Oakley Farrell is sixteen and has not spoken since she was five. Nobody knows what made her stop, not her family and not the classmates who bully her. At school she is friendless, with one exception.

Cole Benson is that exception. He has never treated her silence as damage to be repaired or waited for her to change. Over the years the two have built a friendship of their own devising, and it runs on Oakley's terms.

Then their closeness begins to turn romantic, and a person from Oakley's past comes back. Their return puts at risk the thing she has kept buried: the reason she went quiet as a child.

The first in a contemporary young adult series that shares its name, the book leans on character more than plot, following trauma, friendship and a first love. The story is told from inside Oakley's head, so the reader hears everything she cannot say aloud, while the reason for her silence edges closer to the surface.