Book Review

Hello Everybody!

I’m on a roll with my book to-read list and I’m frickin’ loving it! But my next book requires a bit more brain power to read so I probs won’t be finished it quite as soon as the others. This book review is on ‘A Quiet Kind of Thunder’ by Sara Barnard; here ya go!

Steffi doesn’t talk.

Rhys can’t hear.

They understand

each other perfectly.

Love isn’t always a

lightening strike.

Sometimes it’s the rumbling roll of

thunder…

I actually loved this book! I was a bit sceptical going into it at first; I didn’t know how Sara was going to portray the whole deaf and mute thing, but she did it beautifully and kept everything very real.

Okay, so basically Steffi suffers with severe anxiety and this had caused her to be mute since she was a child. She started off completely mute and gradually became confident enough to talk in front of her family, her best friend and her boss. Because she couldn’t communicate verbally, her uncle taught her some BSL (basic sign language).

Rhys is completely deaf and has been his whole life, so he’s kinda used to dealing with people who aren’t familiar with that. He transfers to Steffi’s school for sixth form and can lip read extremely well so he can still communicate his fellow pupils (he can also talk).

Steffi is asked to befriend Rhys because she can use BSL and their story sorta develops from there. I don’t wanna give too much away or go into too much detail because this was a truly great book and I’d rather you read it for yourself than experience it through a somewhat mediocre review on my blog!

I will say that this book made me so much more aware of barriers to communication and although Rhys didn’t really feel disconnected from the world because of his disability, there probably are so many people in the same situation that do. It has really made me want to start learning some BSL myself as I work in a shop with a woman who is deaf and we have some customers who are also deaf and I’d like to be able to communicate with them better as opposed to my usual smiling, pointing and useless hand gestures.

I hope you liked this review! I would defo recommend buying this book and giving it a read as it addresses numerous issues in a dignified manner.

Until next time…

C.