Blog Archives
Righteous Anger
In Silence follows a woman who is no stranger to violence, who returns home to find the dynamic she once knew vastly different, and finds herself opening her heart in ways she never intended. Where did you find the inspiration for Zara’s traits and dialogue?
I think there was an aspect of Zara that mirrored my own experiences (I was not almost murdered in the snow, but I have had multiple times when I thought I was going to die for health reasons). The difference was that I gave Zara the support and comfort I was never brave enough to reach out for. I think part of Zara’s silence was inspired by my own when I was at my most frightened. I refused to seek out comfort or help because I thought it made me weaker, and I think you can see that in Zara.
The story widens from a tight survival narrative into something closer to a sweeping character drama. How did you manage that expansion in scope?
A part of me wanted to write this thriller and have the bad guy get what he deserved in the end, with a lot of action and righteous anger. When I took a step back, I realized that, in real life, you can spend months or years (like Zara did) fighting for justice, and then it takes like ten minutes to wrap it up, and it usually happens without drama. I always knew I was going to write the capture of the bad guy in a somewhat unsatisfying way, but I wanted to give the readers Zara’s story, not just her survival.
The novel balances brutality with tenderness. How did you ensure one didn’t overwhelm the other?
By asking my betas where it felt like too much, and by keeping in touch with how the scene made me feel when I listened to it versus when I read it. Some parts may feel slightly overdone, but I think those were the ones I decided were worth it because, in the end, it is fiction, and I get to do what I want.
Was there a particular scene that was especially difficult—or especially important—for you to write?
Honestly, I’ve gotten some comments along the lines of Zara’s family being too much. And, while I can agree that it does prolong the story, it was necessary for me. My family is such a huge and important part of my life, and I was kinda tired of reading books where the found family was found because the real family was terrible. I wanted to write something where family mattered as much as action, without dramatizing the family. The last chapter also kinda hurt. I reworked it so many times, trying to come up with a different ending, but it just didn’t happen.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
In darkness, I was seen
Bella had expected things to be different when she came home for her grandma’s funeral, but nothing could have prepared her for how different it would be.
Not only had her grandparents taken in a local Park Ranger, their lives had been filled with people and traditions Bella is no longer a part of.
Despite her surprise, Bella is immediately taken with the ranger whose scars run deeper than the eye can see. Her sympathy and grief war with her desire to know everything about the mysterious stranger.
Before she can learn more, the man who haunts Zara’s past returns, and Zara descends into silence.
With bodies piling up and threats escalating, will Bella’s attraction put her in danger, or will it be the lifeline Zara so desperately needs to keep her past from pulling her back into the shadows?
In Silence
In Silence is a trauma thriller that grows into a recovery story, a love story, and finally something close to an elegy. The opening pages throw Zara Holt into a brutal fight for survival, and the book commits hard to the physical reality of pain, cold, shock, and endurance. What kept me reading, though, wasn’t just the danger. It was the way Revka Ashford builds Zara as someone defined by discipline, dark humor, and pure refusal. Early on, the novel runs on that stubborn pulse of survival.
What gives the book its heart is the shift from survival to care. Bill and Betty could have been written as simple rescuers, but they become the emotional center of the story for a long stretch, and the novel is strongest when it lets their steadiness do its work. Their kindness doesn’t feel decorative. It feels lived in, awkward at times, funny at times, and deeply earned. The book understands that healing is made of routines, meals, rides, teasing, check-ins, and people who stay. That makes the emotional arc feel grounded even when the plot keeps moving through danger, grief, and suspense.
Ashford also has a real instinct for tonal layering. The novel is heavy, no question, but it isn’t one-note. Zara’s voice can be sharp and dry even in awful circumstances, and that edge keeps the character from flattening into pure suffering. Later, when Bella becomes central, the book opens into a different register. It becomes gentler, warmer, and more romantic without losing the tension that shaped the beginning. That blend gives the story a wide emotional range. It’s a book about injury and fear, but also about devotion, trust, found family, and the strange ways people learn how to be seen by each other.
The structure is ambitious. The story keeps widening, from a close survival narrative to a larger web of relationships, investigation, secrecy, and consequence. At times, the book can be melodramatic, and some scenes are written with maximum emotional volume, but Ashford’s sincerity carries a lot of that weight. The book believes in its characters’ feelings completely, and that confidence gives it momentum. By the end, the novel feels less like a single-genre story and more like a sweeping character drama built out of suspense, romance, and grief.
What stayed with me most is that In Silence is really about being witnessed after pain has tried to erase a person. The title lands because the book keeps returning to silence as injury, protection, intimacy, and memory all at once. The final lines, “In silence, I was heard / In darkness, I was seen,” bring that thread into focus in a way that feels simple and earned. This is a book that wants to hold survival and tenderness in the same hand, and a lot of the time, it does exactly that.
Pages: 437 | ASIN : B0GR9MDBGQ
Alone in My Silence
In Silence follows a woman who survives a brutal assault tied to a dangerous mission as she tries to rebuild her life and overcome her pain. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
Honestly, when I first wrote it, I couldn’t tell you. Now, I think it was inspired by how I felt alone in my silence when I was going through a tough time. I subconsciously wrote a book where someone was there for Zara in a way I never got to experience. That, and I was curious about the concept of it being so cold you didn’t bleed out.
Zara withholds parts of herself even from people who care about her. What drew you to that kind of emotional guardedness?
Personal experience. I grew up thinking crying was a weakness, and physical affection was a vulnerability. I thought I was tough because I never learned to lean, and in the end, I made it harder for myself and everyone around me.
How did you approach writing the “before and after” divide in Zara’s life?
I essentially imagined Zara in a mission-focused space where she was a soldier first, and then in a mission-oriented space where she was recovering as the mission directed, and then in a family-oriented space where she was learning that it was okay to be more than the mission.
Can we look forward to more work from you soon?
Yeah, actually, I’m writing a sequel that follows Artemis, Zara’s teammate’s, POV. I don’t have a solid plan on when it’ll be out, though.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
In darkness, I was seen
Bella had expected things to be different when she came home for her grandma’s funeral, but nothing could have prepared her for how different it would be.
Not only had her grandparents taken in a local Park Ranger, their lives had been filled with people and traditions Bella is no longer a part of.
Despite her surprise, Bella is immediately taken with the ranger whose scars run deeper than the eye can see. Her sympathy and grief war with her desire to know everything about the mysterious stranger.
Before she can learn more, the man who haunts Zara’s past returns, and Zara descends into silence.
With bodies piling up and threats escalating, will Bella’s attraction put her in danger, or will it be the lifeline Zara so desperately needs to keep her past from pulling her back into the shadows?
In Silence
In Silence is a romantic suspense novel with a strong thread of trauma recovery and found-family drama. It follows Zara Holt, a woman who survives a brutal assault tied to a long, dangerous mission, then tries to rebuild herself with the help of Bill and Betty, the older couple who become her refuge, and later Bella, whose love slowly opens a door Zara never meant to leave unlocked. The book moves through pain, secrecy, investigation, tenderness, and loss, and it keeps asking what it really means to survive when your life has been split into before and after.
Author Revka Ashford writes like she’s not interested in looking away, and I respected that even when the material was hard to sit with. The opening is harsh and cold and visceral, then the story gradually makes room for warmth without pretending warmth fixes everything. I liked that. The writing can be intense to the point of overload at times, and there were moments when the emotion felt piled on, but I never felt the book was faking its heart. It wants readers to feel the bruise, not just admire the sentence. Sometimes that worked beautifully.
I also found myself thinking a lot about the author’s choices around silence, identity, and care. Zara is not written as a neat lesson or a simple survivor figure. She is stubborn, trained, fractured, loving, evasive, and often hard to reach. That made her feel real to me. The book’s structure, with its shifts in perspective and its widening circle of people around her, lets healing feel communal, which is one of the most convincing things about it. Bill and Betty give the novel its soul. Bella brings a softer current, but not a weak one. Their relationship gives the story a pulse that keeps it from becoming only about violence and aftermath. I appreciated that the novel keeps love from feeling magical. Love matters here but it doesn’t erase damage. It just gives Zara somewhere to stand while she carries it.
By the end, I felt like I had been through something heavy but relatable. I would recommend In Silence to readers who like romantic suspense with real emotional weight, to people drawn to stories about survival and found family, and to anyone who can tolerate darkness in exchange for tenderness that feels earned. This is the kind of book that keeps you thinking after you put it down because it cares so fiercely about broken people finding their way back to one another.
Pages: 439 | ASIN : B0GR7HV9FK
