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Dead Silence by Wendy Corsi Staub I had to rush a bit to finish in time to post this review, I just finished the book last night! But it was a fairly engaged read so racing through it wasn't overly difficult. My first impression of the book was one of mild confusion, as I didn't realize it was a series and suddenly found myself involved in characters and mentions of events that I was unfamiliar with! I definitely got the impression that I was missing something, so a quick Google revealed that this was, in fact, not the first book in this series (a trilogy I believe). In the spirit of giving the book a fighting chance I read some cliff notes of the first novel, however I am still fairly sure that I might have enjoyed this book more and felt more connected to the story and characters if I'd been able to actually read the first one. With that in mind, I didn't love this book. It was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end, and there were certainly some elements that I found engaging. I liked the way the author dives deep into the lives of the characters, which you don't always get in mystery thrillers. However, there may have been too many of those characters and too many overlapping story-lines for this to stay firmly on the rails. I felt that there was just too much going on in some places that it really bogged down the primary story, in some places even distracted from it so drastically I wondered if I was still reading the same book. I am not a reader, or writer, who shies away from complexity, but that complexity must be executed with precision and artistry or it just comes off as messy. Most of the characters were likable enough, though I felt Amelia was a bit of a downer and found her frustrating at times with her bluntness - Jessie was probably my favorite character, and I liked Amelia more when they were sharing scenes. Generally speaking, every character in a story should serve some purpose that propels the arc of the plot even if only in a small way, and in my opinion there were a few additions to the cast in this novel who did not accomplish that and maybe should have been edited out. 'The Angler' was about as vile a villain as they come, which of course you want a strong bad-guy for your readers to hate! Truly awesome and memorable villains, however, tend to be those with a bit of the human element to them, something that makes the reader question whether or not they are deserving of that hate. 'The Angler' has zero redeeming qualities and was extremely 'textbook' serial killer, which is entertaining in a basic sense but there was nothing fresh or particularly interesting about it. This obviousness of his origin story and equal obviousness of the 'monster' that history created made the character come off as two-dimensional and predictable to me. This, in turn, made the overall story itself feel predictable. There were some nice human moments between the characters, and I did like the connection drawn between the 'foundlings', Amelia being one herself and struggling with that as she seeks deeper truths about herself. She seemed stuck in a 'rut' in her life, and sometimes it takes something extreme befalling us to shake us out of that and see the value of our lives and our true worth. I felt the overall story did a good job out of showing us that, and I liked Amelia more by the ending. In conclusion, while reading this didn't feel like a waste of my time, and I enjoyed it in the general sense that I simply enjoy reading pretty much no matter what it is, I won't be picking this book up again and I probably won't make a point of reading the rest of the books in this series. My apologies if that sounds a bit harsh... I think I might be a tough sell  |
Re: Dead Silence - Reviews and Comments, post under this... · 08-19-19 8:24am 
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