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A review by a_bookish_butterfly
The Silence by Luca Veste
slow-paced
1.0
Sometimes rage reading is the only way to get through a book.
Ordinarily, I would simply abandon ship. Although this was sinking from the start, I felt a sense of obligation toward it or, more accurately, toward my book club. After all, I am the one who pitched it as our thriller read.
I have so much regret.
I could be caustic for this review, as I have Post-It Notes galore to support my bitterness, but I know this is Luca Veste’s art. And I know there are others who loved the book. I’ve no desire to publicly insult anyone, so I’ll save my biting sarcasm for private vents, and I’ll do my best to highlight my complaints respectfully here.
Firstly, I must say that I did not care for the quality of the writing. While I found it grating from the start, I tried to stay open-minded. If the story managed to thrill me, perhaps the writing style could have been overlooked.
Unfortunately, this failed to meet those thriller expectations. We have a group of friends here who inadvertently kill a serial killer while trying to protect a member of the group, bury him and their secret, only to find the serial killer has resurfaced a year later. Is it possible that the man they killed wasn’t working alone? The premise holds promise of a propulsive, gasp-inducing narrative, but the story did not excite me at all. The biggest contributing factor is that this is heavily weighed down by filler. I think the book could have easily been two hundred pages shorter. Very little happens within each one hundred page span, outside of conversations laced with repetitiveness.
The book also contains some components that tend to be hard sells for me: Amatuer sleuthing and characters making foolish decisions to aid the narrative. I’m sure there are novels out there that have used these tropes that I’ve enjoyed. When other aspects really work for me, it’s easier to give a pass to the ones that don’t. In The Silence, I could not conjure anything but annoyance with these features.
Then, of course, the killer was kind enough to explain his actions to his next victim, as killers often do in books. This is another facet I despise in thrillers. Villain monologues feel like cheap methods to illustrate what the reader does not yet understand. There has to be a better way.
On the bright side, the actual killer was not my number one suspect, which was a relief, as I couldn’t have swallowed the ridiculousness of it all if that assumption had been correct. The killer was suspect number two on my Post It Note theories, so it wasn’t a complete shock, but still more surprising than what I’d mainly expected. I will give the author points for that.
There you have it. This book failed me completely. It will be interesting to see what my fellow book club members think of it, but I have time before we sit down to discuss it. I read it early so I could pass it along to my husband, who is also a member of the club. I cannot imagine him liking this, but he does not read as much fiction as I do, and he certainly doesn’t read as many thrillers, so perhaps he’ll find this refreshingly different. Who knows? We all see books differently and thank goodness for that.
Ordinarily, I would simply abandon ship. Although this was sinking from the start, I felt a sense of obligation toward it or, more accurately, toward my book club. After all, I am the one who pitched it as our thriller read.
I have so much regret.
I could be caustic for this review, as I have Post-It Notes galore to support my bitterness, but I know this is Luca Veste’s art. And I know there are others who loved the book. I’ve no desire to publicly insult anyone, so I’ll save my biting sarcasm for private vents, and I’ll do my best to highlight my complaints respectfully here.
Firstly, I must say that I did not care for the quality of the writing. While I found it grating from the start, I tried to stay open-minded. If the story managed to thrill me, perhaps the writing style could have been overlooked.
Unfortunately, this failed to meet those thriller expectations. We have a group of friends here who inadvertently kill a serial killer while trying to protect a member of the group, bury him and their secret, only to find the serial killer has resurfaced a year later. Is it possible that the man they killed wasn’t working alone? The premise holds promise of a propulsive, gasp-inducing narrative, but the story did not excite me at all. The biggest contributing factor is that this is heavily weighed down by filler. I think the book could have easily been two hundred pages shorter. Very little happens within each one hundred page span, outside of conversations laced with repetitiveness.
The book also contains some components that tend to be hard sells for me: Amatuer sleuthing and characters making foolish decisions to aid the narrative. I’m sure there are novels out there that have used these tropes that I’ve enjoyed. When other aspects really work for me, it’s easier to give a pass to the ones that don’t. In The Silence, I could not conjure anything but annoyance with these features.
Then, of course, the killer was kind enough to explain his actions to his next victim, as killers often do in books. This is another facet I despise in thrillers. Villain monologues feel like cheap methods to illustrate what the reader does not yet understand. There has to be a better way.
On the bright side, the actual killer was not my number one suspect, which was a relief, as I couldn’t have swallowed the ridiculousness of it all if that assumption had been correct. The killer was suspect number two on my Post It Note theories, so it wasn’t a complete shock, but still more surprising than what I’d mainly expected. I will give the author points for that.
There you have it. This book failed me completely. It will be interesting to see what my fellow book club members think of it, but I have time before we sit down to discuss it. I read it early so I could pass it along to my husband, who is also a member of the club. I cannot imagine him liking this, but he does not read as much fiction as I do, and he certainly doesn’t read as many thrillers, so perhaps he’ll find this refreshingly different. Who knows? We all see books differently and thank goodness for that.