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A review by detailsandtales
Silent Hall by N.S. Dolkart
I'm not going to assign this one a star rating because I want to give it a 2.5, and I feel like there's a huge difference between a 2 (which feels really negative) and a 3 (which feels completely neutral).
Part of the reason for my hesitation is that there were times when I was ready to put down the book and not come back, but I gave it a chance, and other parts did make me want to keep reading.
The good: I liked that there were five different characters, each with their own goals, conflicts and weaknesses. There were a few I really began to care about.
The bad: Unfortunately, the writing style felt very much like that of a Middle Grades book, in that the characters spent a lot of time explicitly thinking things through. I would have preferred less telling and more showing. Not only did all of this thinking slow down the plot, it also made the characters feel even younger than they were in some ways, which was jarring against some of the other story elements. I was also bothered by the fact that it felt like the characters kept repeating the same mistakes, and kept trusting a character they all knew was not trustworthy. It also seemed like they had no real direction beyond whatever their next destination happened to be.
Part of the reason for my hesitation is that there were times when I was ready to put down the book and not come back, but I gave it a chance, and other parts did make me want to keep reading.
The good: I liked that there were five different characters, each with their own goals, conflicts and weaknesses. There were a few I really began to care about.
The bad: Unfortunately, the writing style felt very much like that of a Middle Grades book, in that the characters spent a lot of time explicitly thinking things through. I would have preferred less telling and more showing. Not only did all of this thinking slow down the plot, it also made the characters feel even younger than they were in some ways, which was jarring against some of the other story elements. I was also bothered by the fact that it felt like the characters kept repeating the same mistakes, and kept trusting a character they all knew was not trustworthy. It also seemed like they had no real direction beyond whatever their next destination happened to be.