Reviews with content warning for Self harm - Dead Silence

The one line reviews make it seem like it’s going to be this gritty juicy horror book, but aside from very detailed gore and body horror / injury descriptions the plot wasn’t actually scary. I think the author tried to make it a psychological thriller but made the MC so uniquely and extravagantly insane that you could see right through to the end. The world building was meh, the prose wasn’t distracting. It’s like a less vibrant version of a fan fiction mash up of 2001, Firefly and Levithan Wakes. It did them all a disservice. That’s said, not my worst read this year

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cryface's review against another edition

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challenging tense fast-paced

4.0

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enc3336's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I couldn’t put this book down!

The Shining is one of my all time favorite horror books and s this took some of the same concepts but mashed it with Titanic/Poseidon and threw it all in space.

Could it have been scarier? Maybe, but there is something so unnerving about people causing the issues and it not being fully supernatural. The lengths companies will go to, to be on top and what they’re willing to do if anyone gets in the way is something you can see happening in real life (and I can tell you we as humans have seen this before done).

As the lone survivor of two major events and not knowing that the people who are protecting you and helping to raise you after all your family is gone, is actually just using you as good publicity. Claire must try and piece together what is real and what isn’t in order to not only save herself but any other survivors as well as expose the company she thought was on her side. When you can’t tell the difference between what is and isn’t real, in a fit for your life, what lengths would you go to in order to survive?

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ladylothlorien's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book was AMAZING. It was described as "Titanic meets Event Horizon" and I think that is a better description than "Titanic meets The Shining" although there are definitely elements of The Shining present. I appreciated that the narrative device of the split timelines didn't last for the entire book (it's a good device, but it does sort of "spoil" the fate of the character(s) who are telling the story if it lasts for the whole book). I also appreciated that there are some unanswered questions, but all the crucial questions are answered. And some of the unanswered questions are related to character development. The way that the tension was ramped up slowly but surely throughout was so good. It became harder to put down the book the closer I was to the end, in part because I wanted to know what happened but in large part because the tension and terror were so constant that it was like being rapids leading to a waterfall. As for the "why is this happening" solution:

part of me was a little disappointed at first that it wasn't a supernatural/paranormal/alien reason that everyone was driven crazy. But the more that I thought about it, the more I was okay with it. Even if it was a literal device, it's more realistic and something that could (and probably has) happen in real life. Which is so terrifying to think: the human brain being thrown into chaos but trying to make sense of it with hallucinations, paranoia, and aggression.

I will definitely read this one again and the author is now an insta-buy for me (which is great timing since she recently released a new book).

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han_pear's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I absolutely LOVED this book, I was hooked from the first chapter and I was telling everyone I knew about it, I even told a customer at work about (I work at a doggie daycare lol). The story is interesting and I think the direction the author went in was interesting regarding Claire. I LOVED the twist. In all honesty I put this book down for a bit because of life and work, but the twist sucked me right back in and held on tight until I was done. I was a bit disappointed the book ended where it did, and honestly I would devour an entire book about the Aurora’s voyage, the ship is so fascinating. HUGE RECOMMEND!!

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unlikelyplaces's review against another edition

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3.0

Dead Silence - S.A. Barnes

⭐ - 3

🎧

I was just looking back at my Q1 reads and realised that I’ve had such an underwhelming reading year so far and this book continues that trend… I have really mixed feelings about this.

Dead Silence follows a crew out in the depths of space who stumble across The Aurora, a luxury space cruise that mysteriously disappeared over 20 years ago. When the crew decide to investigate, they find unspeakable horrors inside.

Ok so I really don’t read a lot of horror/thriller but, when I do, I like it to be sort of equal parts tension and mystery. I need some element of “trying to figure it out” to keep me interested and this book almost had that.

I absolutely love this concept, I always think that space is a great setting for something like this because of the claustrophobic nature of it. I also, for the most part, really liked the protagonist, Claire. She reminded me a lot of Ripley from Alien if she had a bit more backstory (which I love). She did, however, keep making stupid decisions but I could forgive that if that was my only issue with this book.

My problem with this was mostly the pacing. If we were to split the book into thirds, I really loved the beginning third, and I would have loved the last third if I hadn’t been so bored for the whole middle section. I honestly don’t know how you make such an interesting concept so boring but it felt like the characters had mostly figured out what was going on pretty quickly and then it was just gory description after gory description with no real purpose and you just kind of get desensitised to them. From about 30% until about 70% of the way through I just wanted the book to end and I almost DNF’ed it but I enjoyed the beginning so much that did care enough to see what the ending was.

So, I feel quite conflicted about this… if the description sounds interesting to you and you like horror for the gore rather than the mystery then you might like this. For me, it had the set up to be a high 4 star but just dropped off so much in the middle so I levelled it out to a 3.

Content warnings: Extreme gore, v!olence, parent d3ath, su!c!de, self h@rm, pandemic

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cait's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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pepper_mind's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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