Hey everyone! I hope all is going well for you. Things are starting to look up in my little world so I’ve been in a better mood as of late. I am starting some longer fantasy series and have finally started Priory of the Orange Tree, but don’t expect that review any time soon as I still have a ways to go on that book. Dead Silence, however, has been on my TBR for a hot minute now. I’ve been really getting into horror and I definitely plan on reading some intense novels in the future. If that is not your type of thing, I totally understand. I do have other non-horror novels I intend to read soon. In the meantime, let’s talk about Dead Silence.

Content Warning: Graphic Depictions of Death and Bodily Injury, Violence and Gore, Self-Harm, Depictions of Mental Illness Involving Hallucinations, Harsh Language, Drug Use

Claire Kovalik is the captain of the LINA, a small salvage ship that is meant to go back to Earth soon. Doing that means that Claire will no longer have a job and no longer have a purpose. That is what ultimately drives her to investigate a strange distress signal. The stress signal is coming from the Aurora, the first luxury space cruiser that disappeared over twenty years ago with no explanation. This discovery would give Claire and her team instant fortune and fame. When the crew goes onboard the Aurora, they find that all of the crew and passengers had met with a horrific and mysterious fate. In order to find out what happened onboard the luxury cruise liner, Claire must hold onto her sanity during her investigation, or else face the same gruesome fate.

I am still on the hunt for a mind-blowing, spooky sci-fi horror novel. I had really high hopes for Dead Silence as I kept seeing it popping up on almost everyone’s recommendations for horror novels. I will say that I thought the writing was good and that the first 80% of this novel was really suspenseful and seemed to be heading for a good plot twist. While, yes, there is a plot twist, I found it kind of underwhelming. There is a rather abrupt shift in the novel and, while I get why it happened, I just felt that it took away some of the “investigation” portion of the story. When it comes to a novel that involves some sort of haunted location, I always look forward to the investigation part and seeing that mystery unravel. This novel just didn’t deliver as much as it could have, in my opinion. I’m definitely not going to call this novel “bad” at all, but I will call it “mid,” as the kids say nowadays.