A review by sarahweyand
The Silence in Her Eyes by Armando Lucas Correa

dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

Thanks to Atria Books and NetGalley for providing me an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and feedback are my own. 

I was excited to read this book because the premise seemed very compelling and I've heard that Correa's historical fiction has been very well received. I am so sad that this was such a miss for me. 
The story was okay until about the halfway point, probably a three-star read, but the time jump and plot left-turn was a real struggle to get through.

Normally I try to make these reviews have some depth to them, but I'm going to keep this to a bulleted list to keep myself from getting too deep into the weeds on any one point.

  • The crux of this book - that the protagonist has akinetopsia - is compelling but ends up not being essential to the plot at all.
  • Despite the fact that our protagonist, Leah, can still very much see (all she is lacking is the ability to see movement), she has developed Daredevil-like abilities of hearing and smell that it's too unbelievable for me to ascribe to.
  • Similar to the previous point, I simply cannot suspend my disbelief to the point where I'm okay with the fact that Leah can simply stop using her sense of smell on command.
  • Our protagonist leaps to conclusions like she's a professional hurdler and yet she is somehow always right.
  • I actually called the reveal of this book about 20% of the way in, so I'm glad that it went the direction that it did, but the big twist seemed anticlimactic and poorly executed.
  • There is backstory with a specific character that is alluded to have meaning to the mystery/plot Leah is trying to solve, but the point is ultimately  meaningless and has no real reason to be included except as an unbelievable red herring.
  • In fact, a lot of the subplots in this story (see: the reason for the title of the book) end up not contributing to the plot in any meaningful way, leaving me wondering why they were included in the first place.
  • I didn't know what akinetopsia was going into this book, but I only needed one explanation to get the idea, and yet Leah uses the same explanations and description for her condition at least five times (probably more) throughout the book. I felt like I was being patronized or like the author thought I'd forgotten.
  • The writing was almost painful at points. From a very "tell-not-show" style to laughable scenes (like the one where Leah takes a photo of bergamot, captions it "bergamot" and posts it to Instagram to her 100k+ follower photography page), a thriller that is supposed to be taken seriously shouldn't have points where I'm snorting out loud.

I'll end this by saying that I believe Correa is a talented historical fiction writer, and the premise here could have been promising. This just wasn't the hit it could have been. I could see some people enjoying this book for the mystery and the thrill of the reveal, but overall I don't think I'll be recommending this one.
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