Daisy Pearce

Spoiled former child star Stella, of Katie Marigold! fame, has finally found love. Washed up and living in a flat with her best friend, Carmel, Marco is exactly the rescuer Stella needs from the wreck her life has become. He’s handsome, charming, wealthy… and did I mention wealthy? Because, apparently money makes some women lose all common sense. What starts simply enough—a squabble here, a forgotten date there—turns into one of the most disjointed stories I’ve read in a while.

The unreliable narrator, be it from drugs, alcohol, or some sort of early onset dementia, isn’t a new concept, but some authors execute it with greater or lesser success. For what felt like ever, this book droned on with Stella’s repeated bouts of confusion, making the first fifty percent a very slow read.

There were key elements dropped in, like Stella’s friendship (soon wrecked) with Carmel and tidbits about her past as the character Katie Marigold!, that come into play at the end, but everything else felt like fluff. Indulgent, overly-detailed accounts of all the ways that something is messing with Stella’s head (and it’s clear to the reader from the beginning what it is).

The Katie Marigold! show might have been my favorite part of this book, but I’m kind of obsessed with the dark behind-the-scenes stories of child actors. The author does an incredible job bringing to life a show I’d argue has to exist, because it is so well fleshed out. There’s tension, greed, and sex, but the bit about Joey, Stella’s co-star, who may or may not be harassing her as an adult, is just another in a sea of diluted and haphazardly constructed plotlines.

For me, The Silence could’ve been a really awesome book. As is, it’s not bad, but there is just too much going on with Marco’s and Stella’s pasts and Marco and Stella’s presents, between ex-loves, an ex-career, a stalker (possibly returned), ba-ba-bad romance, blossoming new love with other partners, the possibly haunted house, the questionable doctor, and a drug-addled Stella facing the demons of her parents’ past bad actions impact on her present, that I’m just like whoa! Wait a minute. Several of the threads tie together, but mostly it is a lot to resolve, and some of it just feels unnecessarily convoluted, like the manuscript needed another judicious pass.

My biggest gripe is Stella. I get the spoiled child bit, but she’s the world’s most clueless adult, and that turned me off big time. The antagonist is clear from the beginning. The plot devolves from the possibility of happily ever after to likely homicide, and I can’t understand why Stella cooperated so willingly in her own destruction. Maybe that’s how these relationships work? I don’t know, but the whole time I felt like I was watching that TV ad with the chainsaw-wielding maniac hunting the group of young adults who are like “let’s get into the running car.” “No, let’s hide in here,” and they go into a barn full of weapons that stuns even the would-be killer. I am as baffled as he is about their choice of hiding spots about Stella and all the illogical choices she made out of convenience, to advance a story line that maybe needed a more critical narrator.
… (mere)