Week 39 Review: Dead Silence

From Goodreads:

Titanic meets The Shining in S.A. Barnes' Dead Silence, a SF horror novel in which a woman and her crew board a decades-lost luxury cruiser and find the wreckage of a nightmare that hasn't yet ended.

A GHOST SHIP.

A SALVAGE CREW.

UNSPEAKABLE HORRORS.

Claire Kovalik is days away from being unemployed—made obsolete—when her beacon repair crew picks up a strange distress signal. With nothing to lose and no desire to return to Earth, Claire and her team decide to investigate.

What they find at the other end of the signal is a shock: the Aurora, a famous luxury space-liner that vanished on its maiden tour of the solar system more than twenty years ago. A salvage claim like this could set Claire and her crew up for life. But a quick trip through the Aurora reveals something isn't right.

Whispers in the dark. Flickers of movement. Words scrawled in blood. Claire must fight to hold onto her sanity and find out what really happened on the Aurora, before she and her crew meet the same ghastly fate.

My Review:
Oh, man, this book! A big part of this book is on the fact that we don't know if we can trust Claire, because she doesn't trust herself. Doesn't trust that what she's seeing is real. The mental  and psychological parts of this thriller was just so tense and atmospheric, and pushed the story along so frighteningly well! Not to say the physical part of the story weren't tense, but the other two were on point!

This concept reminded me of two books, one YA, the other adult. The YA book, Pitch Dark by Courtney Alameda, and the adult book, Salvaged by Madeleine Roux. OK, maybe one other adult book, Salvation Day by Kali Wallace. They all have ships that were either missing or abandoned, where something went wrong. And Dead Silence is a great addition to the group! Lots of dark and creepy ship atmosphere books, these sci fi books really blend well with horror, and I love it!  

I really enjoyed the way that it was told. We had little snippets of the present, and then the bulk of the story when Claire and her team find the ship. And then we hit that point where things transition to the present, and oh, do things really take a turn there!

When we found out what was going on, that was very satisfying! Everything made sense, and it tied everything together in a really believable way! Well, almost everything. It doesn't explain what happened to her as a child, but the how and why of that aren't the focus of this book, only how that affects her mental state throughout this book. But yeah, that ending was excellent! 

This was such a fantastic read, and I can't wait from more books from the name S.A. Barnes! 

Author: S.A. Barnes
Read: September 26th, 2021
Source: NetGalley 
Reason Why: Sounded really great (and it's by Stacey Kade writing under a different name!) and it's a SAC 2021 Book and a WoW Book!
Publisher: Tor Nightfire
Published: January 25th 2022

5/5 Hearts

5/5 Books

5/5 Stars