Satan Reviews- Books: Dead Silent

Dead Silent (Poppy Sinclair #2)

Sharon Jones

Orchard Books

Warning: Spoilers (I legit reveal the identity of the murderer).

I wasn't sure if I was going to enjoy this book. It's not the kind of thing I usually read; a thriller, especially a YA thriller legit no idea why I bought it in the first place, but it does have a cool cover though . It's a gripping book that's well written and isn't entirely obvious who the murderer is.

Considering this is the second book in a series, and I've not read the first it works well as a stand alone book. Apart from occasionally referencing the first book, without any spoilers, you wouldn't know that this book is a apart of a series, which is good for me, as a reader, because I have no idea where to buy this series- I got it in a discounted book shop.

The characters were pretty likeable, if a little thick. I mean, Michael (le boyfriend) read a note supposedly written by Poppy and went to a random place while a murderer was on the loose. Because apparently, the murderer had very similar handwriting to Poppy, or Michael doesn't know what his girlfriend's handwriting looks like. How can you not know what your girlfriend's handwriting looks like?
I feel as if Poppy was a realistic interpretation of a teenage girl, which is surprising, yet pleasant. Although, she can come off as too smart, yet a little tstl. She figures the clues out incredibly quickly, almost too quickly, but then does silly things like run into something that even she knows is a trap without much of a plan other than hoping the cops that she at least contacted will arrive in time.

I think I liked Poppy and Michael's relationship. It wasn't too weird, uncomfortable or had any bad imbalances of control/ abusive dynamics, which happens way too much in fiction. The sex stuff was at the beginning was a lil bit ew, but it was turned around to show the maturity of their relationship. Which was pretty decent. I also found the fracking joke amusing.

I sort of figured out the murderer by the middleish of the book. To be semi precise, it was around the time Lucy had her eyes gouged out. Ayyyyyy....
I had two theories, which were the obvious ones tbh:

1. The Dean whose son had killed himself ages ago but she still wasn't over it

or

    2. The girl who was mostly insignificant, but appeared more than once and appeared to be romantically involved with the protagonist's father. 

It was the second option.

Chrissie's motives were a bit bland as a murderer. I mean, they weren't unreasonable motives, just a bit meh. It also fell into the overused, she really needs help bc she went cray cray from her boyfriend dying, thing. Which is kinda boring and eh, but at least they didn't actually kill Nick so it's less meh and conspiracy-y. 

Where did Poppy's weird "powers" come from? There weren't explained, they didn't affect the book much and it made it feel like Sharon would write more books to progress her powers, but that never happened. So we're stuck with being like "waaaaaaaaaaat?????" for about twenty pages of the book.

I gave the book 4 out of 5 stars.

Exra bits on Goodreads.