The Weight of Silence
Apr. 18th, 2025 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearThe Weight of Silence by Heather Gudenkauf takes place almost in real time on one day in a small US town, where two seven-year-old girls go missing very early in the morning.
We get multiple viewpoints from various people in the town, who are variously connected to the case (parents, siblings, law enforcement - and, interestingly, also both the girls) in very short chapters (2-5 pages each), gradually building up a picture of what's going on and what's been going on for some time.
It started out feeling more like a 'want to know what happens' kind of book, rather than an 'enjoy the journey' kind of book, then flipped to a 'journey' book about halfway through, and then back again.
I liked some aspects of it more than others. The perspective of the older brother of one of the missing girls (and his entire arc, actually) was my favourite, and the whole thing became quite affecting as things progressed. My main gripe was that the dialogue was extremely clunky, with not nearly enough contractions to make it flow naturally.
But it all came together quite well in the end - though the tension of the climax was rather diminished by one of the police officers predicting what would happen, and then it happening almost exactly as he envisaged...
It was pretty depressing overall, though there were some lovely moments along the way and some hopefulness at the very end.
We get multiple viewpoints from various people in the town, who are variously connected to the case (parents, siblings, law enforcement - and, interestingly, also both the girls) in very short chapters (2-5 pages each), gradually building up a picture of what's going on and what's been going on for some time.
It started out feeling more like a 'want to know what happens' kind of book, rather than an 'enjoy the journey' kind of book, then flipped to a 'journey' book about halfway through, and then back again.
I liked some aspects of it more than others. The perspective of the older brother of one of the missing girls (and his entire arc, actually) was my favourite, and the whole thing became quite affecting as things progressed. My main gripe was that the dialogue was extremely clunky, with not nearly enough contractions to make it flow naturally.
But it all came together quite well in the end - though the tension of the climax was rather diminished by one of the police officers predicting what would happen, and then it happening almost exactly as he envisaged...
It was pretty depressing overall, though there were some lovely moments along the way and some hopefulness at the very end.
