The Silent House

by Nell Pattison

[Leah]

The Silent House is one of those books that you start reading and you can’t quite believe no one’s thought to write a book about it before! When you think about it, a book where there’s a murder in a deaf family really does ask a lot of questions, namely, can you get away with it? (Hint: the answer will surprise you and it isn’t yes.) As soon as I heard the synopsis of the novel, I was so, so intrigued. And it was absolutely fantastic.

The Silent House is, as I said, set in the deaf community, a young girl is murdered in her bed, and her parents don’t realise until the next morning. BSL interpreter Paige Northwood is asked to interpret for the parents/police but realises a little too late that she actually knows the family involved, through her sister Anna. She keeps that quiet, however, as the case intrigues her. She starts to do some digging of her own as she knows someone is lying, she just can’t figure out how or why, but as Anna gets closer to unveiling the killer, her own life may well be at risk, too.

I absolutely loved The Silent House. The concept was new and interesting to me, as I’ve never wondered what would happen if someone was killed in a deaf family. Then there was the tension between Laura and Elisha, who both had babies to Alan, and it was Laura’s daughter who was killed while in the care of Elisha and Alan. I genuinely had no idea while I was reading who was responsible. I couldn’t really figure it out, because who WOULD kill an 18-month-old toddler? It just doesn’t make any sense. And much like Paige, I was suspicious of literally every single character we came across in the novel. Every time the police interviewed someone new, I was like IT WAS THEM! No, wait, IT WAS THEM! And repeat, about 10 times. But that just goes to show how fabulous Nell Pattison is as a writer, as it just wasn’t obvious what had happened.

I absolutely loved Paige. She was a fantastic narrator. Yes, she probably got a bit too involved, and it didn’t always help her standing with the police – especially DS Forest (who, by the way, intrigues me massively and I hope we get to understand more why she is the way she is; we got a small glimpse of it in The Silent House, but I feel like there’s more to her story as to why she is the way she is). But I could also understand that instinct to find out why, because I am that kind of person. I like to know why something has happened the way it has, and while I’m not necessarily investigating murders, I am an inherently nosey person so my investigations tend to err on the side of trying to understand why people hurt me (and usually, I end up hurting myself more in the process, it’s wild).

I’m actually super excited that this is the first novel to feature Paige Northwood, there’s a new one coming in November and I’m excited to dive in to it, I’ve already pre-ordered it and I think Nell Pattison is a fantastic writer. She really makes you care about the characters and although it took me a good few weeks to read this, I was always thinking about it every second, desperate to get back to it and unravel the mystery of Lexi’s death. It very much held my attention even when I wasn’t reading and that’s one of the best things about this book. You’re always thinking about it. I couldn’t figure out what had happened and so, I was always thinking about it, trying to figure it out. And then being desperate to get back to reading ASAP so I could see if I was right (I wasn’t, because none of my theories held any water and I just kept skipping from suspect to suspect).

This was an immense debut novel! I’m so excited to have Nell Pattison in the thriller genre. She is an incredible writer, with engaging characters and fantastic pacing and a very relateable writing style and it all adds up to a pretty immense novel, I couldn’t recommend The Silent House any more and I implore you to go and buy it – it is only 99p on Kindle at the moment