Book Review: Silence by Deborah Lytton
“Someday Broadway. The thought flutters in the darkness. A golden butterfly seeking escape. It frees itself. Flies away. I watch Someday Broadway disappear. And I close my eyes.”
Stella is shy, but shines when she’s singing on stage. Her dream is “Someday Broadway” while she avoids falling in love like her mother. Hayden stutters, but is a master at the piano. He is cloaked in mystery and slow to reveal himself to the readers. He’s very artistic and keeps to himself. An accident leaves Stella deaf and Hayden’s slow speech allows her to easily read his lips. With a tragic past of his own, he only allows himself 17 days to show her how beautiful the world could be even without sound.
Confession time! I spent most of this book pretending Stella was seventeen instead of fifteen like she’s supposed to be according to the novel. Her characteristics and dialog (not to mention her interactions and her parent’s reactions to the seventeen year old Hayden) do not fit that of a fifteen year old girl.
It is a very clean romance, which is very refreshing and fit the characters perfectly. But at times it did get sickeningly sweet and left the characters in a gooey mess. The plot ran smoothly along, almost too smoothly. There were no big bumps along the way to throw the characters off track and create a deeper plot. There were plenty of past reveals, but nothing that shook the relationship between the characters enough for there to be any real drama.
Overall, Silence is a good Young Adult romance that I recommend to anyone looking for a nice, clean romance for a fresh chance of pace.
