Book Review: Silent Child

SILENT CHILD | Sarah A. Denzil
01.26.2017 | Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Rating: 3/5 stars

In 2006 a devastating storm hit Emma Price’s town and she watched as her son’s red coat was fished out of the river. Her son, Aiden, was at school during the storm and at some point in the middle of the chaos, he slipped away and went to play by the river. He was believed to have fallen in and drowned, however, his body was never discovered.

You can never control the circumstances around you. You can’t control how other people react, only how you, yourself, act. That’s the great tragedy of life. One moment everything is perfect and the next it’s all in tatters because of the circumstances happening all around you.

Ten years have passed since Emma lost her son. She is now living a new life. She’s married, working a job she loves, and is expecting a baby in just a few short weeks. One day she receives a phone call that changes everything she has built. Aiden has been found. It is clear that Aiden suffered at the hands of whoever has kept him captive for ten years, but he refuses to speak to anyone to share his tale. As the days since his return tick by, everyone in the village looks like a viable suspect. Who took Aiden all those years ago? What happened to him?

On that day, when I lost Aiden, I lost all control of my life, and with him gone, I would never get it back.

SILENT CHILD is a story about every parent’s fear. A child gone missing, believed to be dead, but having no concrete answers. What would you do if your child returned a decade later? Emma Price has to determine how to help her son, while balancing her current life and determining how Aiden fits. The first half of this novel kept me at the edge of my seat. I eagerly wanted to know about Emma, Aiden, and the lives and connections of everyone involved in their lives. Somewhere in the middle, I felt like things got weird. For starters, it seemed like weeks had gone by and Emma was still pregnant, but when the book started it sounded like she was giving birth any day. I felt like Denzil tried to spice the novel up by throwing in new plot twists with other characters, but they seemed overdone. While I’m fine with mildly unbelievable details or needing to stretch my imagination in books, this went a bit too far. With a book that started out with so much potential, I was left wanting more. I will say, there are a ton of rave reviews for this one on Goodreads, so it could easily be a situation where it didn’t work for me and you might love it.