THE SILENCE IN HER EYES | by Armando Lucas Correa
01.16.2024 | Atria
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Leah has been living with akinetopsia, or motion blindness, since she was a child. For the last twenty years, she hasn’t been able to see movement. As she walks around her upper Manhattan neighborhood with her white stick tapping in front, most people assume she’s blind. But the truth is Leah sees a good deal, and with her acute senses of smell and hearing, very little escapes her notice.
She has a quiet, orderly life, with little human contact beyond her longtime housekeeper, her doctor, and her elderly neighbor. That all changes when Alice moves into the apartment next door and Leah can immediately smell the anxiety wafting off her. Worse, Leah can’t help but hear Alice and a late-night visitor engage in a violent fight. Worried, she befriends her neighbor and discovers that Alice is in the middle of a messy divorce from an abusive husband.
Then one night, Leah wakes up to someone in her apartment. She blacks out and in the morning is left wondering if she dreamt the episode. And yet the scent of the intruder follows her everywhere. And when she hears Alice through the wall pleading for her help, Leah makes a decision that will test her courage, her strength, and ultimately her sanity.
I love a shorter thriller and The Silence In Her Eyes hits this mark by coming in at under 300 pages.
Within the pages of this book we meet our main character, Leah, who has just lost her mother and is learning to navigate a solo life while living with motion blindness. I didn’t know much about akinetopsia before picking this book up, but it felt like Correa was able to create a realistic representation of what life with this condition would be like. I really enjoyed how this played into Leah’s investigation of the strange series of events that start happening to and around her throughout this story.
The twists throughout this story were great and some were completely unexpected. What was lost on me was the repetitive feel that the story would take on at times. I felt like I was reading in a loop at certain points or there were exaggerated repetitions of facts we already knew. This could be a result of the translation for this story.
Overall, if you’re looking for a quick and interesting read, I definitely recommend giving this one a try!
A huge thank you to Atria for my gifted copy!
What Jess Reads 