The Silent Land

I will give it 4 stars because once I got started I devoured it. Honestly I “figured it out” pretty early on (though I do hate putting it in those terms) but it was still a fairly satisfying read. also, it genuinely scared me at times, can't remember the last time a book spooked me.

So apparently this guy wins a lot of awards. It's not completely surprising, because the book is full of elegant descriptions and beautifully painted scenes. Unfortunately, his characters are uninteresting, and the plot, while excellent at first, actually ends in the “it was all a dream!” territory, which - no. Not my thing. Probably another reason why I didn't care for it was that it was marketed as a thriller, when it's much more a quiet story about two people and their relationship. Like I said, the writing was beautiful and sparse, and I read it for that reason, but in the end, there wasn't enough meat to the story to make it memorable. I really wish they had half-star reviews, because this is definitely a 2.5 star book.

This would have been better as a short story.