Silence for the Dead

By: Simone St. James / Narrated By: Mary Jane Wells

Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins

Actually? A fine piece of historical fiction without toooo much romance to spoil it

I know! I know! I’m a romance junkie, especially for historical romance. But gimme a good piece of historical fiction, and I don’t wanna blow the story with characters who quite suddenly care more for each other than for the desperate predicament the author has written them into.

And here in Silence for the Dead, we have Kitty, a young woman who’s pretending to be a nurse because she’s running hard, running fast from something/someone in her past. Getting this job in a hospital for the WWI shell-shocked soldiers (The story takes place after the war in 1919) is pretty much her very last option. She has zippo choice, has spent her last bit of money; she will do and say what it takes to fit in and make a life for herself.

But Portis House has its strange noises, its odd spots of cold, its eerie sightings. And men who are tormented by demons from the war… and by a nightmare that each of them has, unbeknownst to each other. The mansion also used to have a fairly well-to-do family, but they all disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As Kitty struggles to keep up with the workload, she finds herself desperately trying to untangle what’s going on, all with the help of the handsome, but wildly damaged, Jack Yates.

Noooooo—this does NOT cause toe-curling pauses in either the story’s momentum or in its development of the haunting. There’s no: Oh my GOD, what was that noise… let’s just stop here for a kiss… holy COW…mmm, smooooch!

I haaaate that!

No, author Simone St. James crafts a good story with some fairly nifty hair-raising moments. Plus, I listened to Pat Barker’s book Regeneration right after this, and I found that both books were respectful of the horrors that WWI soldiers suffered, of the trauma and nightmares they endured (Plus I’ve listened to Taylor Downing’s Breakdown about Shell Shock on the Somme). I was quite pleased that this audiobook, which can be checked out under Audible’s “Escape” Romance package, was actually somewhat hard-hitting.

For me, however, whenst choosing this for a Halloween Listen, I was comPLETEly swayed by the fact that Mary Jane Wells narrates it. She did the All Regency Collection which I deeeearly loved, and her narration of that collection of novellas, where she showed her ability to carry off a man’s voice so very well, and her ability to add emotion had me sniffling back tears, was all I needed. Period. to give this book a try. And she totally rocks it! I can’t think of another female narrator of historical fiction who coulda carried off a whole passel of traumatized and out-of-control men as well.

So this book is very MUCH a go get ‘em for me. I’m not going to be able to review Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House this year, but some of the eeriness of that book, some of the chills, could be found in this book as well. And I don’t get spooked that easily; and I have a tendency of rolling my eyes just where I most certainly should NOT.

But with the writing? With the narration?

Brrrrrr!!!! I feel that cold spot swirling around me even as I sit here and chuck out these words!!!