Let me start out by saying I desperately want to give this 5 stars.

Dead Silence does an amazing job of not only including a character's mental illness and disability into the story, but deftly avoiding ascribing stigma and stereotypes to the character. In addition, it is one of the very few stories I have seen where a character's conditions (in this case unilateral hearing loss, traumatic brain injury, and PTSD) are not treated as the character's fundamental flaws. Claire struggles with and is debilitated by her PTSD, in very realistic and accurate ways, but it is not her downfall. Far from it, her past experiences with trauma inform her of the present. In a sea of horror media that demonizes mental illness and disabilities, I appreciate what this story did and how S.A. Barnes approached the topic. If you want horror with a protagonist that knows how to handle emergency situations instead of running around with their head cut off, if you want horror that depicts mental illness accurately, empathetically, and nonjudgementally, if you want horror that is largely emotional and psychological, or if you want a story that deals with systemic ableism and an overarching message of how survivors are often failed by society including either shunning them or holding them up as inspirational depending solely on how palatable they and their story are, this is the one for you.

I personally found the book to be enjoyable, and could hardly put it down. I am very likely going to purchase a hard copy of this book and very likely will reread it. The characters are loveable in their own ways. The pacing of the book itself, I felt, was wonderful for the subject. I felt that there was an appropriate amount of detail in graphic scenes--enough to make it vivid but not so much as to cross into the territory of gratuitous.

However, I can see why many, especially hardcore horror fans, may be disappointed. The book is not scary, at least not to seasoned people in the horror genre. I do not read horror to be scared, so this was not a drawback for me. The plot twists are largely predictable, and I can hardly call them "twists" and moreso the protagonist realizing things. Perhaps this was intentional, and I personally do not mind a predictable twist as long as it is done well. But I can understand being disappointed by this. The side characters do not get fleshed out much at all, and can come across as fairly cliché. For example, a self-isolating socially awkward tech wiz who doesn't get any sun, obsessed with forums. I also feel that <spoiler>having the love interest be the only other person to survive</spoiler> is a bit trite, but then I tend to dislike romance so take that with a grain of salt. Despite disliking romance, I can also see how important it is for the character's development, and it was largely not obnoxious--this is likely as close to praising romance I will ever get. I can see also how disappointing it may be to readers to have a lot of build up for WHY Claire escaped originally, only to have no concrete answers in the end. At the same time, I can appreciate that in the vast majority of traumatic situations, you do not get closure and it does not get tied up in pretty, digestible bows. 

Between these, I can't say that I would recommend it to every horror fan, nor can I say that it will be enjoyable for certain people. But the things it does do, it does very, very well. Some of the drawbacks could well be artistic decisions rather than oversight, so I have elected to remove only a half point from its rating.