Silent Sister

The Senior Sabbatical. A weeklong school trip to Shady Oaks Lodge that every Forest Lane Academy senior looks forward to. However, the trip goes awry when sisters Maddy and Grace Stoll disappear one night. An injured Grace is found on the side of the road, without her memory and without her sister. Nobody knows exactly what happened, and anyone who might have a clue isn’t talking.  

Silent Sister bounces between the two sisters’ perspectives. Maddy’s perspective focuses on the lead-up to the disappearance and the sisters’ time on the Senior Sabbatical. Maddy is the younger sister who has always felt overshadowed by her “perfect” older sister, Grace. But now, Maddy is determined to use the senior trip to reinvent herself, especially after learning she won’t be able to attend her dream college. And all is going well—she ends up befriending her roommate Jade, getting romantically close to cute jokester Adrian, and enjoying outdoor activities, all while reconciling with her personal struggles—until she and Grace get into a blowout fight.  

The details of what happened afterwards are murky, leading readers to rely on Grace and her post-Senior Sabbatical perspective to try to fill in the blanks. Overachiever Grace had everything going for her before the trip, including a bright future playing college volleyball, but after the trip, she’s totally lost. And when things couldn’t possibly get worse for her, Maddy’s dead body is discovered. Everyone is a suspect—teachers, classmates, and Grace. Determined to find out what happened, Grace teams up with Adrian, and together they interrogate their classmates and piece together snippets of Grace’s memories. They’re determined to find out what really happened to Maddy. Was Maddy’s death an accident? Or was it something more sinister? 

Maddy is an incredibly relatable main character, facing the same issues that most teenagers struggle with, including the stress of deciding their futures, choosing a college, being in the shadow of a sibling, and facing friendship and social troubles. While readers may not relate to the book’s deadly mystery, teenage readers will absolutely be able to relate to the struggles of being a teenager. Maddy and Grace feel very real, as does their sibling relationship—they don’t have a picture-perfect sisterly bond, and that adds to the book’s realism. Grace’s struggle with memory loss is believable and adds intrigue to the story. The sisters’ struggles and resolutions are well-written, and the book’s trauma is presented and addressed in an appropriate manner.  

The list of side characters is extensive, yet each person manages to have a distinct personality, and, as suspects, they contribute to the unfolding mystery in the book. This is especially true of Adrian and Jade, who are both complex and layered characters. Adrian operates as both a love interest and a suspect, complicating his relationship with both Grace and Maddie. Jade becomes Maddy’s friend when she needs one the most, but Jade has ulterior motives and a deep backstory that complicates the mystery. The supporting characters remind readers that things are not always as they seem and that there’s always more to the story than meets the eye.  

The plot is complex and ever-winding, with a plethora of characters and details to remember, yet it’s still an engaging read that ties up loose ends. The perspective swap keeps readers on their toes and makes room for incredible cliffhangers. There’s a surprise in practically every chapter, with plot twists that are incredibly well-done. Silent Sister is a hard book to put down, and readers will be eager to reach the gripping conclusion, which is a true jaw-dropper that both makes sense and prompts readers to take a second read to uncover all the clues they missed. 

Davidhizar nails both the mystery genre and the first-person portrayal of complex, teenage female characters. Additionally, Silent Sister successfully transcends the deadly mystery to explore themes of sisterhood, trauma, the internet’s dissemination of misinformation, and the importance of telling the truth. The book has its moments of harsh violence, but it grapples with death in a way that feels genuine and authentic. Its many emotional moments are relatable and bring an unexpected yet welcome element of hope to the story. Silent Sister thrills with a fascinating, twisting plot that features well-written characters, while also accurately highlighting the struggles of being a teenager.  

Sexual Content  

• While at a diner, Grace and her friend, Adrian, have a conversation about grief. He tries to comfort her. “Adrian reaches across the table and covers my hand with his. His calluses are rough, but his touch is soft.” 
• Maddy gets upset, and Adrian, whom Maddy is crushing on, comforts her. “He extends his hand. . . My fingers slide between his. A slow warmth creeps up my chest, and I hope it doesn’t reach my cheeks.” 
• When Maddy confesses to Adrian that she writes poems, he coyly indicates that he wants her to read one. This leads her to dream of a romantic moment between them. “He’s so close to me that I could stare into his deep, brown eyes, say something flirty and funny, softly flutter my lids closed, and lean in to kiss him.” 
• Maddy and Adrian are playing a game. When they are close together, she imagines them kissing. “I’d be wishing we weren’t surrounded by classmates so he would kiss me, and maybe he’s thinking the same because his eyes drop to my lips before flicking back up.” 
• Grace and Adrian skip prom and hang out at a playground instead, which leads to small physical romantic gestures like cuddling and touching, and eventually a kiss. “His lips touch mine, both of us smiling as we relax into a light, enchanting, true kiss of understanding and comfort.” This scene lasts five pages. 
• At the big post-prom party, teenagers are making out. “A couple is pressed together against a wall.” 
• A teacher, Mr. Holtsof, initiates an inappropriate relationship with one of his students, Grace’s best friend Nicole, by “making plans to get coffee” and “DMing” her. 
• Mr. Gutter, another teacher, is rumored to be “a pedophile.”

Violence  

• Grace remembers pulling Maddy’s body from a lake. “My sister, face up on the ground. Her wet, dark hair half covering her cheeks. Her closed eyes not even fluttering.”  
• Maddy’s body is depicted again via an autopsy. An officer says, “The initial examinations shows she experienced some severe bruising, particularly around her chest and upper limbs.” Later, the autopsy report is read aloud. “Maddy’s skin, dull and pale and white, against a dark deep-purple bruise. A handprint. Four distinct fingers meeting a thumb, wrapped around the arm in a vise grip.” 
• Mateo, an old classmate of the Stoll sisters, tragically died in middle school, and his death haunts both Grace and Maddy. His death is described multiple times, as the Stoll sisters recall the incident differently. From Maddy’s perspective, Mateo tripped on a purse strap and fell down the bleachers to his death. She says, “I still remember seeing his hand between [onlookers’] feet. His fingers were half-curled…The fall should’ve broken his arm, not snapped his neck.”  
• Grace thinks she “pushed” Mateo off her after he made unwanted advances. He fell down the stairs, and “he landed wrong.”   
• Maddy and Grace get trapped in a flooded cave and start to drown. Grace describes, “My lungs burn and I can’t breathe and I kick harder but there’s no air and I can’t hold my breath much longer and I don’t want to die here.” Afterwards, she finds Maddy’s dead body and tries but fails to revive her with CPR. This scene is described over three pages.  
• When Grace is in the hospital, she assesses the injuries she got during her disappearance, noting her “black eye, the scratch on my cheek, or healing bruises and the gash at the base of my skull required seven stitches and hurts worse than all of them combined.” 
• After Grace is found in the woods, she is cleaned up, but there are still remnants of blood. “While the dried blood’s been washed away from my face, I spotted some flecks of it along my hairline in the bathroom mirror this morning.” 
• When Grace is being questioned after Maddy’s death has been ruled a homicide, the officer reveals they found blood on Maddy. “We found blood on her clothes...We’re having it tested and compared to the blood we found on your clothing, but her injuries don’t match your head wound.” 
• Adrian tells a story of his mother’s late-term miscarriage. “One night. . . the baby didn’t move. . . When she went in for an ultrasound, they couldn’t find the heartbeat. . . They had to induce her labor.” This story includes Adrian and his siblings holding their dead baby sibling.  
• Jade used to have an eating disorder, which Grace details. “In ninth grade, she kept making these comments about herself or other girls. She was always talking about her weight. Then she stopped eating lunch.” Jade’s dad manipulated Jade’s disorder to get custody of her. “Her dad claimed she had an eating disorder because of her mom.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

• Underage consumption of alcohol is mentioned occasionally. 
• When being interrogated by Grace and Adrian, their classmate, Ryan Jacobs, admits that he “brought some bottles of vodka on the trip.” He didn’t drink it, but his friend “Caleb did [drink]. Not wasted or anything, but enough to numb him, ya know?”  
• Detective Howard accuses the Stoll sisters of drinking, saying, “If there was any drinking or drugs involved, it’s not worth hiding with your sister missing” because “the police found two broken vodka bottles on the grounds.” However, the Stoll sisters were not drinking. 
• At a post-prom party, underage teenagers are drinking. Maddy’s best friend Erica chugs an unspecified but presumably alcoholic beverage from a “red plastic cup” before displaying drunken clumsiness. Continuous references to illicit activities occur at this party, including Erica offering a cup and saying, “Here, have a drink.” This scene lasts five pages. 
• At the same party, a girl is covered in “spilled beer.” The cops show up to bust the post-prom party, and students begin “running from an underage drinking fine.” This scene lasts three pages. 
• Grace often takes medication to heal from her injuries. For example, “I measure out the number of pills Dr. Thelsman prescribed and swallow.” 

Language  

• Characters occasionally make references to and use gestures of vulgar language, but never actually say profane words. For example, a boy “flips [his friend] off” and “Jade breaks through the crowd first with a shriek of colorful expletives.”  
• “Oh God” and “God” are used rarely as exclamations.   

Supernatural  

• None 

Spiritual Content  

• Grace keeps having flashes of a specific memory. “Whatever cosmic fate or God exists clearly wants me to keep this one vivid image alive: me, dragging Maddy from the water.”