Book Review: The Noise by James Patterson and J. D. Barker

Name:  The Noise
Author:  James Patterson and J. D. Barker
Number of Pages:  400 (Kindle)
Published: August 16th 2021 by Little, Brown and Company
Genre: Thriller, Horror, Mystery

A mysterious explosion kills thousands in the Pacific Northwest—and only two young girls survive. The newest in psychological suspense from the mind of James Patterson.
Two sisters have always stood together. Now, they’re the only ones left.  In the shadow of Mount Hood, sixteen-year-old Tennant is checking rabbit traps with her eight-year-old sister Sophie when the girls are suddenly overcome by a strange vibration rising out of the forest, building in intensity until it sounds like a deafening crescendo of screams. From out of nowhere, their father sweeps them up and drops them through a trapdoor into a storm cellar. But the sound only gets worse…

My Rating:

My Thoughts:

Well that was unexpected. I think this is going to be quite a short review as less is definitely more sometimes, as proved to be the case for me with The Noise.
It wasn’t a book that I’d heard of beforehand, or anticipated, the blurb gives very little away, I didn’t know what to expect, I just picked this one up on a whim and away I went. What a read.

I want to talk about the story, but only briefly, because going into this knowing so little really enhanced my enjoyment. It begins with two sisters out in the forest. Suddenly there’s a disturbance, a sound that comes out of nowhere, and their father snatches them up and races them to safety underground. Once it subsides the girls emerge to find their whole world decimated and no one to help them or tell them what happened.
It soon becomes apparent that this is not just a small-scale event, and people from the worlds of science and the military are drawn in to this lethal mystery, which escalates quickly into something intriguing but potentially very dangerous.

Thriller, mystery, a little bit sci-fi, horror – all these elements come together in this rapid-paced story, bringing some really creepy moments, plenty of action and destruction, and characters you become interested in quickly, particularly Sophie and Tennant, the two sisters with whom this story begins.

The chapters are short and fast-paced, switching between viewpoints of a scientist, a soldier, a young girl at the heart of all this trouble, and even for a brief period to the president, who faces some tough calls.

The narrative is driven by the non-stop action and the constant questions. What on earth is going on? What caused it? Can it be stopped? And does anyone know more than they’re initially saying about how all this came about and what may lie ahead?
I can’t say more about any of this, because it really would ruin a tense, exciting, scary, thriller of a read and one which I enjoyed discovering.

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