Silent Sisters is a true and horror-filled story. The reader is pulled in, hoping from the start the young daughter is somehow able to survive despite the lack of any maternal care. She survives but along the way uncovers ghastly crimes committed by her mother. It’s a story of resilience and survival, but also a tale of strength of character and mental sturdiness in the face a unbelievable evil. Silent Sisters was published in 2020. 

In this blog I offer a different type of book review­—one that’s combined with vocabulary building. In Silent Sisters I found a few interesting words to explore.

From Silent Sisters:

The very idea that mum would put herself out in any way for her children was as ludicrous as it was abhorrent.

abhorrent: adjective, inspiring disgust and loathing; repugnant

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From Silent Sisters:

She hadn’t looked after me. Or Cath. And I was totally flummoxed as to why she was having another.

flummoxed: adjective, bewildered or perplexed

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From Silent Sisters:

She’d just carry straight on to the local pub and stagger home, paralytically drunk, in the early hours of the following day.

paralytic: noun, a person affected by paralysis / Derivatives—adverb, paralytically

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What interesting words or terms have you found in your recent reading?

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 Definitions are typically from the dictionary that comes with my Mac or The New Oxford American Dictionary.

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“The word is only a representation of the meaning; even at its best, writing almost always falls short of full meaning. Given that, why in God’s name would you want to make things worse by choosing a word which is only cousin to the one you really wanted to use?” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft