Everyone in this book is terrible, and that makes it difficult to care about navigating the tense situation of who did what. Extremely suburban drama. 

I really liked the pace and mystery as you jump between 4 characters perspectives to uncover the neighborhood secrets. The book kept me guessing and had really great reveals towards the end. The ending was so well written but it did leave me wanting more, a sequel from the end point would be amazing!

I hate every single character expect for Xavier and Rebecca. I want to punch Whitney in the face. I want to punch Blair in the face. Rebecca is cool, sad as hell. I hate all the nondescript coward husbands that blended together in a quilt of disappointment. Only a great author could make you hate character throughly and completely. 

Title: The Whispers
Author: Ashley Audrain
Genre: Contemporary
Rating: 3.75
Pub Date: June 6, 2023

T H R E E • W O R D S

Messy • Tense • Uncomfortable

📖 S Y N O P S I S

On Harlow Street, the well-to-do neighbor­hood couples and their children gather for a barbecue as the summer winds down. Everything is fabulous until Whitney, the picture-perfect hostess, explodes in fury because her son disobeys her. Everyone at the party hears her exquisite veneer crack—loud and clear. Before long, that same young boy falls from his bedside window in the middle of the night. And then his mother can only sit by her son’s hospital bed, where his life hangs in the balance.

Over the course of a tense three days, the women of the neighborhood grapple with what led to that terrible night. People-pleasing Blair, Whitney’s best friend, suspects something isn’t as it seems. Rebecca, the ER doctor who helps treat Whit­ney’s son, has struggled to have a child of her own. And the all-knowing Mara, the older woman next door, watches everyone’s world unravel from her front porch.

💭 T H O U G H T S

I was not one of the people who loved Ashley Audrain's debut, The Push, however, after reading the synopsis for The Whispers I was intrigued and wanted to give this Canadian author a second chance. What I knew for sure was I'd get a plot that pushes the boundaries and delves deep into the darkest areas of the human psyche. And that it does!

Told from the perspective of four women, the entire story spans a week and touches on themes of motherhood and marriage, envy and desire, and womanhood and female friendship. It unearths the darkest and most disturbing thoughts, those little inklings many woman have, yet never actually voice. While none of the characters are very likeable, each perspective does offer something entirely different and allows the reader to contemplate their inner most thoughts and feelings. There is an underlying thread of mystery surrounding what truly happened to the boy running in background.

While nothing overly shocking occurs in The Whispers, it's filled with secrets and a whole host of twists and turns. It forces the reader to sit with some uncomfortable truths, which would make it an excellent book club selection. It worked for me so much better than The Push and while neither book was a favourite, I'll continue to follow Ashley's career and look forward to seeing what she'll write next.

📚 R E A D • I F • Y O U • L I K E
• suburban thrillers
• adults behaving badly
• examining motherhood

⚠️ CW: child abuse, emotional abuse, injury/injury detail, bullying, death, child death, grief, infertility, infidelity, mental illness, pregnancy, miscarriage, toxic relationship, toxic friendship, blood, medical content, medical trauma, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempt, gaslighting, sexual content, cursing, alcohol

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"But this is the thing about miscarriage. It is not an event, something that once happened and has ended. Miscarriage goes on and on, follows a woman through her days and her dreams, and then she will have blissful split seconds when she forgets, when her brain can still feel the gratification of having that baby, until she remembers the baby is not hers anymore, and hasn’t been for days or even weeks."

"It’s amazing what you can learn about people when you’re more or less invisible. It’s the things they don’t want you to see that tell you the most." 

I loved Ashley Audrain's debut THE PUSH so much that when I saw she wrote a 2nd book I immediately checked it out. This one is more broad and character-driven with less narrative drive. The characters are super MESSY in their dealings with motherhood and marriage. Audrain is really giving voice to taboo things that we all think about but are too afraid to say. The book is told from the POV of 4 women, and honestly 1-2 of their stories felt unrelated to the main story.

Oooof. These folks are *awful* - supergritty story, and tough to read because of it, on one hand, but I enjoyed the way the mystery unfolded

A small neighbourhood domestic thriller, with the added Ashley Audrain signature of commentary on motherhood. This one follows four different women, all mothers of different sorts, and the complexity and messiness of each of their lives that is uncovered following a tragic accident.

The plot and drama of the story felt slightly lacking in this one, and it definitely took a while to become invested. As unfair as it is to do so, I can't help but compare it to the Push by the same author, which still stands as one of my favourite books. This one felt much more domestic thriller, with themes around motherhood woven in, whereas the Push felt, in its entirety, a book about motherhood and intergenerational trauma, without needing to deliver this through the medium of a domestic thriller.

That said, the Whispers did deliver on the themes discussed, and I loved the conversations on what it is to be a mother, and the pressures and expectations that come with motherhood. The Push is a deep dive into one woman's experience, and the Whispers shows us four different experiences of four different women. I enjoyed these multiple perspectives and how these expectations and stories of motherhood interact, but it was definitely a trade off on the level of depth we see from each perspective.

I think the Whispers will appeal to a wider audience, but I think it will be on fewer favourites list than the Push. If you don't connect with the themes and commentary in this book, you have the drama plot to fall back on that will still entertain you, but for me this made it feel slightly diluted.

 Thrillers and what you're looking for in them, will vary from person to person. For me however, I do think I would've loved this more if it focused less on withholding truths for the sake of drama and mystery, and more on the raw details of the inner lives of these women.