Reviews - The Whispers | The StoryGraph

160 reviews for:

The Whispers

Greg Howard

3.8 AVERAGE

selenarreads's review against another edition

3.0

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

caprivoyant's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 69%

This sounded so cute! But I'm feeling sensitive about the world right now, and the fatphobic comments from our MC to his friend... And all the religious bigotry right now are more than my heart can take.

Content Warnings

rebeccawantstoreadmore's review

3.5

emotional sad medium-paced

welcometoellasbookshelf's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

saraza3's review against another edition

2.5

emotional sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Religion, sexuality, race, obesity, mental health... This author tried to tackle it all in one short book, and ends up doing more harm than good for some topics. Especially with how he was throwing the word 'crazy' around.
But the real frustrating part of this book is that it seems like the author was short on words so just pasted in half a dictionary. I guess it was meant as a sweet ritual between son in mother, but instead it just felt like an annoying disruption that pulled me out of the scene.
The ending was pretty good, but not worth the 75% leading up to it.

Content Warnings

steggellettea94's review against another edition

4.0

So, this was not what I expected. No spoilers, but it wasn’t as magical as I thought. It is also not a light-hearted read. I will say there is homophobia and the main character, Riley, does struggle with some internalized homophobia. What really kept this from a 5 star, was the random mentions of Black people - more accurately how they were portrayed. Gary felt almost...like a caricature. He liked one particular slang term - “dawg” - and when he was first introduced, it felt odd and thrown in. He punctuated many of his sentences with “dawg,” and it felt like it was there to remind us that he was Black. The bus driver, Miss Betty, started to creep into the sassy black woman stereotype in just the couple scenes she was in. There is another very brief mention of a young Black boy who has red lips. It was a throw-away line, a descriptor, but it was uncomfortable and didn’t sit right with me. Maybe I’m too sensitive, but these little touches and the fact that this was written by a white author made me uneasy and I had to mark this book down. While I’m happy this is an #ownvoices, and that the main story is loosely based on Howard’s own, the descriptions of three of the four black characters really unsettled me. I can only hope Greg Howard’s other book is better.