A review by whimsicallymeghan
The Whispers by Ashley Audrain

4.0

Whitney, Blair, Mara and Rebecca all live on the same street, when a terrible accident happens to Xavier, Whitney’s son. He falls out his bedroom window in the middle of the night, causing him to slip into a coma. Now the questions start to fly, what was he doing up and why was he at the window, maybe he was pushed? The rumours fly around as the truth slowly unravels itself. This was a heavy novel about motherhood and marriage and what keeps everything together. This was a very fast-paced novel; the reader felt like they flew through this despite the heavier topic. Audrian has a way of making her writing feel breezy, but with a lot of weight that really stuck to the reader because they really felt for these characters. We may not always have liked them or their actions, but we could understand where they were coming from and knew it was trying to come from a place of good and not bad, even when it looked pretty bad. These characters were so complex, nothing was ever black or white with them and that’s probably what made them so interesting to read. They were a little hard to distinguish in the beginning, but as we furthered our way into the novel, we could really see each character for who they were and the things they truly wanted. We had our four main characters, each of them mothers in one form or another and watching them as they all struggled with some form of motherhood, whether it was trying to conceive a baby, dealing with the loss of a child, or just trying to cope with motherhood because it wasn’t exactly what they wanted. It was so fascinating to see all these forms of a mother come together and be together, even if it wasn’t always a good time. The intertwining plots felt so raw and unfiltered; different women at all stages of motherhood and how they perceived or wanted it. This novel tackled a lot of tough situations that left the reader gut wretched to read, and yet we couldn’t stop reading because we had to get to the bottom of the mystery, what really happened to Xavier. The author did a good job of setting that up, and creating a bit of a false narrative for some characters so that we’re led to believe one thing when really it’s another. It was done in a way that was clever and not beating around the bush; it created this illusion that really held our attention. The plot was really well thought out and told in what felt like layers. It wasn’t told in chronological order but in a back and forth, past to present to get a full picture of each of the characters and their backstories without giving too much away. This was also told in short chapters that really helped in flipping through this. In the end, this was well told with very intricate characters.