A review by brennanlafaro
Whispers in the Dark by Laurel Hightower

5.0

About 3-4 nights a week I have to close up the music shop I work at. I've done this for the last 5 years or so. Closing consists of locking the front door, turning off the master set of lights, and letting myself out the back door, about 40 feet down the hall. After reading the first 50 or so pages of Whispers in the Dark, Laurel Hightower's debut novel, I headed off to work. At the end of the night, I went to lock up as usual. I locked the front door, hit the lights, turned around to leave, and all I could think of, as I faced the long pitch-black hallway, was the whispers. The horrifying "gray people" that materialize out of the shadows. This experience stuck with me for 2 reasons:
1. This book pulled me in immediately and took over my headspace. Even hours after having put it down, the ghosts it had filled my imagination with were still present. So much so, that it transformed what has become an everyday experience.
2. This is only the second time I can call to mind that a book has given me the creeps when it wasn't even in my hands. The first such time I recall belongs to a certain Sai King.
I'm pleased to be able to recommend this as a story that gets under your skin, with its' exceptionally creep-tastic imagery, but there's so much more. Perhaps the reason that the scares work so well is because of how fleshed-out the characters are. All the characters. Our protagonist, Rose, (that's right "our". Laurel Hightower created a great character that we love to root for) is a wonderfully strong female lead whose refusal to take shit makes for some terrific quotes. Sam, the ex-husband, has all the marks of a potential one-dimensional character, but avoids going there via some very-well done POV portions of the story. Even side characters like William, Luke, and Joy are presented in a way that subtly make us care about not just their parts in the main story, but what happens to them after. The only character(s) not given to us in great detail are done so intentionally so that we don't fully know what to make of their motives and actions.
Whispers in the Dark is very self-contained. It wraps everything up, yet if the concept of the whispers were revisited in another story, I'd be there for it. Whatever Laurel Hightower puts to page next, I'll be first in line for it. I can't wait to see what else this author has up her sleeve.