3.5 stars

Whistle in the Dark felt like a donut read for me. I loved the beginning, the middle felt kind of long and tedious, and I loved the end. The story is told from Jen’s perspective. Her 15 year old daughter Lana has recently disappeared for 4 days without any explanation as to what happened to her during that time. Upon her return, Lana seems changed, but Jen can’t put her finger on how and she can’t deal with not knowing what happened to Lana. This isn’t really a mystery and it’s certainly not a thriller. It’s more of an introspective novel about the challenges of being a parent to a troubled child. Healy does an excellent job of depicting Jen’s self doubt, relentless fear and exhaustion. Healy’s writing is really strong and she captures the flinty emotions between the characters perfectly. My only complaint is that I felt that the middle sagged and floundered. The fact that Jen’s emotional upheaval was relentless is realistic, but in the form of fiction, it got a bit tedious. Having said that, I’m still glad I read it. I thought the end was brilliant and I do very much appreciate the way Healy depicts the emotional challenges of being a mother. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

I jumped at the chance to read Emma Healey's new novel, Whistle in the Dark, as I had previously loved Elizabeth is Missing. This book is very different from that one, but I also enjoyed it very much.

Although the book description sells it as a mystery, I don't think that that is a fair description of the novel. The mystery is almost a side note. Instead, the focus of the novel is on an anxious mother, Jen, who has difficulty connecting with her teenage daughter, Lana. The book delves into this relationship, primarily, although we do get to meet her husband, Hugh, and her older daughter, Meg, and learn about those relationships too.

The mystery is relatively minor, but leads to a lot of tension. Jen and Lana had taken a short art-focused vacation and then Lana had disappeared for a few days. After the panic of this disappearance, she reappears and indicates that she doesn't remember what happened during her absence and doesn't want to talk about it. This incident sets off Jen, so that she tries frantically to understand how to connect with Lana and to learn about what happened during Lana's disappearance.

Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

I loved Healey’s first novel, Elizabeth is Missing (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/search?q=Elizabeth+is+Missing), so I jumped at the chance to read her second one. I was not disappointed.

Lana Maddox, fifteen, goes missing for four days. When found, largely unharmed, she claims not to remember what happened. Jen, Lana’s mother, is desperate to find out where her daughter had been and takes increasingly desperate measures to get to the truth.

The focus of the book is a difficult mother-daughter relationship. Lana and Jen had not communicated well before Lana’s disappearance. Worried about what may have happened to Lana, Jen is desperate to make a connection with her daughter, especially since Lana suffers from depression and has engaged in self-harming activities and even made a suicide attempt in the past. Jen questions Lana constantly but as her daughter continues to shut her out, Jen takes to stalking her, trolling her social media accounts, listening to private conversations, and questioning her friends. None of these actions, of course, are appreciated by Lana so their relationship becomes even more emotionally fraught.

Characterization is a definite strength. Both Lana and Jen are realistic, flawed characters. Lana is a typical teenager who both loves and hates her mother. At times she shows outright contempt for Jen: “’You’re always walking into people. Get some spatial awareness.’” and “’You look ridiculous.’” and “’Can you not breathe like that, though? It’s superdistracting.’” Meg, Lana’s older sister, claims Lana manipulates her mother and objects to “’the way she affects your mood, the way she has you tiptoeing around.’” At other times, Lana shows consideration for her mother; when Jen worries about looking old, Lana says, “’You never look like you can’t apply your make-up properly . . . And you don’t have lines around your mouth.’”

Jen loves her daughter and wants to understand and help her daughter. She just doesn’t know how to get Lana to open up. It is so irritating to her that Lana talks to the world through her social media accounts but won’t talk to her mother. Jen’s clumsy efforts only result in further alienating Lana. Jen worries so much that her job performance is affected and she is unable to fully enjoy Meg’s wonderful news. The relentless stress of not knowing what happened to Lana causes Jen to become paranoid. She sees danger everywhere and even fears her daughter is trying to physically injure her.

There is a suspenseful atmosphere throughout. Since events are seen through Jen’s perspective, it becomes difficult to determine what is real and what is the result of Jen’s over-active imagination or paranoia, “the hole of suspicion and desperate anxiety.” Is there a cat in the house? Is Lana really trying to hurt her mother? Statements like “Lack of sleep had made her see things before” and “People had a habit of accusing Jen of imagining things” make the reader doubt what Jen sees. Jen’s mother comments, “’you do have a tendency to worry unduly, don’t you?’” And Jen often daydreams and finds herself “startled out of her reverie.” When things happen, she is sometimes not even certain they happened: “she had become so used to second-guessing herself that she wondered if she hadn’t dreamed the incident.”

This book is not full of action and adventure; it is a character study and an examination of a complex mother-daughter relationship written in lucid prose. It is definitely recommended to readers who appreciated Healey’s first novel or Elizabeth Strout’s My Name is Lucy Barton.

Note: I received a digital ARC of the book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Whistle in the Dark is a slow burning mystery where the mystery is an afterthought. The synopsis of this book intrigued me, which is why I requested it on Netgalley. Unfortunately, Whistle in the Dark is an incredibly slow moving, boring mystery that doesn’t deliver.

Whistle in the Dark focuses on Jen as she tries to help her daughter, Lana, recover from being lost in the woods for four days. Jen becomes obsessed with figuring out what happened to her daughter. As the novel progresses, Jen becomes more and more paranoid and neurotic.

Healey focuses on Jen’s paranoid and neurotic thoughts and behaviors, but does little to create a worthwhile reading experience. Instead, the novel becomes a by the numbers story as Jen discovers a clue, obsesses over it, and repeats. At the same time, Healey’s portrayal of a dedicated and scared mother is well written. Jen does everything in her power to help her child, but always falls short. For this reason, it seems as if there are two different novels within Whistle in the Dark competing for space. One of the novels is a contemporary story about a mother’s desperate and frantic search for answers on how to help her teenage daughter suffering from depression. The other novel is a mystery about a mother’s despairing search for answers about her teenage daughter’s disappearance. I understand what Healey was attempting to accomplish, alas the execution was lacking.

The only reason I read the novel in its entirety was to find out what happened in those four missing days. Unfortunately, the reveal is lackluster and should have been obvious from the first few chapters.

Whistle in the Dark opens in the hospital where 14 year old Lana recovers after being missing for 4 days. Her mother and father have no idea where she has been or what happened but all the questions are answered “I don’t remember” by Lana. What follows is an emotional drama by her mother, Jen, who is hoping to find some answers and help her daughter, who has a history of mental illness. I wish I enjoyed this book more but I found the writing style out of my reach. It seemed to me to be a little all over the place and frantic with a lot of speculation about what happened and flashbacks without much connection to the current drama. I found that hard to get into and never developed a connection to the characters. That is more of a personal preference of style rather than a critique of the book as a whole but not all books can be perfect for all people! I was given access to this galley by Knopf Canada on Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. It is released on May 1, 2018

This is a rare novel that gets better as you get closer to the end. Don't get me wrong: the beginning and middle are darned intriguing too. A 15 year old girl goes missing, only to turn up days later with strange wounds and no apparent memory of what happened to her. The unfolding is so real, so unexpected: it's all in the culmination of the utterly authentic cast of characters. Bravo!

Thank you, netgalley, for the e-edition of this book.