I really wanted to like this one as I so enjoyed The Push. This felt lacking and there were just too many characters/couples and storylines to keep track of. That last line though? Full body chills.

Well that's definitely a memorable way to end a story!

This is my first go with Audrain but it won't be my last. I will absolutely be picking up her debut THE PUSH after this experience. There was something about her writing that just sucked me in and considering I'm really struggling to read right now that was a huge win.

While I saw this marketed as a thriller, as well as a mystery, I think it's more accurate to call this a domestic drama. But mystery? Absolutely. Even though, barring the mic drop at the end and a little bit related to the children themselves, I did see a lot of this coming as it unfolded. With maybe.. one other complication I won't hint at that was an interesting twist. But none of this took away from my enjoyment or, again, my inability to put the book down.

The majority of this does deal with motherhood and it's many many facets. I found it fascinating how authentic each situation, and each woman, was written; how each of them felt so different but also not just merely as case studies to hold up against the other. This felt very real, very modern, and there's something here for everyone and for so many different experiences. Also, as someone who has no interest in motherhood, I was still very much drawn in to the struggles and the resentment, the complexities and the sacrifices, and, above all, the love.

I'm really glad I took a risk on requesting this one because I have no idea if I would've made the time for it otherwise. And while I don't quite know who I would recommend it to, I have to think that if you enjoyed the author's debut, you'll like this one, too.

A close-knit neighbourhood is struck when Xavier, a young boy, falls from his third-story window leaving him in a coma. But was it a tragic accident, or was something hidden at play? The Whispers provides four different perspectives; Whitney, the mother of Xavier; Blair, Whitney’s friend; Rebecca, a nurse desperately trying to start a family of her own and Mara, an older woman who is living with her past but keeping an eye on the happenings around the neighbourhood.

I read The Push by Ashley Audrain for a book club, and I loved the discussion it generated, particularly with women. Each woman brought her perspective to such a chilling tale. The same can be said of The Whispers. I loved that Audrain branched out into multiple POVs. It paid homage to the different lives a woman can find herself in.

It dives into the challenges of balancing motherhood, a career and identity in a society that is always watching and judging. Often, in books with multiple POVs, there is one or two that I gravitate towards. That wasn’t the case in The Whispers. Each woman’s story was intriguing, heart-wrenching and challenging to put down.
The suspense and mystery play out in perfect timing, and the ending is so good. As I finished the novel, I turned to my boyfriend and told him about it. I couldn’t keep it in. The most impressive part of Audrain’s writing is her ability to write those scenarios and situations that almost feel too personal or uncomfortable to read about, such as child abuse or infertility. She makes you question your beliefs and notice that not every situation is black or white; there is a ton of grey.

I highly recommend this novel to anyone who wants an excellent chilling mystery. I think this one will be incredibly popular, just like The Push.

The Whispers will be released on June 6, 2023!

Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an ARC of The Whispers in exchange for an honest review.

Four families. One neighborhood. One night where everything goes wrong. What happened, and why?
We follow the four families from the POVs of the women, Blair, Rebecca, Whitney and Mara, during the time leading to the accident while Whitney is sitting on her son's bedside in the hospital, refusing to speak. Everybody has a theory about what happened. But it turns out that all of them has something to hide too...
I was let down by the marketing of the book as a thriller, so I was very underwhelmed as I kept waiting for the thrill. This is a literary psychological drama without the thrill present in The Push. It was character driven, and as I could not relate to any of them, it made it hard for me to read through. Don't get me wrong. The writing is beautiful. It's poetic and all of the characters are very richly developed and flood and raw. There is also a very strong motherhood theme as in Ashley Audrain's first book, and make sure to check your trigger warnings. However the pacing was kind of took me about 20% of the book to kind of be able to figure out. Who is who and to distinguish each of the voices. Finally, I would've prefered if the explaination of what happened happened sooner, even in bits and pieces, than in the very last chapter. I felt it was not worth the struggle. But I loved the epilogue (and that last sentence was gripping!).
I received an advanced review copy for free and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. I really liked this book. This is not your typical mystery/thriller. There is no murder, but there is mystery built into this story for sure and some aspects bring to mind more of a psychological "thriller". The book looks at some really interesting themes surrounding the women in 4 different families. We have the neighbourhood "Queen Bee", Whitney with her husband Jacob and 3 children, one of whom is her son Xavier who a big chunk of this story revolves around. We also have stay-at-home Mom Blair and her husband and their one daughter. Then we have Rebecca, a doctor and her husband Ben, who can't have kids but desperately want them. Finally we have the elderly couple next door, Mara and Albert who have lived on the street the longest and we see that Mara knows/sees a lot more about her neighbours than she lets on. We see throughout the story, the lives of these women and how they are intertwined. We see their hopes and fears, their bonds and things that will test their friendships. We see the things that drive them and the things that hold them back. They're imperfections and flaws. Whitney is not as polished as she appears, Blair is not as perfect as she appears, Rebecca is not as indifferent to having a family as others assume since she is a doctor and Mara is not as "invisible" as she feels as we get to know her backstory a bit. The men in the book play their parts and are some of the reasons there are mysteries at the core of this story. Even Whitney's son, Xavier, who is gravely injured in a fall plays a key role in showing a different side of Whitney. The mystery surrounding these women, their families, their secrets are well written and really only get fully revealed as the story is coming to an end. I'm not sure how I feel about the ending...it was a bit abrupt for my liking, but at the same time, it was also surprising. But it left me wishing there was more after that. Great book overall though!

Thank you for the advanced readers copy in return for an honest review

Mara - retired living with her husband Albert, Blair married to Aiden and one child,Rebecca - doctor and childless and Whitney married with 2 children and a temper

This book is about these 4 women and what they go through as friends and in their personal lives.

In the first couple of pages, I was thinking I wasn’t going to like this book but as I kept reading I found I quite enjoyed getting to know these women and what each has gone through.

Ashley Audrain is quickly becoming the expert of great endings! The Whispers, like The Push, had one of these and I wanted to speed through my reading to see how it all ended. Very satisfying!

After pre-teen Xavier falls from his bedroom window late at night, his mother Whitney sits by his bedside steadily as he is in a coma. Whitney and her husband Jacob are close with the other neighbours and in this story we meet each set of neighbours and discover they each have their own issues. Questions are raised about how a young boy falls out a third storey window in the middle of the night when he should be sleeping.

I loved the older neighbour Mara who came from Portugal with her husband years ago and had a son with some developmental disabilities that her husband didn’t manage well. She was a quiet character with a heartbreaking story.

Audrain has written a good mix of likeable but mostly unlikeable characters. Hints at the individual storylines were dropped effortlessly into the bigger story and created tension.

I did find it a little bit tricky to keep the three women’s husbands separate in my mind and often referred to my notes. The men weren’t of importance in this story and I think that is why the author didn’t build their characters.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one and look forward to whatever Ashley Audrain writes next.

Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinrandomca for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. The Whispers comes out June 6, 2023.

While each book should stand on its own, this book is so clearly reminiscent of and building on the ideas of The Push that it's impossible to separate them.
The brilliance of The Push was very simple. A woman believes that her child is evil and we are left to decide if that is true, or if this mother is an unreliable narrator. It is told entirely from her perspective, so you are sucked into the world as she sees it.
The Whispers follows (primarily) three women: a career mom, a stay at home mom, and a woman having trouble conceiving. And the career mom doesn't especially like her kids. Something happens her kid and you're wondering what happened.
The problem here is that all of the women are bad people. And you know that they're bad because you get everyone's POV of everyone. The mystique of the perception of a child is removed when other people interact with that child and have different opinions. It ends up just being a grind about these super unlikable women being unlikable and hiding things from each other.
There's more to it than that, obviously, but it's a very slow moving book. Very little plot, lots of internal dialogue, lots of characters who have the answer but just refuse to tell us. It also ends in a very unsatisfying way that you could tell was trying to do the same thing as The Push's ending, but it just fell flat.
There's a good story in here, but I think it needed a different approach than The Push, which would make it a more standard domestic mystery thriller. Instead, it ends up feeling hollow.

This story was so multifaceted. A story about motherhood, marriage, and survival. Somehow a quiet, slow burn neighborhood story while also being an absolute page turner. Every women’s story was given the same care and detail - I truly felt and understood all of these women.. I knew, from reading The Push, that the story would be relatively straightforward - but this book had my eyes bugging out, my jaw dropping at some points. When some of the women’s secrets were revealed I was legitimately SHOCKED.

This book gave me season 1 desperate housewives vibes -getting to know the women, an innocent old woman next door who these self absorbed women don’t even look twice at. Mara’s story was one of my favourites. She gave her entire life for her son and husband - but even she has some of her own secrets. While my heart broke for these women and their hardships, they all did things that endangered their own relationships.

One of my favourite things about Audrain’s writing is how she can say much between the words. Things aren’t always laid out on the page - she leaves a lot to infer in her story, it allows your mind to wander, to jump to the conclusion - listening to your whispers - if you will. Another thing I love is the ending. It will not all be wrapped up in a perfect bow, you will be left on the edge of the cliff you’ve been careening towards the entire story. This is my absolute favourite type of ending - it leaves me wanting more.

After loving The Push, I knew I would read Ashley Audrain’s next book as soon as I could. The Whispers did. It disappoint! This book is told from the POV of the women on Harlow Street. There are so many secrets!! Everyone suspects each other and are also guilty of something. The last line of the book is stunning and I can’t get it out of mind! I will read anything Ashley Audrain writes!

From the international bestselling author of The Push comes an engrossing tale about the evolution of motherhood, how the act of becoming a parent changes every fibre of our being, and how far some are willing to go to protect not only the ones they love, but also themselves.

Audrain transports readers to manicured lawns and picture-perfect homes of Harlow Street, where we follow the intersecting lives of four distinctly different women.

As Summer draws to a close on a warm September day, Whitney Loverly, an enviable woman with the most expensive home on Harlow has invited the neighbours to a BBQ in her backyard.

All is well until her ten-year-old son Xavier disobeys her, causing Whitney’s temper to reach a boiling point. She tries her best to push the incident aside, but to her neighbours, she's no longer who they think she is, and her monstrous outburst will follow her like a bad omen.

Fast forward nine months, and Whitney’s neighbour, Dr. Rebecca Parry, is on the receiving end of an admission at the hospital. It’s Xavier, and he’s suffered a brain injury from a drop out of his third floor bedroom window. Cause of fall: to be determined.

Until that day in September, Whitney seemed to have it all: a husband who adored her, three children, and a successful career. And now with her son fighting for his life in the ICU, a string of events have led her friends to monitor her every move. Whitney Loverly's life is falling apart at the seams.

Did Xavier fall? Was it something her friend’s daughter said? Or could this really have been the result of Whitney's uncontrollable anger?

One thing Whitney feels certain of is that she is tired of failing Xavier. “The cruellest part of motherhood is that she has made him the way he is, every frustrating part of him.”

As Audrain’s masterfully constructed narrative unfolds through the perspectives of Whitney, Blair, Rebecca, and Mara, what becomes clear is that these are women who have loved, lost, and sacrificed. They have done it by virtue of becoming mothers.

Furthermore, what brings them together is their shared gut instinct, the whispers they hear, each of them desperate to see the truth for what it is. It’s these whispers, these instincts, that bind these women, yet may also break them.

Audrain proves yet again to be at the top of her game in this genre. Her use of multiple subplots, alternating timelines and various perspectives pushed me toward the finish line.

The Whispers certainly did not disappoint. It’s a book that I raced through at breakneck speed.

I’d been looking forward to reading this but I was underwhelmed. The characters’ lives intertwine and there are some twists but for me this one was a miss.
Thanks to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, and Ashley Audrain for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I am not sure what possessed me to request an advance reader copy (ARC) of "The Whispers" by Ashley Audrain from NetGalley when an email offer popped into my inbox. I have, but have not read, her first novel, "The Push," which made a huge splash when it was published a year or two ago (and the author is Canadian). I do like a good thriller now & then, but this one promised (in the words of one reviewer) "A beautifully written hymn to the pain, love and fury of motherhood." Hmmm... As a non-mother (not by choice), I was wary... but I decided I'd try to keep an open mind.

Nevertheless, there was a LOT in this book that hit just a little too uncomfortably close to home.

The story focuses on four very different women, neighbours on the same rapidly gentrifying street, their relationships to motherhood, and to each other -- all of them with their own particular flaws and carefully guarded secrets. There's affluent professional couple Whitney and Jacob and their three children. There's uber-stay-at-home mom of one, Blair, who is obsessed (creepily so, at times) with Whitney and her life, so different from her own -- and obsessed with the suspicion that her husband Aiden is having an affair.

There's a childless couple: kid-magnet Ben and Rebecca, who is a trauma physician in a hospital emergency room. Needless to say, she's the character I identified with the most -- even as I cringed over the sometimes stereotypical way she was portrayed. (Although undoubtedly some moms reading this book will cringe over Blair & Whitney in much the same way...!) Audrain must have personal experience with infertility and pregnancy loss (or is very close to someone who has), because she hits every note here.. (Graphic descriptions of pregnancy loss are included.)

Finally, there's elderly Mara, a longtime resident of the street, who knows and understands more than most people think -- and who has been keeping a few secrets of her own.

The plot shifts back & forth in time. It begins with a backyard birthday party, where Whitney loses her temper in a confrontation with her 10-year-old son, Xavier -- and not for the first time. Months later, the boy is in the hospital, fighting for his life. Little by little, as the tension builds, and there's one revelation after another, we learn the truth of what happened...

This is a very readable book -- but also very disturbing -- nasty in parts. Lots of secrets and lies. There are triggers galore, depending on your own personal situation and tolerance level -- including (but not limited to) infertility, pregnancy loss, children in peril, child loss, abuse, jealousy, sex, infidelity, betrayal, death, mothers vs non-mothers,. Consider yourselves forewarned!

I had a hard time figuring out how to rate this one. I settled on 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 on Goodreads. I had problems with the plot and disliked many (most?) of the very flawed characters. There were still a few plot points left ambiguously hanging at the end.

But it sure kept me turning the pages.

Publication date: June 6th.

Thank you to NetGalley (and the publisher) for my free copy in exchange for a review. This was my first experience with NetGalley and ARCs. Once I got some technical kinks worked out and was able to access and start reading the book, I enjoyed the experience, even if I had some reservations about this particular book.

The Whispers is the upcoming novel from Ashley Audrain, the Canadian author whose debut novel, The Push, was a massive hit & bestseller.

I think The Whispers is even better than The Push! While The Push explored one woman's experience of motherhood, The Whispers explores motherhood (& often marriage) from a number of viewpoints of different women living in the same neighbourhood. And all of those experiences are incredibly varied...I loved that there is a senior mother in the neighbourhood and we hear her story, as well as a neighbour who is desperately trying to become a mother.

There is a tragedy at the centre of the story, but the story is also a mystery, as these characters are also trying to determine who is involved and what exactly happened.

I absolutely loved how the way this story is told puts the women's experiences, in relation to motherhood, their children, their husbands, first. And I appreciated how complicated every one of the women are...there is nobody that the reader can't empathize with (or at least it's true for me).

I read this over a couple of days on vacation & I'm sure I'm going to see this book everywhere this summer...it's the perfect beach read...it hooks you & then you just have to find out what happens.

Ashley Audrain is such a talented writer & I really appreciate @penguinrandomca letting me read an advance copy through @Netgalley.

I was super excited to read this new book by Ashley Audrain and it didn't disappoint. I like me a good "dark and twisty" insight into other people's lives and "The Whispers" delivered. I'm pretty sure I know the neighbourhood where the book took place (jk!). The read of this book is fast and intense and it touches on a number of important topics including grief, loss, infidelity and deception and of course - motherhood - a topic obviously near and dear to the author. I was gripped from the get-go and that ENDING!!! Can't wait for Ashley Audrain's next book. READ this book this summer - it will be the one everyone is talking about!!

3.5? Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC! Sorry it took me awhile to get through re: life is hectic). I raved about Ashley Audrain's first book, The Push, so was very excited to be able to get an ARC of The Whispers. Most people had secrets and yet couldn't connect the dots on others' and not many of the characters are particularly likeable, but the fishbowl-style narrative keeps you wondering how it will all play out. Unfortunately for me it was not as page-turningly compelling for me as The Push was.

Posted to GoodReads

Thank you NetGalley and Penguin Random House for my advanced copy. This novel follows 4 women who live in the same neighborhood. A tragic accident starts the story and each women tells her own tale. The Whispers does not disappoint. I recommend reading this book.

The Whispers by Ashley Audrain was the book I didn't know I needed this month.
I *love* reading about (well written) drama and this book delivered 🔥
Dueling timelines and unreliable narrators take us through the story of a neighborhood, where everyone's lives seem perfect on the outside but on the inside, well, they're kind of a mess. We have liars, cheaters, fakers and an accident that lands a young boy in a coma. As the secrets unravel, all of your assumptions are proved to be incorrect and everyone seems to be hiding something.

This book was wonderfully paced (an absolute page turner) and the story was incredibly built. I've heard great things about Ashley's writing and I can confidently say I'm a fan. I can't wait to read The Push! I'd highly recommend this one for those who are on the same quest that I was - super excellent drama!

Thank you NetGalley, Ashley Audrain and Penguin Random House for gifting me a copy of this ARC in return for an honest review!

I was so impressed and taken with Audrains debut novel, The Push, so I am thrilled to have been able to read an advanced copy of the much-anticipated The Whispers. This book was captivating and I hungrily made my way through the pages. The Whisper left me with a ball of dread in my stomach as I made my way through the story, recognizing what I may be about to uncover as cracks in the lives of the characters were revealed. Four women, neighbours, linked in this story of motherhood and struggling to belong and fit the mold that society has made for them. I will continue to read anything Audrain writes in future and hope she is already working on her next novel.

As in The Push, Audrain is exploring those deep, negative, socially unacceptable emotions that human beings share at times. Unfortunately, one needs to root for the protagonist/s, even if you disagree with their choices or behaviour. In The Whispers, I was not convinced to root for anyone, even Rebecca, who is portrayed in the beginning as a sympathetic character. The character development for all was two-dimensional and stifled my involvement. I also would have liked to see some more unusual complications in characterization that would make them rise above a type. There are also a few loose ends that did not make me suspend my disbelief.
Yet, Audrain still gives the reader a good page-turner of a novel. Her pacing is fine, and there are enough twists and turns for the psychological thriller reader to enjoy. I'm sure the novel will do well. Three stars for The Whispers.

Thanks to Penguin Random House Canada and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.