Murder of Crows discussion

The Whisper Man by Alex North

This was a book that I just decided to snatch up from Barnes & Noble one day and I’m glad I did. This book felt like I was watching a combination of a TV drama series (Criminal Minds, CSI, etc.) and horror movies (Annabelle, The Conjuring, etc.). It was so weird to get to read that in a book rather than watching it on screen, so I think it was very well done in that regard. That being said, throughout the book you can catch some nods towards well known figures in the horror scene. Two examples that are really prominent are Mrs. Shelley and the corpus moth.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t entertained much by the plot of the book. It started out very strong but then the middle became very drawn out and the eventful things were shoved into the last fifty pages of the book. I don’t think the ending of the book did the beginning of the book justice, it just had so much potential.

The one thing I could not stand in this book was the excessive use of the word “daddy.” I know Jake is a seven or so year old child, but you don’t say a person’s name in every sentence that you talk to him, not even kids do this. For Jake having such a large vocabulary to begin with, I’d imagine he also would have an easy time forming sentences that are very “adult-like.” Throughout the story he does, but he never stops using the word “daddy.”

At first I thought the different perspectives in the book were from two different timelines and it took me a bit to set that straight for myself. From chapter to chapter the POV is from the same timeline but all from different people. The only time I knew for sure who I was reading from was when it was written in the first POV (that would be Tom). The rest of them I had to figure out with context clues.

It’s a good read but I was expecting a little more. I do have another of the author’s books (The Shadows) that I am going to read at some point and I’m hoping to enjoy that one more.