Tom Kennedy and his son Jake aren’t doing well. After the death of Tom’s wife, Jake’s mother, a few months ago, Tom feels like there’s a gulf between them that he just can’t cross. Hoping that a new home in a new town will help bring them closer, Tom lets Jake pick out a new house and packs them up to move. Their new home is in the idyllic-sounding town of Featherbank, and despite Tom’s initial misgivings about the kinda creepy-looking house Jake picked, they do seem to be settling in nicely. But Featherbank’s has a dark past that whispers from the shadows. When Jake begins to hear those whispers, Tom realizes that their new life isn’t safe either. Can they survive The Whisper Man? Find out in this terrifying novel from Alex North.
[Warning: My review of The Whisper Man contains some spoilers!]
Father and son are trapped in too much pain to connect
The death of the Kennedy family matriarch just might destroy the whole family. Ted is so lost without his wife he can barely function. Even though he’s an author, he hasn’t written a single word since her death months ago. Worse, he doesn’t know how to communicate with his son. Rebecca was always better was dealing with Jake, as cliché as that might be, and most days Tom just doesn’t feel up to it. He feels the distance between him and his son growing as both try to deal with Rebecca’s death on their own. He wants to be closer; he just doesn’t know how.
Then he gets the idea that their home might have too many memories in it to move on. So he and Jake pick out a new house on a realtor site. Tom thinks the house looks spooky, but Jake is adamant about it, so they buy it and move in, ready to start a new life in Featherbank.
But Featherbank has its own secrets. Twenty years ago, a monster abducted young boys and tortured them to death. The case nearly broke DI Pete Willis, but he did catch the man responsible, Frank Carter. There were always rumors that Frank had a partner, but no evidence ever surfaced to back up the theory and the killings stopped after he was arrested. Until now that is. Suddenly, a young boy goes missing in an eerily similar way to Frank Carter’s victims all those years ago. The victim even reported hearing someone whispering to him through his window, just like Frank Carter did twenty years ago. When the missing boy turns up dead, Detective Amanda Beck is determined not to let it happen again; she even enlists DI Willis to help her track the new murderer. She’s determined to catch him before another boy gets hurt. Then Jake starts to hear whispering at his window. Can they solve the case before Ted loses his son too?
Every parent’s worst fear
As a parent, you do everything you can to protect your child. Every day is a balancing act because you know that they need space and freedom to grow, but what if something happens to them that you can’t prevent? The idea of them being taken, of someone having them and hurting them, is just paralyzing. The Whisper Man deals with this fear in two different ways. The obvious one is that someone is taking and killing children. When Rebecca died, Ted thought he had lost everything. But when Jake is taken, Ted really learns what it is to lose your heart. The fear he feels for Jake and his relentless need to find him will resonate with any parent.
The second, and in some ways worse, way that parents fear their children getting hurt is by themselves. No one is perfect, but when it comes to parenting, it’s hard to accept that. What’s worse is that you never know just which misspoken word will roll right off a child’s back and which might end up emotionally scarring them for life. Ted struggles with that a lot. As he tries to deal with his own grief, he often fails to connect to Jake, and he worries that he’s going to push him away.
The good thing is that even if we do mess up as parents, there’s an easy way to (mostly) fix those mistakes. It’s called communication. It can’t fix everything (psychologists everywhere are grateful for that), but it can go a long way towards bridging the gap. Ted eventually realizes this in The Whisper Man, with both his son and his father. It can be scary too; Ted sure isn’t sure he wants to be so open, but it’s so much better than being terrified that you’ve caused your child harm for the rest of your life. As an author, you would have thought that Ted would have known that communication was the secret a little sooner. I guess it’s harder to see that when it’s your own life and not a story.
A feel-good horror story?
The Whisper Man is terrifying while you’re reading it. You will have a hard time sleeping and find yourself staying up late to read “just one more chapter” to find out what happens. But it isn’t one of those horror stories that stays with you when it’s over. North’s ending wraps everything up neatly, and you don’t find yourself checking corners or listening hard in the empty house (making sure it’s actually empty). I’m not saying that The Whisper Man is a forgettable story, it’s just saying that the ending makes it easy to put the book away when you’re done and move on. No nightmares once it’s over. Although, while you’re reading, it is another story…
Rating: 9/10
The Whisper Man by Alex North is available now!
Learn more about the book at the official website for the title.
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