It’s time to review The Whisper Man by Alex North, but first…
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Rating: 1.5 out of 5
Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Horror
Reasons to read it: Like police procedurals and true crime stories
Am I broken????
Because my two horror/true crime friends recommended The Whisper Man to me citing that it was really scary and yet I felt nothing.
The Whisper Man was not the book for me.
I’m struggling to read thrillers. I went into a long rant about them in my review of The Fourth Monkey. The genre title implies that I should be thrilled, on the edge of my seat, turning the page, but most of the time I’m bored. The Whisper Man offered nothing new. The beginning wasn’t scary. The kid has an imaginary friend… okay. How is that scary? Not even on the list of things that freak me out.
So maybe the plot sucked… could the characters save the story?
Not even close. They were store-bought vanilla, fitting perfectly into the standard issue character charts that have been overused. Let’s break the mold somewhere friends. How many more stories are going to be about the detective who loses everything getting too involved with a case and then has a second chance with his family later in the book?
I. Don’t. Care.
Been there and done that a few books ago.
My singular good comment would be that the story stuck in the realm of reality; a massive complaint of recently been making about my horror reads. The books keep veering into the absurd or whatever monster theory the writer could come up with. The Whisper Man could have been pulled right out of a true crime podcast. Maybe that’s why the clues were too obvious. The imagination slim. The story was realistic. And real-life serial killers don’t keep me up at night.
Like I said… something is wrong with me.
I swore I was done. And I’m making that a promise (minus one more book on my list). If you heard my friends though… the told me it kept them up at night. I thought it was living in the spooky realm. All that kept me up at night were the technical errors.
North lives on the bad decision train. His choice of multiple POVs were a massive distraction. Only one person was told in first person, leaving the the reader to stumble through the rest of the chapters since there were no character tags at the beginning of the chapter. What was the point of doing that? I kept believing that the first POV was the person narrating the entire story. That it was going to be revealed that he was the son the whole time. Or that he was the killer. Nothing. So why? Was this just a style choice? It didn’t work.
And now we’re back to the bad. Technically there were problems. The multiple POVs were a massive distraction. Only one of them was first person, leaving the reader to stumble through the rest – there were no character callouts at the beginning of the chapter. The way the story was told, I thought this was going in a different direction. Like the son was writing this story in the future. But why do this when there wasn’t a clear story reason? There was no reveal at the end. It was literally just how North decided to tell the story. And I think that was a real folly.
Overall, I think there is more wrong with the book than me not liking it. The story was lacking quality and imagination. It delved too far into the characters without giving the readers something new. I’m really questioning my friends’ tastes right now. But am I missing something? Did I miss the wink like in Just Like Home? What did the rest of the world see?
This book would be going in the trash if I owned it.
Ugh… I wish I liked Alex North because all of his covers really draw me in. I have to remind myself that it’s not worth it.
Happy Reading.
Love,
Kait