This is a book that I have seen come up more than once as a recommendation for me. I have seen many friends post about it, and I was on the fence about reading it. Then, my son’s speech therapist came over and said that it was a good read with a powerful ending. I decided to take a chance on it.
While I thought the ending was as powerful as the speech therapist did, I found it to be more of a book for female readers. I even told my wife that it reminded me of an episode of Desperate Housewives.
Here is the synopsis from Amazon:
“Expertly, subtly and powerfully rendered….[The Whispers] delivers a sucker-punch ending you’ll have to read twice to believe.”—The New York Times Book Review
“[An] electrifying…razor-sharp page-turner.” —Carley Fortune, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Every Summer After
Featured in summer reading recommendations by Good Morning America, TIME, ELLE, The Washington Post & more
On Harlow Street, the well-to-do neighborhood couples and their children gather for a catered barbecue as the summer winds down; drinks continue late into the night.
Everything is fabulous until the picture-perfect hostess explodes in fury because her son disobeys her. Everyone at the party hears her exquisite veneer crack—loud and clear. Before long, that same young boy falls from his bedside window in the middle of the night. And then, his mother can only sit by her son’s hospital bed, where she refuses to speak to anyone, and his life hangs in the balance.
What happens next, over the course of a tense three days, as each of these women grapple with what led to that terrible night?
Exploring envy, women’s friendships, desire, and the intuitions that we silence, The Whispers is a chilling novel that marks Audrain as a major women’s fiction talent.
The Goodreads Synopsis gives you a bit more…
From the author of THE PUSH, a pageturner about four suburban families whose lives are changed when the unthinkable happens–and what is lost when good people make unconscionable choices
The Loverlys sit by the hospital bed of their young son who is in a coma after falling from his bedroom window in the middle of the night; his mother, Whitney, will not speak to anyone. Back home, their friends and neighbors are left in shock, each confronting their own role in the events that led up to what happened that terrible night: the warm, altruistic Parks who are the Loverlys’ best friends; the young, ambitious Goldsmiths who are struggling to start a family of their own; and the quiet, elderly Portuguese couple who care for their adult son with a developmental disability, and who pass the long days on the front porch, watching their neighbors go about their busy lives.
The story spins out over the course of one week, in the alternating voices of the women in each family as they are forced to face the secrets within the walls of their own homes, and the uncomfortable truths that connect them all to one another. Set against the heartwrenching drama of what will happen to Xavier, who hangs between death and life, or a life changed forever, THE WHISPERS is a novel about what happens when we put our needs ahead of our children’s. Exploring the quiet sacrifices of motherhood, the intuitions that we silence, the complexities of our closest friendships, and the danger of envy, this is a novel about the reverberations of life’s most difficult decisions.
The story bounces between the four women and their families. At times I had to remind myself who was married to who (just like Desperate Housewives)! There were characters in this book that I just hated because of their actions (just like Desperate Housewives). At the same time, there were plenty of times that I just needed to know what happened next or why a character did something.
As I said, the ending was worth waiting for and everything the various reviews stated. Yet, while the main storyline is wrapped up, I found myself wondering about many of the sub-plots. What happened to that couple? How does that neighbor’s storyline tie up? I don’t know, maybe it is a good thing that I wanted more.
I admit that this book isn’t for everyone, and that is why I didn’t title this a “Book Recommendation.” However, I post this because I know of a few followers who might enjoy a nice book filled with drama and a good ending.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 