Tuesday 8 October 2013

Whisper by Michael Bray

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Firstly take a good look at that cover, beautiful, yet haunting; that sets the tone for this book.

The first few chapters leap about in time a bit but they are distinct and easily followed, giving little hints and snippets of history and left me with expectations of the house and woods.

There are only a few main characters, with no real periphery characters, but these have enough presence and real feeling to them to fill the story.

As Steve and Melody move into Hope House with many plans for the future Steve starts to become plagued by nightmares and Michael Bray really manages to conjure some spine tingling moments.

As the once perfect couple begin to withhold information, and ghostly events, from each other I began to feel the tension rise, especially when said spooks start to use text messaging!

However much worse was yet to come. As they seek out other members of the small community for answers the plot thickens, just what is going on? Mr Bray continues to give little morsels of information and I felt like I had insider knowledge, therefore complicit in terrorising this couple. Far from being trite it felt spooky and gut tingly. 

The climax is enthralling and the fast rhythm set by Mr Bray left me with a chant going on in my head. 

The chapter with the tap tap (you will HAVE to read it now!) nearly made me wet myself when the cooker timer went off at the same time as the conclusion, alone in the house is not the best time to have read this book.

I have a few little niggles, which stop it short from being a firm favourite. There seemed to be some confusion over employee or slave. Time elapsing seemed a bit awry, especially when they had watches, which they had already looked at to note time. Finally my personal bugbear, commas and full stops in the wrong places! but only one spelling error.




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