Review: Whisper the Dead by Alyxandra Harvey

After reading the first book a lot quicker than I thought I would, I knew I had to race to get the second book in this series. I wanted to hear more about Emma, Gretchen and Penelope and their place in the witching world after the climax that finished A Breath Of Frost.

Normally I do not like books that switch their focus on characters from one book to the next. As the first mainly focused on Emma, I had grown to like her more than the other cousins and as there was also a romance in the works with her, I wanted to hear more about her. However we did get to see bits from Emma in this book, which I was pleased about because we didn't just let her go, and through the course of the book I got to like Gretchen more and more. She developed a lot and I was glad to be there for that rather than letting my favour of Emma win over.

I have to admit that after the fight with the Sisters and their defeat, I thought that would be an end to that part of the story line, but Harvey brought the story back in a clever and believable way. If the Sisters had come back through means of their own it would lead to a lot of unanswerable questions and would make the story not fit right, but with Sophie carrying out the plan with an accomplice, it meant that their return was feared.

The introduction of Tobias as a love interest for Gretchen was, again, far too obvious. In fact, it was almost a repetition of Emma and Cormac's story. Of course you had the difference in Gretchen's powers from Emma and the fact that Tobias was a shape-shifter made the story have a twist, but it was the same 'hate to love' cliché. I have to say that I was still interested in their romance, but I would have preferred it if it was more different to previous romances in the series.

In the first book I did not, regrettably, focus much on Gretchen and what the witching world had done to her, but this book really gave a different insight to the first. Emma's magic did not have many side effects apart from draining away her energy, but that was nothing compared to what Gretchen had to go through. I really empathised with her because of the lengths she was willing to go to to help stop anything that was going to hurt her friends. Hers is a talent that I'm sure a lot of people would envy when they would first hear about it, the ability to make new spells is simply brilliant, but the prospect of her turning mad and having blood coming out of your ears is not the best thing to have. In the future I hope she is able to maintain her sanity.

Shape-shifting is something that is usually only portrayed as bad. They are seen as evil creatures in most of the books I have read about them, so it was nice to get to witness a different perspective. As well as that, having a female alpha of Tobias' pack was definitely a nice change and a welcome new dynamic for the period that this book is set in. The effects of the wolf were also explored, although not in as much depth as I would have liked, and getting to hear different opinions and back stories made me understand each character a little more. I hope we can revisit the wolves in the final book.

The climax of this book came with no real warning apart from the fact that I was running out of pages. Everything happened in quick succession and it meant that I just had to keep reading through the action so I would know what would happen to my beloved characters. Some things started to click together, but other things left me with lots of questions that I'm hoping will be answered in the final book. The cousins each had their own part to play and I was entirely swept up with each sharp turn that the book sent me on. As a closing to a book goes, that was definitely the most tense I have read in a long time and by leaving me on a cliff-hanger such as that one, I am wanting to camp outside my local bookstore until there is a hint of the third book.

My only other criticism of this book is the length of the chapters. They were much longer than the ones in the first book and I felt that the book could have been split up better than how it was. It made reading feel forced in some places because I always like to finish at the start of the next chapter. I cannot complain about character deaths though because although they impacted me severely, they were just at the right moments to spark on something bigger.

This book was just lacking a little something to make it five out of five stars; maybe that's something that I will be able to give the final book. (If anyone has any news on that it would be greatly appreciated as I can unfortunately find nothing on it.)

(Goodreads parallel)