The Story

All of the females in Joy’s family can hear Whispers – the deepest desires of the people around them. Joy and her mother see this as a gift, allowing them to grant people’s wishes, but Joy’s sister Icka sees it as a terrible curse. All Icka can hear are the bad wishes that people have, and it is too much for her to handle.

After a fight between the two sisters, Icka runs away from home in search of some sort of drugs that will stop the Whispers – and when Icka sends Joy some desperate thoughts on how Icka needs help, Joy know she needs to save her sister. Enlisting the help of a loner emo-boy with special powers of his own, Joy starts her quest to find her sister – but can she find Icka before it’s too late?

The Review

Sounds like an exciting premise, doesn’t it? As a people pleaser myself, it would certainly be extremely helpful in order to hear what people were wishing at any particular moment. That’s what drew me to this book.

The way this book was written had me hooked from the beginning. It’s an easy read, and it’s an enjoyable premise. The concept isn’t something completely different and new (who’s the first character that comes to your mind when thinking about characters who can read your thoughts – because that’s pretty much what hearing Whispers seemed to come across as), but it was done in a different way. And it dealt with a girl discovering that what she was Hearing wasn’t always everything a person was Whispering – just one facet of it. That exploration was very cool – sometimes heartbreaking, but definitely very cool.

As hooked as this book had me, though, there were a few things that took away from the utter and total enjoyment of this book. In all honesty, I didn’t really care for Joy for the most part. She felt very one-dimensional. Her sister Icka, however, seemed to be the much more developed and relatable character in the book. And this book was as much about Icka and Joy’s relationship as it was about Joy dealing with changes in how she hears Whispers, and about Joy’s self-discovery.

As well, for some characters there seemed to be a total lack of character development… As seeing this through Joy’s eyes, it seemed like other characters went from being one thing to being the total opposite, and it was hard to believe these were the same people. Could Joy’s total perspective on people change so suddenly? What exactly changed with her Hearing that it happened so quicklyk? Or was it more of oa personal outlook on the world that changed her ability from hearing happy wishes to hearing evil wishes? This could have been explored or explained more thoroughly, as it just seemed to happen to sudden to be realistic. That said, though, Joy’s reaction to the sudden change was what I would expect – it making her so utterly sick. I just wish I could understand what happened a little bit better.

Other than those points, though, I thought this was a fun book. And I am definitely looking forward to what Kitanidis writes in the future.

The Bottom Line

All in all, it wasn’t a perfect book. But it was a good debut book for the author, and it kept me reading all night long. So even though it had its flaws, the fact that I didn’t put it down until I finished the last page means that there was definitely something going for it. I would definitely recommend Whisper.

Other Reviews

Steph Su Reads, Lauren’s Crammed Bookshelf. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.