Book Review for The Whisper Man, by Alex North

★★★★

What I thought it would be going in:

Some kind of supernatural detective novel, one where the supernatural of course is just proven to be a lot of creepy circumstances or framing etc.

My initial impressions:

“Here we go again, another sad man left with a kid he doesn’t know how to connect with”. Now, I’m not belittling the situation, I do understand that it’s a difficult situation and that it often happens, but I’m tired of reading about it. It feels like I’m just reading books from the same male character and I didn’t care about him before and so I don’t care about him now.

My final impressions:

Good, easy mystery. Didn’t really care for any of the characters, but I liked the plot. I don’t remember a lot about the plot right now, just that I didn’t like the characters but loved the mystery.

What I liked most:

I think I loved the mystery plot and it’s resolution the most. Not the resolution of the story, but of the mystery itself. I love mysteries (don’t love reading them as much as I like watching them) and so I did like that I was able to engage with the theories but it wasn’t overly obvious what was happening. There was something about the scene where everything snaps into place that was just pretty writing, and I’m a sucker for that.

What I disliked most:

The MC. I had the same issue with him that I did with the main character of A Song for the Dying. There’s just something about the brooding male archetype that I’ve just seen/read too much. I can’t bring myself to like them because … well, frankly, I don’t like them. It’s the same for the female detective archetype, which I’m pretty sure I’ve covered quite a few times.