Joined in 2023 
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disclaimer: i completely agree that dark magic is haram. i agree that the occult is haram. but my interpretation of this book wasn’t that of magic because none of the characters use magic. this read to me like a group of characters with superpowers and i read it as such. It’s all smoke and mirrors, she’d seen someone comment, when a leaked video purported to show a Godbole student slipping between worlds. Anyone with a laptop can doctor footage. These students are paying into a sham. I wanted to like it a whole lot more than I did, but I just didn't. I loved reading about a Deaf main character who is drawn to the darkness—the concept was so cool, but. The writing. I just couldn't with the writing. It suffered from being overly repetitive. From describing the same thing two or three times to hammer the point home. From being melodramatic to the point of insufferability and over-description veering straight to purple prose. Yes, I'm doing it a touch here, but I can't help it. This book's prose broke something fundamental inside me. It’s happened. The Meyers-Petrov girl has been accepted to the program. She’s to start in September. You’ll keep away from her, Price, do you understand?”
The question tore through him. Lane was his. She'd alwas been his. And he was hers. They were painted the same shades. Threaded with the same lines. He'd spent his whole life drawn to her, and she to him.”
The dark not only limits vision, but for Delaney, speech as well. She’s Deaf, and though she has CIs (cochlear implants) reading lips is part of conversation for her too. Long sigh of...this book is why I'm falling out of love with YA. Not this book specifically, but this book as a representation of a writing trend that is becoming increasingly prominent within YA fantasy. It was a bad habit—her tendency to personify the dark. To imagine it restless, the way she had when she’d been little and lonely and looking for a friend. To fear the way it drew her eye, the way it pulled at her like a tide. As the proctor rattled off rules she couldn’t hear, she’d busied herself with setting her pencils into a neatly sharpened line and done her best not to stare into the gymnasium’s murky corners. If you compare it to "Ninth House", which is one of my favorite books of all time along with its sequel, yes, it's a YA version of it. When you compare it to "The Raven Boys", it feels like the NA version of it and with "The Atlas Six" it matches perfectly~•~
The little girl looked down at him, frowning. Her leggings were striped with red, orange, yellow, and green. Drowning had been cold and dark, but every part of her was bright, bright, bright. Her tiny mitten cuffed his wrist. The stitching was lumpy, done by hand.He meant to speak again, but when he opened his mouth, there was the dirt in his lungs. There was that buzzing in his empty chest, the tight spool along his bones. His arms ached, as if he’d dragged himself some unfathomable distance. Somewhere nearby, he heard the sound of running feet. He burbled, choking and fading and so, so very afraid, and the world shut up silent as a tomb. In front of them, the doors rumbled open to reveal a familiar face. A lump solidified in Colton’s throat as Eric Hayes pushed over the threshold, ramming his substantial height into the already small space. The look he shot Colton’s way made him feel as if he’d been caught with his hands down his pants, and a hot well of resentment rose in his chest. We’ll start with a positive first; it’s refreshing to have a deaf main character in a book that’s written by a deaf author. There’s a lot of lived-in experience that feels present within the narrative and it really opened my eyes to certain aspects that I had not thought of before. Her breath caught. Leaning in close, he pressed a kiss to the pulse beneath her ear. Her body arched instantly into his, like they were strung all together. Twin marionettes, their strings hopelessly twisted. The Whispering Dark markets itself as a mix of The Raven Cycle and Ninth House, and I think that this is a perfect way to describe the essence of it.
But this is a story told from both Lane and Colton’s perspectives, allowing readers to be privy to the snarky and aloof TA’s tempestuous thoughts too. And hate is the last thing on Colton Price’s mind when it comes to the new girl. Despite being warned to keep his distance, Colton is mysteriously drawn to Lane – and she to him. Yet when a Godbole student turns up dead, revealing an unsettling pattern of gruesome fatalities, the two are forced into a tenuous alliance that will unveil both their secrets and their true feelings. But in opening the doors between worlds, Lane and Colton leave themselves vulnerable to an old and nameless entity that threatens to tear them apart. I’ll start my negatives off gently and that is with the fantasy and world-building aspects of the book. This isn’t a fantasy with a romance element, it’s very much a romance with a bit of fantasy thrown in. Lane is granted a scholarship to a programme at Godbole University which teaches its students to walk through to parallel worlds. We start off seeing her first lecture where she is given a 3-minute monologue about what is expected in the course and told to get some rest to prepare. Then… that’s it. That’s the only lesson we are a part of – we know they learn Latin and calculus (for some reason), but this is the last time anything that is taught at the Uni is referenced until they have a test to see if they can walk through to another world. In this test Lane just stands in the room, listens for a minute and then slips through easily – it was hard to see what anything they were teaching them had to do with it. The world-building is also non-existent, it's difficult to understand whether this program is a secret, if parallel worlds or demons are a known thing in the world as a whole, how this university exists etc. I took a lot of clippings trying to capture what it was about the writing that was pulling me out of the story, and reviewing the clippings made me realize it was the sheer repetition, combined with a heaping dose of metaphors and similes with the assist. Once or twice every so often to punctuate a point: great. For every description, big or small: no thank you, not for me. Delaney Meyers-Petrov is tired of being treated as some fragile thing – a breakable girl made of glass – just because she’s deaf. So when she’s accepted into a prestigious program at Godbole University that trains students to slip between parallel worlds, she jumps at the chance to prove herself. But Delaney, or Lane as she’s affectionately called, struggles to assimilate to student life. Falling behind before she’s even started, Lane faces pressure from her professors who won’t accommodate her disability. Then there’s pretentious undergrad teaching assistant Colton Price, who seems to despise Lane on first sight.
Overall, The Whispering Dark is fantasy with no world building and a paper-thin plot which romanticises a heavily problematic and dangerous relationship to its young adult audience. Thank you to NetGalley & Orion Publishing Group – Gollancz for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for a (very) honest review. AGHFJSDKDJK I JUST GOT AN ARC OF THIS BOOK OMFG????????????? IT’S MY MOST ANTICIPATED DEBUT OF 2022 I’M SO EXCITED I CAN’T BELIEVE I GOT AN ARC AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHSADJKFDVSHJ!!!! It’s my 2nd ever ARC, too!!! Idk what I did to deserve this, but I’d like to thank the Edelweiss and Scholastic gods for this!! 😭🙏 The beginning was a bit confusing and repetitive but once I got the hang that I’m not really supposed to understand the “magical system” right away. That is the mystery of the book, why can they walk in between worlds but others cannot? Why does the dark seem to be able to speak to Delaney? The ending was just wow, actually made me tear up a bit. The Raven Boys meets Ninth House with a deaf MC, a hijabi side character, and the most stunning writing you've read in your life. The Whispering Dark is incredibly immersive, I absolutely adored every aspect of it. It felt so intimate? I don't know how to explain it but I felt so much comfort every time I opened the book to continue reading.
He knew Price would know. The boy was a walking encyclopedia. unforgivably smug in the understanding that he was, more often than not, the smartest person in the room. "I have not failed ten thousand times," he said, speaking over the muffled clash of swords, "Tve successfully found ten thousand ways that won't work.”
Delaney, otherwise known as Lane, is a fantastic protagonist. Used to being overlooked because of her disability, she’s inquisitive, determined, and desperate to prove herself. She’s also haunted by voices in the shadows, terrified of the dark, and paralyzed by impostor syndrome in an environment where she isn’t quite sure she belongs. Lane draws the reader’s empathy immediately, carrying the novel through sections of mystery where it’s unclear what everything means. At the bottom, the signature of a board member was signed in a loping scrawl. She’d stood there for a long time afterward, rain needling her skin. She’d heard of Godbole. Everyone had. It was a highly prestigious yet controversial program, a magnet for those who dabbled in the occult. Laced with twists and revelations that will stop your heart' Aiden Thomas, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of CEMETERY BOYS The writing is repetitive, heavy on metaphors and atmosphere and light on answers. Fans of books like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and The Starless Sea will likely get on with it. Those who found these books pretentious are unlikely to find any enjoyment here. It can be a little grating in places – Andrew overdoes the use of glass to describe Lane as delicate – but mostly works well, adding to the gothic nature of the story. This isn’t a book with an intricate magic system or carefully crafted fantasy world – it requires the reader to go with the flow, accepting the supernatural elements for what they are and not questioning the whys. Delaney wants to keep her distance from Colton — she seems to be the only person on campus who finds him more arrogant than charming — yet after a Godbole student turns up dead, she and Colton are forced to form a tenuous alliance, plummeting down a rabbit-hole of deeply buried university secrets. But Delaney and Colton discover the cost of opening the doors between worlds when they find themselves up against something old and nameless, an enemy they need to destroy before it tears them — and their forbidden partnership — apart.
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