The atmosphere in this book, lemme try to properly explain: comfort, warm, spooky, feels like coming home, but home is a lil deserted and kinda creepy and there's a weird draft coming through an ajar door, this book feels like the warmest hug, wrapped in autumnal goodness, hot drinks and gloves, boots and crunchy leaves, but also frosty night air, can't feel your toes in the snow, eyes watering from the wind, and you keep looking left and right because the shadows look weird. OH AND THE PLAYLIST THAT GOES WITH THIS??? I'm still listening to it, a week later!! So good I love when playlists match perfectly. 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. He regarded her for a long moment before bringing a hand to his chest. Before tapping it against his sternum. Once. Twice. The sign for mine. The prose. The metaphors were meticulously intertwined throughout the story, slowly unveiling the true nature of Delaney and Colton as they navigate the chaos that seemingly ensues upon them meeting in a university designed for people like them. The ambience of the book is more horror🧟‍♀️ than magical. more paranormal than fantasy.

She was four feet away from him, and for the second time that day, the elevator doors were about to slam shut in her face. He leaned over and jabbed a button, halting their advance. She watched him with a razor-sharp acuity. She didn’t move. Her cheeks were pinked, her wide-eyed stare fringed by dark lashes. With slow-budding alarm, he realized he’d spoken her name right out loud.The kiss was a surprise, immediate and immolating. There was nothing sweet about it. Nothing soft. Only the clash of mouths, the scrap of teeth. They collided the way they always did. Like they were going to war". NINTH HOUSE meets THE ATLAS SIX in the enemies-to-lovers dark academia debut everyone's talking about . . . Laced with twists and revelations that will stop your heart' Aiden Thomas, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of CEMETERY BOYS Not to mention, nothing made sense about the climax. We got no concrete answers about what the hell sort of cult Colton was pledged to. The “Apostle” was the most obvious person ever and would have been better if the author just straight-up said who it was instead of making it a mystery. The whole premise is supposed to be about going into parallel universes, but it was so irrelevant to the plot it could have been cut out entirely. Oh, not to mention, Colton freaking KILLS SOMEONE and BURIES THEIR BODY in the woods and we never hear about this again.

After a fellow student turns up dead, she and Colton are forced to form a tenuous alliance, plummeting down a rabbit hole of deeply buried university secrets. They soon find themselves up against something old and nameless, an enemy that threatens to tear them - and their forbidden partnership - apart. If you don’t chase the whys and hows of the paranormal plot too much, this is a story that will reignite your love for dark academia – or serve to fuel the romanticism even further. With its moody atmosphere, unnerving plot and its intricately woven romance, The Whispering Dark more than earns its place amongst this year’s best contemporary fantasy books. i have wanted to see muslims and hijabis existing in every genre for so long because we should see ourselves represented in stories across the board. it will be a fine line to follow, and there will be mistakes made that we will learn from. And i'm not saying i am right in this; i don't know. i did my best with what i thought would be a good representation for us in a genre we don't really see ourselves in ever.A creature who walked with the dead and a woman who drew them close. He would never not be caught in her orbit. My main issue with this book is the portrayal of the relationship between Lane and Colton. From the blurb I had assumed that Colton was perhaps an older student and that would have made some of it a little better. However, he’s actually a TA and is responsible for marking her coursework and some of the grades for her Uni course. This heavily shifts the power dynamic between the two of them and makes some of the scenes seem uncomfortably like grooming which I’m sure wasn’t the intention! Added to this, the relationship is abusive, controlling and manipulative and nowhere in the narrative is this ever pointed out as a bad thing. THE WHISPERING DARK will burrow into your bones and nestle deep, refusing to let go. Kelly Andrew's prose is aching and lyrical, the mark of a master in the making. This is a story I won't soon forget' Hafsah Faizal, NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of WE HUNT THE FLAME The intense and turbulent romance at the heart of the story is all consuming, which does mean that the paranormal aspect suffers slightly. There’s little explanation into Godbole and its unusual curriculum. Students jump between parallel universes and perform mystical practices like divination, but the history and lore of the book’s world remains hazy. Part of this is due to the mystery that propels the story; revealing too much too soon unravels the secrets that bind these characters. And whilst some of the twists aren’t as easily disguised as they’re meant to be, the dark thrill of this book is in gathering the different pieces of the puzzle and slotting it all together – particularly the bone-deep connection between Lane and Colton, which is the novel’s driving force. In that respect, this is very much a romance first, fantasy second kind of book.

This is a tale full of mystery and murder, perfect for both Dark Academia fans and those who enjoy supernatural spookiness! Romantic and horror-filled, with tension and twists at every turn, The Whispering Dark follows Delaney Meyers-Petrov as she navigates Godbole University, a school that seems to contain more secrets than students. Having been accepted into a prestigious program where students are taught to slip between parallel worlds, Delaney soon finds herself hearing voices in the shadows and facing entities that lurk in the dark. The Raven Boys meets Ninth House in the most exciting debut of 2022 -- a dark, atmospheric fantasy about a Deaf college student with a peculiar connection to the afterlife. The question tore through him. Lane was his. She'd always 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.” She wanted to be defined. Not by the silence between her ears or her fear of the dark, but by the sum of her achievements. Not by what she couldn’t do, but by what she could. Good lord where do I begin. None of the characters had any depth, the MC especially. She was like a paper cut out of a person, who did absolutely ~nothing~ but dress differently, and yet somehow could effortlessly walk through worlds and became the cHoSeN oNe for some sort of demon/monster thing (was never really clarified what it was.)A very well written piece of supernatural thriller about people with the ability to walk between parallel earths. The book follows Delaney Meyers-Petrov, a girl who has been accepted into a prestigious school that teaches its students to walk between worlds. Delaney, or Lane, is deaf, and so her inner struggles are not the same as the ones from fully abled people. This is OwnVoices disability rep, and I am so glad that Andrew is finally able to have a book that represents her, even if that book is her own. I am always so happy when OwnVoices books enter the market, as everyone deserves to see themselves in a character. 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. that being said, the book is a fantasy and while i looked at it from an "x-men world view where some people have powers", there will be readers out there, muslim readers, who won't agree with how adya's powers were written. and that is 100% their right to have that opinion. i read it as a story based on strange science that allows for universe hopping.