Let me tell you about this creepy read - emphasis on "at times." It had me peeking over my shoulder like a paranoid squirrel, wondering what's lurking in the shadows. But you know what? The ending left me feeling a tad underwhelmed. I was all geared up for a twisty rollercoaster, but instead, it was more like a gentle kiddie ride - straightforward and predictable.

So there I was, having bought the book on a whim, not knowing what to expect. Surprise! It turned out to be a police procedural type of deal, and usually, that's not my cup of tea. But hey, the writing was solid, and the characters were good company. It's just that certain something left me with an unsatisfied feeling, like when you finish a bag of chips and it turns out there's more air than chips. You get me?

Now, don't get me wrong, it was still an above-average read, but it didn't blow my mind like a dynamite explosion. It's like a tasty sandwich with all the right ingredients, but it's missing that secret sauce that makes it unforgettable.

But hey, I'm not giving up on this author! Oh no, they've got potential, and I'm keeping my eye on them like a hawk eyeing its prey. Who knows, the next book might just be a five-star extravaganza! Until then, I'll tip my hat to this book for being a decent, if not extraordinary, read. Cheers to creepy moments and good writing!

The Whisper Man, just the title conjures up many thoughts and I can't think of a good one other than it is an appropriate title. A thriller about missing boys, murder and copycat abduction and murder. I liked the imaginary friend angle which brought a James Herbert touch to the novel. However, a bogeyman whispering at windows luring children from their homes is not a new concept so I will deduct one star. Altogether a very entertaining book with some good insights.

The Whisper Man By: Alex North and Narrated by: Christopher Eccleston was an excellent debut from Alex. This book was superb and a great read for Halloween!! it was creepy, with lots of scary twists and turns throughout that will have you sitting on the end of your seat! What a great roller coaster read! I loved it.

The narrator was excellent for this audiobook.

My apologies for taking so long I downloaded it as an audiobook to listen to.

Thank you to NetGalley, Penguin UK - Michael Joseph and Alex North for an ARC to read and review

I think that the students in our school library need to hear lots of diverse voices and read stories and lives of many different kinds of people and experiences. When I inherited the library it was an incredibly sanitised space with only 'school readers' and project books on 'the railways' etc. Buying in books that will appeal to the whole range of our readers with diverse voices, eclectic and fascinating subject matter, and topics that will intrigue and fascinate them was incredibly important to me.
This is a book that I think our senior readers will enjoy very much indeed - not just because it's well written with an arresting voice that will really keep them reading and about a fascinating topic - but it's also a book that doesn't feel worthy or improving, it doesn't scream 'school library and treats them like young reading adults who have the right to explore a range of modern diverse reads that will grip and intrigue them and ensure that reading isn't something that they are just forced to do for their English project - this was a solid ten out of ten for me and I'm hoping that our students are as gripped and caught up in it as I was. It was one that I stayed up far too late reading and one that I'll be recommending to the staff as well as our senior students - thank you so much for the chance to read and review; I really loved it and can't wait to discuss it with some of our seniors once they've read it too!

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

‘If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken’ , so says Jake’s imaginary friend. Tom’s wife has tragically died and he decides to move himself and his son Jake to a new town to make a new start. Only Jake is not like every other little boy, he has an imaginary friend and she keeps him company when he’s alone. In the Town of Featherbank there’s been an abduction and murder and one of the detectives on the case, Pete Willis, thinks there’s a link to the case of ‘the whisper man’, Frank Carter who was imprisoned for the abduction and murder of 5 children. The present victim’s mother informs the police that her son had told her about someone whispering at his window.
As Jake and Tom begin their new life strange things begin to occur in and around their home. The home that Jake fell in love with, despite it being quite unattractive and rather sad looking. Each day in the new house something strange occurs, is it related to the little boy who was abducted, or is it just the wild imaginings of a grieving traumatised little boy?
This is both a terrifying and thrilling read that scares and engages the reader from start to finish. Fantastical psychological thriller that cannot be missed.

This was a thrilling and chilling and cleverly suspenseful book from the beginning to the end, and around every second corner there was another twist that kept the reader glued to the pages. Recommended, and I can't wait to read a next book by this author!
TB

One of the best books I’ve read in a while. I was totally blown away by this book and couldn’t turn the pages quick enough to find out what was going to happen next. Outstanding,

I thank NetGalley and Penguin UK-Michael Joseph for providing me an ARC copy of this novel, which I freely chose to review.
I confess this novel got buried on my e-reader and despite the good reviews I have read and the many times I’ve seen it mentioned since its publication, it kept being knocked down by reviewing commitments and general lack of attention. After coming up as a recommendation in another article right as I finished a book I was reading, I decided its time had come. And? It kept me reading, and I enjoyed many aspects of it, although some worked slightly less well for me, but it has much to recommend it.
I hadn’t come across Alex North before, although that is not surprising as this seemed to be his first novel. As his biography explains, though, he had published a number of books under a different name before (it wasn’t hard to find this is Steve Mosby), but I hadn’t read any of those either. I don’t know if this marked a change of direction or it is part of a marketing campaign, but, in any case, it seems to have worked.
The description provides the gist of the action. We are in a small village were terrible things had happened many years back. The child killer (not molester, let me clarify that) is now behind bars, but another child goes missing. As you can probably imagine, the new police team investigating are drawn to check on the old case, and Pete, the detective who was almost destroyed by that case —which had some loose threads still pending— becomes once more entangled in it. But this is not a straightforward police procedural. It is a bit of a mixed bag. There is the mystery element (as we don’t know who the culprit is but are given a number of clues, red herrings, and repeatedly sent down the wrong path along the way); it also has aspects more typical of a thriller than of a classical mystery (the grisly nature of the crimes, the teasing serial killer, the different points of view, including also snippets from the perpetrator); there are paranormal elements (the young child at the centre of the story, Jake, has an imaginary friend who seems to know a lot about the case) and at times it also veers towards horror; and there is plenty of attention paid to the psychology and state of mind of some of the protagonists, particularly Tom, Jake’s father, traumatised by the sudden death of his wife and having to look after a young child on his own, Jake himself, also showing evident signs of trauma and not coping particularly well with his grief, and Pete, the detective who caught the previous killer, who struggles to keep the ghosts of his past at bay.
As I said that some aspects of the book did not fully work for me, I thought I might as well say which ones right now, although I’ll try to avoid any spoilers. I’ve just mentioned how much attention the book pays to some of the characters and their psychological difficulties. I enjoyed this, but was quite puzzled that nobody ever mentions the possibility of getting help. After all, we have a policeman whose work would have been supervised, and a young child going to school, presenting with bizarre behaviour and evidently struggling. I know this is a novel, but it does require quite a degree of suspension of disbelief to imagine that nobody would have picked up on that and suggested a psychological evaluation or some therapy. The novel feels a bit timeless (and it did remind me of some of Stephen King’s novels set on small towns, usually many years back), but there are dates mentioned, and the action is not set sufficiently far back in the past to justify that. Talking about the setting, one of the other things that bothered me was that I had not real sense of where we were supposed to be. Many of the minor characters and locations felt standard, and although the house Tom and Jake move into seems to have a defined personality, the rest of the place is a bit of a mixed bag. The police department seems rather large for a sleepy village; there are parts of the place that are half abandoned and less than savoury (as if we were in the outskirts of a big city), with known drug dealers and criminals tracked by the police as well; and some of the action fits in better with a rundown city than the village suggested. The fact that some aspects of the story reminded me of the typical book or movie about an urban legend (down to the nursery rhyme or playschool song) contributed to that feeling and gave the story a touch of the dark fairy tale. There were some other inconsistencies I won’t mention, as those might easily be explained away, and I don’t think will curtail the enjoyment of most readers.
Apart from the investigation and the mystery side of things, the novel also explores grief and trauma (Jake shows signs of PTSD, and so do his father and Pete), relationships between fathers and sons and legacy. How much do our childhood experiences influence our adult behaviour? It also looks at memory and the way our minds are not always reliable witnesses of what happened.
I have mentioned the main characters, but there are others like the main investigator (whom I quite liked but didn’t get to know too well, although I understand she plays a bigger part in the next novel by the same author), one of the mothers at Jake’s new school, the serial killer, of course… The story is narrated in the first person by Tom, who is, after all, a writer, but there are also chapters narrated in the third person by other characters, including Jake, Pete, the new detective, and the perpetrator (who only appears a few times, and those chapters do help provide some clues as to motivation). I sympathised with Tom, who had a hard time of life in general, liked Jake (and his invisible friend). I also empathised with Pete but I wouldn’t say I liked him. Although there is something generic about the characters (most readers of the genre will have met other characters in similar circumstances before), I thought the author did a good job of getting inside their heads, but it is true that this slows down the action somehow and might not work for people looking for a page-turner. People who don’t like first-person narration might not appreciate Tom’s narrative voice, although it does make sense in the context of the book, and there a few instances when it takes on an omniscient quality. As for the third person narratives, each chapter is told from one distinct point of view, and readers don’t need to worry about getting confused, though I recommend paying close attention to the action. The original serial killer didn’t impress me in particular (for me, it lacked something to make him distinct enough. He seems just thoroughly evil), and I found the new killer more interesting.
The writing is fluid, although, as I said, some readers might not appreciate the emphasis on the psychology of the characters and their obsessive thoughts and guilty feelings. There are some detailed descriptions of some of the objects and locations but this does not apply to the actual murders. The book is not gore, especially considering the topic. There is some violence and blood, but this does not relate to the main crimes an does not involved the children. I think people who worry about explicit or extreme violence would not be upset by this book, but readers must remember the book is about a serial child killer, so the topic is a hard and harrowing one nonetheless.
I enjoyed the ending, which sits well with the genre, rather than being all lights and no shadows, and it sheds a new light over the whole book. Some readers have complained about the paranormal aspect, feeling this is not fully explored, and I don’t disagree with the comment, although for me, it is left open and there is much that can be read between the lines.
In sum, a mystery with touches of the police procedural, the thriller, and a paranormal element, with an emphasis on the psychological angle, some pretty eerie touches (although I wouldn’t call it horror), which will grab the attention of most readers intrigued by these kinds of books. It might not work for people keen on realistic crime novels, but it is a very entertaining read, and I’m sure the author will not be short on followers.

Perfect for fans of CJ Tudor, this debut novel launches itself off the starter blocks and wraps it's fingers around your throat then starts to squeeze...
With more than just a touch of supernatural menace, and a underlying theme of parental repsonisbility gone horribly wrong, 'The Whisper Man' is not, I repeat NOT a book to start at bedtime.
Because you will find that just one chapter turns into 3 a.m very quickly and all the normal noises in the house suddenly sound like an intruder.
And your partner/pet will not thank you for this.
Ahem.
The story concerns Tom Kennedy and his son Jake moving back to Featherbreak village after the death of his wife , Rebecca. Jake is a sensitive child with an imaginery friend, a poem about the Whisper Man which Tom cannot fathom him knowing, and a packet of Special Things which he carries with hime everywhere.
This makes him a natural target for school bullies and some shockingly poor teaching intereference-this is a grief stricken child who needs support not punishment.
Tom and Jake are trying to ease their way into a new normal-however, they have arrived in the midst of an investigation into a missing child.
A young boy has vanished with an eerie familiarity to a series of child murders that occurred decades earlier.
The killer is behind bars-or is he?-and is visited with dogged determination by detective Pete Willis whose one remaining goal is to find the missing child that Frank Carter, 'The Whisper Man' . This six year old boy haunts Pete and finding him creates a Hannibal Lecter-esque cat and mouse game with echoes of the cruelty displayed by the Moors Murderers.
The anguish Pete feels bleeds through the pages.
Who or what is 'The Whisper Man'?
Is this a copycat crime, and did they get their man the first time around?
Filled with scenes of jaw dropping suspense-there is one with a letterbox which left me floored-and a step into the darkest reaches of human depravity, this is an outstanding debut which heralds a major new voice in fiction writing.
I loved it and am so excited to read Alex North's next book, 'The Shadow Friend' which is out next month!

The Whisper Man was such a chilling story that I couldn't read it before going to sleep at night without having a few minutes of reading something relaxing.

It was eerie and well-written and the embodiement of every parents worse nightmare.

When Tom and Jake move to Featherbank Tom thinks they are escaping the bad times following the death of his wife.

Tom doesn't know anything about Featherbank's dark past. Fifteen years ago a serial killer killed five boys and now another boy has gone missing.

Then one night Jake hears someone whispering at the door....

I highly recommend this book.

I didn’t really enjoy this book and couldn’t finish it. It didn’t live up to the marketing hype, at least for me anyway

A huge Thank You to The author, The publisher and Netgalley for providing the e-arc in exchange for a unbiased review of these works.

absolutly breathtaking! such a clever read, the blend of police procedural and supernatural elements was inspired

After the death of his wife Tom Kennedy and his young son, Jake, move to a new house for a new start. Jake starts at a new school but one of his classmates goes missing and Detective Pete Willis is assigned to the case. When a strange man attempts to contact Jake, Tom and his son become drawn into the investigation. It turns out they are linked to it and each other in more ways that they know...

This is really a police procedural but it does have a couple of clever twists to make it stand out and I did enjoy reading it. Tom and Jake are particularly interesting characters and the story hangs together well, leading to an interesting reveal with a few curve balls along the way.

It's an enjoyable read but it doesn't stand out enough for 5 stars although it's definitely a solid 4.

This is so cleverly written and spine tingling chilling
this book has everything it's emotional, full of suspence, it's creepy with plenty of twists and turns
So lock your doors, and make sure you have all the lights
then prepare to be blown away.

Highly recommended

Thank you netgalley, Alex North and Penguin UK Michael Joseph for allowing me to read and review this book

Wow! What a thrilling read. And so creepy, too! I had chills when reading this. It was a delight!

This is crime writing at its scintillating best. Believe all that you may have heard about this book - it is an absolute must-read.

Thanks to the Publishers via NetGalley for the opportunity to read this in exchange for an honest review.

I gave this story a solid 4 stars or 8/10.

Told in short chapters that draw you in to the story, this is quite a dark read that will keep you guessing from the start until almost the end when all the strands of the story begin to knit together.

Who is the Whisper Man and what is his connection to the missing boy, if any at all? The Whisper Man stands up there with the Bogey Man, who forms the basis of plenty of childhood nightmares. To find out more about the Whisper Man and his relevance to this story grab yourself a copy and prepare to be a little scared at times as the story reveals itself to you as you read.

I enjoyed the story and found myself wanting to read another chapter as soon as I finished one, due to the addictiveness of the storyline and the short chapters tempting the reader to carry on reading.

This is the first book that I have read by this Author, I will be looking to see what else he has written and keeping my eye on him in the future. After having a quick look on Goodreads apparently Alex North has written previously under another name. I need to investigate this further now.

When a young boy goes missing DI Pete Willis is struck by the similarities to a case years before, but he knows the murderer known as The Whisper Man is behind bars, after all he put him there. Into this frightened town moves Tom and his son Jake, both reeling from the loss of Jake's mother. It's meant to be a new start but soon Jake begins to act strangely, he's hearing whispers. Tom tries to dismiss them as a childs imagination but then he hears them too....

Spooky, atmospheric and genuinely disturbing this gripped me from the start. Theres a sense of danger for this family that gripped me and actually had me chewing my nails by the end of the book. I'd highly recommend this to any fans of thrillers or supernatural tinged stories.

The whisper man by Alex North.
Absolutely brilliant. Creepy eerie spooky and scary. I had my theory about the killer. Brilliantly written.i liked Tom and Jake. And the rhyme If you leave a door half-open, soon you'll hear the whispers spoken . . . Wow. I would Highly recommend this book. 5*.

Love, just love, the cover of this book. So beautifully haunting and I think, it reflects both the beauty and the tragedy of the father son relationship which forms the focus of The Whisper Man.
Alex North (AKA Steve Mosby) has always been able to keep me on the edge of the seat with his writing and in The Whisper Man, it was no different.
Apart from the creepy supernatral stuff and the eerie, but inspired rhymes ( I always find those really chilling) which kept me on the edge of my seat, I was engrossed in the development of Tom's relationship with his son.
The whole idea of trying to keep your child safe against the presence of a serial killer who appears to have a copy cat fan is something that any parent can relate too. Combined with the idea of a bogeyman called the Whisper man luring your child outside by whispering at his window, it's the sort of thing nightmares are made from.
Beutifully written, suspenseful and with a few quite stunning twists, I highly recommend The Whisper Man