Whistle in the Dark audiobook

3.5 starsWhistle in the Dark felt like a donut read to me. I loved the beginning, the middle felt kind of empty, and I loved the end. The story is told from Jen’s perspective. Her 15 year old daughter Lana has recently disappeared for 4 days without any explanation as to what happened to her during that time. Upon her return, Lana seems changed, but Jen can’t put her finger on how and she can’t deal with not knowing what happened to Lana. This isn’t really a mystery and it’s certainly not a thriller. It’s more of an introspective novel about the challenges of being a parent to a troubled child. Healy does an excellent job of depicting Jen’s self doubt, relentless anxiety and exhaustion. Healy’s writing is really strong and she captures the flinty emotions between the characters perfectly. My only complaint is that I felt that the middle sagged and floundered. The fact that Jen’s emotional upheaval was relentless is realistic, but in the form of fiction, it got a bit tedious. Having said that, I’m still glad I read it. I thought the end was brilliant and I do very much appreciate the way Healy depicts the emotional challenges of being a mother. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

Men's fifteen year old daughter goes missing for four agonising days. When Lana is found unharmed, everyone thinks the worst is over. But Lana refuses to tell anyone what happened.Jen, Hugh, Meg and Lana are just an average, middle class family. Jen is devastated when Lana goes missing while on a painting holiday in the Peak District. When Lana is found, she swears she can not remember what had happened to her. The police draw a blank so Jen tries to uncover what happened by searching through her personal belongings and following her daughter to school. The relationship between a mother and daughter is put to the test in this book. It can be quite grim at times, but it's a touching story of family life. There are some lighter moments as well.I would like to thank NetGalley, Penguin Books UK and the author Emma Healey for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved Emma Healy's debut novel, Elizabeth is Missing. When I saw this one on NetGalley I got really excited and requested it. So a big thank you for the publisher and NetGalley for providing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I loved this book.This is the story of Jen and Lana, a mother and her teenage daughter. It's mostly about Jen, always worrying, thinking for her daughter, assessing the rights and wrongs in their relationship and her decisions. Jen is a loving mum to her two daughters- Lana has a big sister called Meg-, she is an easily likable character with real worries, as a mum I can relate to her a lot.She didn't mind being mum to her children, of course, that was normal. But from other people - health professionals especially- it felt wrong, weird, paralysing.One day Lana and Jen go to Peak District where the hope of a pastoral holiday turns into a nightmare for Jen, after Lana's four day long disappearance. Jen had a sensation of clutching at nothing, though her hands didn't move, and she walked around the series of outbuildings, her steps weighty in the thin morning air. It was too early to believe yet, but she believed it anyway. Lana was gone.After she is found safe and sound, Lana says she doesn't remember anything. Nothing. Not knowing what Lana did for these four days eats Jen. The aftermath of what happened, why it happened, and how it happened haunts her. Was she with Matthew, another youth Lana befriended during their stay, or the worryingly-religious Stephen, who believes children could visit hell and come back? She wants to know, but there are no answers in Lana. ..there were thoughts Jen tried not to think when Lana was near, in case her daughter saw the questions on her face.Jen and Lana's relationship is explored and told masterfully mostly within Jen's feelings, from the times Lana was a small baby to her troublesome teenage years. There is magic for Jen in her ordinary life, where she thinks she's done a deal about Lana's name with a stranger, or when she thinks 'the depressed' Lana might have been replaced, she has a quirky way of thinking which is a delight to read.A child growing up to become a stranger is a worry for every parent. It scares me to think when my son will ask for a mobile phone for himself, for instance. The idea of him being able to communicate with everyone, anytime without any limits is frightening. The novel puts a finger on all these worries. It explores the subjects like teenage depression, the use of social media, confidence issues, family members falling apart. Healey writes about these so elegantly and naturally. Happiness was doing everything wrong and finding that things had turned out okay, anyway. Happiness was obliviousness, it was not having to read books about adolescent mental health, it was eating dinner in front of the TV without consequences, it was buying your children mobile phones and feeding them crisps and forgetting to check with their homework. Happiness was everyone in the same room, captivated by their own digital device.As Jen gets closer to discover what really happened to Lana; their relationship with other members of the family(Jen's older daughter Meg, and husband/father Hugh), Lana's depression, Jen's worries, are deeply explored and the end comes like a long breath of relief: all the pieces connected, making up a beautifully structured story in your hands.I love the natural and effortless style of writing, Sometimes, Jen felt as though her daughter's emotions hung about in the air. Irritation, exhaustion or despair lingered like a cloud of perfume, waiting to be walked through, the particles clinging to whoever passed by.Emma Healey's writing reminds me of Elizabeth Strout's, a little bit. Writing about ordinary characters in such an interesting way is a huge talent. Elizabeth is Missing was drawing a big circle around the word Dementia, and this book is making the same for teenage depression. I congratulate Healey for raising awareness in these sensitive issues by writing these wonderful novels. I also loved the name of the book. A beautiful novel, deserving every praise. Probably one of the favourites of 2018, for sure.

I was a huge fan of “Elizabeth Is Missing” which has taken on a whole new level of poignancy since my Mother started suffering from dementia, so I was intrigued to read another novel from Emma Healey. This time it’s a different central theme but just as beautifully written and emotionally resonant.Whistle in the Dark is a story of family – especially of the mother/daughter relationship – we follow Jen as she struggles to connect with daughter Lana, especially after Lana goes missing for a few days and nobody knows what happened. Lana is silent on the subject, Jen feels inadequate, this has a beautifully realistic sense of parenting and a subtle exploration of teenage depression.I related to Jen on a very basic level – she is baffled, a little clumsy both in word and deed and genuinely distraught at being unable to find the right words and the right actions to bring Lana close to her and understand her issues. She is funny, wryly ironic, realistically flawed whilst Lana is both engaging and infuriatingly perplexing, you can see why Jen struggles but at the heart of this is a relevant and intelligently woven theme.This is less the story of what happened to Lana during those missing days and more a family drama that works wonderfully on many levels – the wider cast, including Jen’s long suffering husband, her oddball best friend and her mother all add to the whole and build an intriguing picture of the struggle to make sense of things. The finale when it comes is elegantly achieved and will linger in your thoughts for a good long while.Whistle in the Dark is moving, whimsical and astutely authentic. I loved it.Highly Recommended.

Emma Healey’s Elizabeth is Missing was a most affecting story portraying a dementia sufferer trying to solve two different mysteries, one the absence of her best friend and the other what happened to her sister in 1946, which gave it an arresting backstory as well. I loved it and was so eager to read the author’s latest that I ordered Whistle in the Dark from England. It is a worth-while read, but not quite worthy of the author at her best. It offers a now familiar plot - but one that provides scope for almost endless development. A child goes missing and after some period of time returns, but strangely altered and unwilling or unable describe where the child has been and what happened. Some I’ve enjoyed are Sarah Denzil’s Silent Child, Megan Abbott’s The End of Everything, and David Bell’s Cemetary Girl. Usually there are evidences of physical or sexual abuse as well. Whistle in the Dark is an innovative variant of the formula. Jen is an older mum in her early fifties, living in London and married to Hugh, an ultra-laid-back property surveyor whose calm forms a nice contrast to his excitable wife. Whilst on a painting holiday in the Peak District with her younger daughter, the 15 year old Leah, the girl disappears for four days, and then is found by a farmer wandering in a field, rather the worse for wear with a head laceration that left a scar and strange ligature marks on her ankles. In hospital Leah refuses a rape examination as unnecessary and insists that nothing happened during her absence, but refuses to supply any details at all. Had she been involved with Matthew, a teen her age whose parents run the holiday camp and seems to have been taken with her, or with Stephen, a young man in his twenties who belongs to a religious society called the New Lollards with overtones of a cult - one of the legends of the district is a story going back to the Middle Ages about a lost child who visits Hell and comes back to warn the living. Jen also has an older daughter, Meg, who is in her twenties, a lesbian pregnant by artificial insemination, who also acts as a stabilising influence of Jen, as like so many suspicious parents of teens, she tries to spy on Leah and discover her secret. There is also a reappearance of Stephen, whose cult may still be interested in the girl. And then there’s the backstory of the mysterious stranger on a train who gave the infant Leah her name. In the end Jen indeed finds out at first hand what happened to her daughter, and it is an absolutely terrifying denouement, but one that leads to a most satisfying conclusion to the story that is totally in character with Leah and her mother. This is another book I shall reflect on a lot.And yet, I cannot imagine reading it again all the way through. Not only is it a very ‘slow burner’ (like making stock from beef bones) but there are simply too many plot elements there for no other reason than to be red herrings. Of course mystery story readers always remind us that these are necessary items, which they are. But in serious fiction -and that is the calibre one expects of Emma Healey - readers expect that these extraneous elements will contribute either to the plot or development of the characters. These, in Whistle in the Dark, lead absolutely nowhere, and serve only to make the book longer, not to contribute to the resolution or explanation of Leah’s disappearance. And too much of the dialogue between Leah and Jen simply expresses the usual disdain a teen displays towards a parent on most occasions, even when no disappearance is involved. So no fifth star.I was amused by a couple of items tho’. In her investigations to discover what happened to her daughter, Jen finds a most unusual employment of condoms! (Funnier with the English emphasis on both syllables.) And when Jen and Hugh make the alarming discovery that Leah is buying religious books, he remarks disarmingly: “How d’you know the books aren’t for school, for RS or RE, or whatever it’s called now?” (Maybe we Yanks are indeed better off believing that our Constitution forbids our government schools teaching any moral or spiritual values. My impression is that Religious Education in English state schools serves largely to vaccinate pupils against believing in anything at all. Seems to be working, too.)

*https://mrsbbookreviews.wordpress.comIn 2014, novelist Emma Healey made an impact on the publishing world with her debut novel, Elizabeth is Missing. Healey returns with a new novel, Whistle in the Dark, a book with a strong line of psychological suspense that puts the limelight on teen depression and the impact this has on a family unit.A family holiday to the Peak District goes terrible wrong when Lana, a fifteen year old girl, goes missing for four days. When Lana reappears unharmed, the police believe it is a shut book case and they declare the case solved. However, for Lana’s mother Jen, it is the start of a nightmare, as she tries to piece together just what happened in those four days. Lana herself is not giving anything away. It is up to Jen to get to the bottom of the truth. In the process, Jen may just push her daughter and the rest of her family away even further. Whistle in the Dark is about one family’s crisis and the steps that they take as a unit to overcome Lana’s disappearance.Whistle in the Dark is one stirring read, marked by very sharp and observant prose. The premise gives it a psychological thriller or crime feel, but instead I feel Whistle in the Dark offers an introspective study into the relations and dynamics of a family pushed to the very edge. Healey is a natural and perceptive storyteller, who is able to bring issues that strike at the very heart of families. Healey’s flair lies in her ability to air these family problems out for her audience to consider.The characters featured in Whistle in the Dark will be sure to evoke many stirring emotions. For a start, the lead, adolescent Lana, gets right under your skin. In some instances I felt sorry for her and in others she simply pressed my buttons, in the wrong way! She is one complex teenager and Healey’s representation of her is very comprehensive. Jen, Lana’s mother, is another character I have mixed feelings towards. I could understand her obsession with trying to understand the circumstances of her daughter’s strange disappearance. As a mother, I am sure this would consume me too. Healey capture’s a mother’s desperation, her frustration with her estrangement from Lana and how this scenario represents every parent’s worst nightmare very well. However, I do feel like Jen crossed the line and in the process she pushed Lana, as well as the other family members away even further with her over the top behaviour. Supporting Jen and Lana are fellow family members Hugh and Meg, along with best friend Grace. Each of these characters is configured in such a way that they contribute succinctly to the story as a whole.In Whistle in the Dark, Healey draws the reader sensitively into a world inhabited by depression, paranoia, social media and increasing disconnection from the world, through the character of Lana. At times this is a tough to read, but it is a subject area that I feel should be addressed in our current climate. It is also a topic we should all aim to have a conversation about, as for many very ordinary and unsuspecting modern families, this illness will touch their lives at some point. Healey provides a rather scrupulous, but no holds back approach to her study of depression and how this impacts upon a teen. These passages of the novel were incredibly moving and emotionally draining all the same.Relationships form a significant part of Whistle in the Dark. Namely, there is the difficult and trained relationship between a mother and a daughter. Then there is the rather stabilising force of a husband and wife. Healey also considers the impact of the events that take place in this novel on fellow siblings and close friends. What I took away from this aspect of the storyline is that the fallout of the depression illness has far reaching implications, not just for the sufferer, but those who surround this individual. At times it can be devastating and heartbreaking to observe. What really hit me in the face, quite literally about this novel, is that we never stop caring for our children and we will do anything in our power to protect them from pain, whether it is emotional or physical anguish.I found much semblance with the way in which Whistle in the Dark reached its final curtain call. The prime reason for my continued and rather frenzied approach to reading this novel, came from my desire to know, just like Jen, what happened to Lana and why. The ending illuminates this well.Whistle in the Dark, in a steadfast manner, captures the gut wrenching turmoil of a family suffering from a piercing personal crisis. Although it hinges on offering a rather troubling read, it is also gratifying in its ability to intricately explore the conflicts that a mental illness can have on a family unit. The results are shocking and heart wrenching, but incredibly real. A very genuine read.*I wish to thank Penguin Books Australia for providing me with a free copy of this book for review purposes.

“Whistle in the Dark” is a psychological-thriller/domestic fiction with which mothers of moody teens will identify. Author Emma Healey flawlessly writes her protagonist, Jen, as the worried mamma who becomes consumed with her daughter’s mental health.Jen’s daughter, fifteen-year-old Lana, was missing for four days during a mother/daughter vacation. The reader is introduced to the story after the missing event occurs. What the reader learns is that Lana doesn’t want to inform anyone as to what happened to her. Lana has mysterious injuries indicating she suffered through some sort of peril, yet Lana keeps mum to her ordeal. Lana suffers from depression so this event is especially a concern to mamma Jen.I identified with Jen. My favorite passage:“Jen wished lying awake and worrying was an Olympic sport, that way, she would be training for the glory every night and might have a chance at being hailed as a hero by her nation. If you needed ten thousand hours to become an expert at something, she was surely a senior apprentice, at the very least.”Yes Jen, I can relate.Jen becomes obsessed with learning what happened to Lana in those days. Healey writes Jen perfectly, showing how obsessive worry is a detriment to mental health. Jen becomes an unreliable protagonist, as she obsesses over Lana. Healey combines this domestic fiction story of mother/daughter relationships along with the psychological thriller of watching Jen implode while attempting to discover what happened to Lana in those four days. For those who enjoyed Healey’s last novel “Elizabeth is Missing”, will find this novel just as satisfying. I am a Healey fan and highly recommend this one.

Whistle in the Dark kicks off where most novels conclude: with what comes after the big event. Lana Maddox has recently been rescued and is safe in hospital, having been missing for four days in the Peak District National Park in central England. Rather than confusing us with a convoluted plot twist – like so many contemporary novels – Emma Healey’s newest offering sets up the mystery on the first page and then moves through a straightforward process of solving it. How very refreshing.Lana doesn’t appear to be seriously injured physically, but her inability – or unwillingness – to fill in the gaps or even say who she was with, is worrying for her parents, Hugh and Jen. Jen, especially, is driven to imagine the very worst and we set out with her, as detective, on an emotional and sometimes uncomfortable quest to discover just what happened to her daughter. Did Lana suffer such trauma that she can’t force her mind to go back to what she experienced? Was Matthew – a boy Lana had just begun to date – involved somehow? Or was Lana involved in something unimaginable at the hands of Stephen, a member of the New Lollards Fellowship religious cult? His concerns with children ascending into hell and children ‘bringing something back’ (something evil) from experiences like Lana’s are both unsettling and bizarre. What complicates matters even more is Lana’s depression, which predates her disappearance and has manifested itself in bouts of cutting and suicidal ideation. As a gentle warning to readers sensitive to certain triggers, mental health plays a big role in this novel so this reading experience can feel like an intense one.“I want to kill myself,” Lana tells her mother and “her voice was flat and quiet, toneless and powerful”.Lana is a refreshing and ballsy character, but she is also strong-willed, scathing and often rude. She is resistant to her mother’s probing and is reluctant to provide desperately anxious Jen with any kind of reassurance while she struggles to establish an independent identity. Jen continues to try to be close to her daughter but Lana pulls away.“[It was] as if she’d invited some stranger into the house, or some mythical creature, a unicorn or a griffin”.Lana’s character is quite dark, with her looking into disturbing and morbid representations of organised religion, such as stigmata and hell. This darkness, however, is balanced by a deadpan sense of humour and some warm and tender moments with her family that are lovely to witness, and we begin to realise that underneath it all, Lana is a very sad, insecure and frightened young girl.“I look hideous without the bandana,” said Lana.“I’m sure it isn’t that bad.”“You’re disregarding my feelings again. We talked about this with Dr Greenbaum.”Jen’s situation is every parent’s worst nightmare and portrays brilliantly the difficulties in dealing with a loved one’s depression. Her journey is a painstaking one. She ‘shadows’ her daughter, following her to school and checking her Instagram profile, trying but failing to decipher her teenage mind and understand her actions.“Lana, who wasn’t talking to her that day, wasn’t talking to her in an ordinary teenage way, or perhaps wasn’t talking to her in a troubled teenage way. How were you supposed to tell?”As tension builds, Jen’s paranoia reaches breaking point and we start to wonder who we should really be concerned about. She begins to hallucinate, seeing a cat wandering around her home; she hears noises and whispering coming from Lana’s room; she obsesses over the meaning behind Lana’s Instagram posts; and at one point she believes Lana and Hugh are conspiring again her. In a café, one day, with her older daughter, Meg, Jen gets overly concerned about an older man and a too-young girl kissing in the corner, even considering calling the police. Another day, with Lana, she obsesses about a bag going missing from under Lana’s chair, asking repeatedly if Lana still has it. The internalness of Jen’s situation, where her thoughts go and how she tries to make sense of them, is fascinating to watch and expertly evoked by Healey.Whistle in the Dark is about mental illness, parenthood, mother/daughter relationships and contemporary family life, but at its core, it is a gripping story about a mother’s love for her child, and her absolute refusal to allow hope to die. It is deeply affecting, and not just for mothers. Its portrayal of Jen’s struggle to stop Lana falling into a state of helplessness, and to impose some form of order in a chaotic world, will strike a chord with anyone who has loved someone. It is impossible not to feel sympathy for Jen, particularly because we are drawn into her internal monologues, right inside her mind as she tries to make sense of her reality. Despite the red herrings that emerge in this story, paying tribute to your traditional detective novel, the conclusion Healey draws is cathartic and hugely satisfying. The tension and intensity she manages to construct by the close of the novel is almost too much to bear, and by the end, I was completely exhausted.This wonderfully constructed, intelligent and emotionally compelling novel was both a difficult and engaging read, and I absolutely loved it. Bravo, Emma Healey. 4.5 stars.

I haven’t read this author’s previous book ‘Elizabeth is Missing’ but I do remember hearing a lot about it, so I was quite excited to read her latest book ‘Whistle in the Dark’. The first page immediately drew me in, it is pretty unusual to start at the point where the missing girl is found and then covering the aftermath and I found this immediately intriguing. The mystery lies in discovering what happened to Lana whilst she was gone and how the whole family adjusts to her return. The characters are realistic, the narrator is Lana’s mother Jen and throughout the novel I felt that so many different aspects of her personality were slowly explored and revealed. The relationship between mother and daughter is a real focal point of the novel. I felt this was a really skilful portrayal of the difficulties of a mother trying to relate to her teenage daughter and the disappointment when she is totally unable to do so. Their relationship is so full of tension and at times it is actually quite painful to read because it felt so real. The issue of mental health, particularly depression is something that is dealt with well in this book. The author does a beautiful job of showing how depression can overwhelm a person completely and change their personality into something else entirely. There is also a focus on the effect that dealing with a child with mental health issues can have on the rest of the family. The author explored these issues with great subtlety which added another layer to the story.Another interesting aspect of Whistle in the Dark was the structure the author used. The book is made up of lots of mini chapters of variable lengths, some very short and with different headings. There were many short chapters which take the reader out of the main story and explains something about a character or a flashback to the past. I found this style very effective as I have never read something quite like it before. I always enjoy reading something a bit different! I also liked the way the author writes, I found it difficult to put down despite it not being full of action or drama. There were some parts in which I felt the story was meandering slightly but I was always hooked back in by the author’s writing. There was a real feeling of unease and paranoia, like something terrible was about to take place throughout the whole novel which did not subside even with the conclusion. I like that sort of uneasy slow burn in a mystery, however it may not be for everyone.Overall, I liked this book very much. I do wish certain things had been more thoroughly explained but I really loved the atmosphere of the novel and I thought the characters of Jen and Lana and their relationship was dealt with beautifully by the author. I will definitely read more from Emma Healey who seems to have a real skill for capturing the intensity of mental illness and showing how it really can and does affect everyone. This is not a book packed full of twists and action, however it is an unusual and thought provoking mystery with a sinister feeling of not quite knowing what is real and what is not.

Poignant insights into the intricate relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter. Adolescence is rarely an easy time for the teen him or herself, nor for his/parents, but this situation becomes all the more complex after the teenager goes missing for four days while on holiday with her mother.

Book reviews on www.snazzybooks.com Whistle in the Dark is such a powerful read. Not only boasting a compelling storyline with a definite air of mystery (something that always pulls me into a novel), it also has some really interesting characters of the type I really like reading about - not always hugely likable, but captivating all the same.The story itself addresses some really serious issues, including missing children and mental health. I don't want to give anything away you can't glean from the synopsis, but this is very far away from a light-hearted read about a family; at times it's shocking, surprising and heartbreaking, but it never feels like this for the sake of being shocking/surprising/heartbreaking. It all feels very genuine, and I can (unfortunately) imagine many families having to deal with elements of this novel applied to their families on a day to day basis.I really warmed to main character Jen, perhaps because we see things from her perspective, but also because Emma Healey manages to convey her rapidly changing emotions so well.  I felt like I was right there with her as she worried, wondered and drove herself half-mad trying to guess what exactly had happened to her daughter Lana over those four days. What actually did happen actually becomes less key to the story than the relationship between Jen and Lana, and Lana's father Hugh. The characterisation is brilliant, and though Lana really irritated me, I felt for her too - she's not having the easiest time herself.I know this is a fairly vague review but I don't really want to give much away about this beautifully crafted story. It really struck a chord with me and left me thinking about it long after finishing which is, for me, the sign of a powerful, masterfully-written novel. Definitely recommended and an excellent new release after the brilliant Elizabeth is Missing [see my review here]... in fact, I think Whistle in the Dark was even better!Many thanks to Penguin for providing a copy of this novel on which I chose to write an honest and unbiased review.

Meet Jen a mother of two daughters, Meg is a lesbian who is pregnant and has broken up with her girlfriend and Lana is depressed and suicidal and has been found after 4 days of being missing. This is difficult to read at some points but overall I enjoyed the book. Feel the author has handled the subjects well and I’ll definitely think of this book each time I look at the sky.