The Whispers by Ashley Audrain 4 / 5 stars
I was SO excited when Ashley Audrain announced that she would be coming out with this book. And I’m happy to report, it didn’t disappoint. In this novel we are taken into the lives of four neighboring women, all who have a connection with motherhood-longing for, regretting, loving, and mourning, and how they navigate their relationship with each other and their children of past and present. This honest look into motherhood is a common plotline in Audrain’s books and writing style. She describes the events in this book with such emotion and rawness, you as the reader are sure she has experienced firsthand what she is describing in the pages. Although this can’t be true because of how vastly different each character’s story is. Audrain’s other book The Push, a psychological thriller I absolutely loved, had a similar tone as well. I will say The Whispers is more of a slow burn, domestic mystery than a fast-paced thriller. There are countless trigger warnings to check before reading this book so I highly recommend looking into those before reading.
I’m not much of an audiobook kind of person, but when it comes to nonfiction works, I find it easier to connect to the novel when I listen to it-especially when it is narrated by the author themselves. I had heard SO much about Atlas of the Heart and had wanted to give it a listen for a while now. I don’t think I’ve ever audibly said aloud while listening to a book “Oh, that makes sense!” or “That’s exactly what I was feeling!” like I did listening to this book. One aspect I really enjoyed about listening to the audiobook is how Brown would repeat herself when she wanted to hammer down a specific takeaway. I found myself screen recording SO many different points throughout the listen. Brené Brown also just has such a beautiful and soothing voice, it was such an easy book to get lost in! This gave me so much insight into the language of emotions and why we feel the way we do in certain situations. Having a sense clarity on something that never came easy to me (expressing emotions) felt liberating. I’m sure I’ll be giving this more than one listen.
Hello Stranger by Katherine Center 2 / 5 stars
Oh man. I need to learn to stop reading books when I do not enjoy them. I wanted SO badly to like this, so many people love it! I may be an outlier here, but this was a hard one to get through. Multiple times I thought about DNFing this because I couldn’t stand the main character Sadie. I found her to be rude, obnoxious, negative, and overall unlikeable. The story in general felt very repetitive and not exciting. Towards the end of the book, where multiple absurd behaviors of Sadie’s character were explained, it felt as if everything she did was excused by her condition? It felt like piecing together a puzzle that just didn’t fit. This is my first book by Katherine Center and while I do want to read another one of her books, The Bodyguard, I may wait awhile before I pick up another one of her works.
