5 out of 5
Book by Darcy Coates
A perfect read on a cold night.
Keira wakes up with no memory of who she is, where she’s been, and what has happened to her. One thing is certain. She is being hunted. Desperate to escape a dangerous storm and the unknown pursuers that have put a target on her back, Keira takes refuge in an abandoned groundskeeper’s cottage. It’s an eerie building, tucked away in a neglected cemetery that spans the cottage and the surrounding forest. Startled by spectral shapes that emerge at night, Keira soon discovers she can see and communicate with the dead. When a young woman still wearing her death wounds approaches for help, Keira is determined to dig into the spirit’s past and solve the mystery of her murder. But solving a forty year old crime comes with challenges, and Keira soon learns that the ghost’s ill-fated love story might just claim another life. Her own.
The Whispering Dead is the first book in The Gravekeeper Series, and while it’s a new style for Coates and doesn’t follow her more traditional storylines, the book’s incredibly spooky atmosphere will not leave readers disappointed. Set in a quaint, isolated village, the story is filled with quirky, charming, and nosy characters that capture the essence of small town life. The horror scenes are vivid and chilling and don’t let the reader breathe as they are thrown into the frightful world that has become Keira’s life. There are many mysteries occurring in this story that don’t eventuate to anything in this book, but perhaps they will be carried on into its sequel, or trilogy. Ultimately, these little mysterious work in building Keira’s character and the ultimate question about her past. Who is Keira? And what is she?
Just like an Agatha Christie novel, everyone in this book is a mystery piece that needs to be solved. Readers don’t know much about Keira to begin with, and they don’t learn much in the end either, but she’s a character that is undeniably interesting. With an unknown past, the ability to see ghosts, and hunted by a growing threat that lurks around the village, who wouldn’t want to read more about Keira? Hopefully for us readers, there will be shocks and surprises… of the spooky kind, in the next instalment.