Book Review: The Murmurings by Carly Anne West

Title:  The Murmurings
Author:  Carly Anne West
File type:  eARC
Release date:  March 5th, 2013
Genre:  YA, horror, paranormal

Everyone thinks Sophie’s sister, Nell, went crazy. After all, she heard strange voices that drove her to commit suicide. But Sophie doesn’t believe that Nell would take her own life, and she’s convinced that Nell’s doctor knows more than he’s letting on.

As Sophie starts to piece together Nell’s last days, every lead ends in a web of lies. And the deeper Sophie digs, the more danger she’s in—because now she’s hearing the same haunting whispers. Sophie’s starting to think she’s going crazy too. Or worse, that maybe she’s not….

I applaud you Mrs. West. You managed to freak me out throughout the novel. 

Since last year, I've been more and more interested in thrillers after so many paranormal novels disappointed me so I decided to shake things up and I'm glad I did because thrillers were just what I needed. 

The night before I finished this book I was home alone and playing Left4Dead and lets just say, it wasn't pretty. All of the lights were on in my house and I was sitting in a corner listening to early Britney songs. This usually does the trick and I snap out of it but it wasn't helping because I started to think of all the creepy things that happened in this book and I back then I hadn't even read the first half of the book. 

The creep factor was really high in this book. I did not expect it would go that far. There were two different parts in this novel. The first one was more contemporary with a dash of eerie mirror scenes with random whispering while the second was full on paranormal/horror story with the strange hair-raising black monsters that are actually something like split ghosts that are looking for their lost, other half in this world.  

Also, the first half had romance which was ignored in the second part of the book. I didn't feel attached to the growing relationship of the characters because it happened to fast for my taste, especially considering that the main character, Sophie didn't have friends in school but she suddenly accepts the attention of Evan. 

There was one thing I didn't like. The way out protagonist, Sophie never listened to anyone. There were a lot of situations where someone would say something like Don't go to that mental hospital or Don't go there alone or Obey the doctor, she wouldn't do it and her disobedience is what got her in big, colossal trouble every time. If she hadn't gone to the hospital in the middle of the night alone, none of the mess in the second half of the book wouldn't happen. But I guess, all of those things needed to happen in order to solve the whole mystery. 

It might appear I said a lot of things that didn't set right but that's not entirely true because it's easier to talk about the bad side of the book rather that the good. All in all, I would recommend this book to my friends and everyone else since it had so many scary and unnerving scenes. It was definitely one of the best young-adult thrillers I've read.