The Whispering Night Review + Luminaries Readalong

I started reading this book on a train in France. I was lucky enough to beta read for Sooz right before they finalized line edits. Anyone who has been here for my blog posts knows that I love her writing. This trilogy leans even more into the atmospheric and deep visual writing for her than the Witchlands, which truly says something. However, I feel like this is a wonderful and lovely wrap up to the trilogy. I’m glad that Sooz was able to share that NetGalley now has the first third of the book out for folks to review because I’d been waiting to post mine for a while, until it was a bit more settled and starting to find it’s way to the readers.

I think this might be my favorite book of the trilogy. Winnie is in top form, emotions (so so many emotions) are across all the pages. Ugh!Jay stole my heart even more than I ever expected. He had the best lines of the whole book, and I just melted. I cried at more than one point. I laughed. And I fumed. The gentle balance of new and old friends and alliances, a really great big bad, the issue of having been a loner for so long and then learning to trust people again, subtle science drops, and trying to hunt down a mystery. The challenge of literally. having a gauntlet thrown and trying to protect the ones you love. Winnie both gives to many flying fucks, and none at all. I as so proud of her growth, we learn so much about backstory without it having felt like telling. The Nightmare Masquerade is such a fun backdrop of chaos and pomp and circumstance.

Also I will just say that you’ll need to pay attention to the details, even the small sentences that I thought were lovely turned out to hold so much information. Again a master craft of understanding that every single sentence and detail needs to lead to something. And Sooz is so very good at details. She pairs devastation and drama side by side with humor to cut tension and still manages to sprinkle in real life among the paranormal. Just *chefs kiss*.

I will say that this book is so much faster than the other two, I got to one large turning point and had to stop because I knew that I was pulling into Paris and wouldn’t be able to pull myself out of the book mentally if I kept reading. So I tucked it away and after I was back from my Europe trip I allowed myself to savor every single sentence. I then proceeded to write Sooz an effusive email highlighting what worked well and we clarified some bits (truly she did it in like two sentences, I am eternally amazed at how she can wordsmith) that should hopefully make the story even better for you all than it was for me.

I cannot wait to read it again. On that note we are doing a readalong to time with the release of the Whispering Night! Currently we are deep into The Luminaries but starting in October we will jump into The Hunting Moon. It truly is the best little series to kick off you fall reads and I would love to talk more! Please come join us on the discord.

Don’t forget to pre-order The Whispering Night:

Bookshop.org ~ Libro.fm ~ Goodreads ~ Storygraph

As a side note, some of the links to Bookshop.org or Libro.fm will either provide me or an indie bookshop I support a portion of the affiliate sales if you use them to buy a book I recommend!