Story for the Week
According to the Internet, which is the source of all practical knowledge 🙄, the name “Nancy” was in the top 20 names from 1931 to 1962. (No, I am not that old.😏) I grew up reading Nancy Drew. My daughter grew up with Fancy Nancy.
While there were three Nancys in my grade all through elementary school (Nancy B., Nancy L., and Nance P.), I don’t come across Nancys very often. I do work with a Nancy, and when we were on the same team, we were A&B because A is my last initial and B is hers (duh). We prefer to call ourselves Team Nancy now though.
I remember having to do a project in school where we looked up the meanings of our names. When we found a reference to Nancy meaning “full of grace,” I became my parents’ graceful klutz because I could (and still do) trip over my own feet. The running joke was that it was my dad’s fault.
My mother wanted my sister and me to have the initials CAL because we were born in California, so she wanted to name me Carol. My father said there were too many C’s in the family already. My grandmother was Catherine. My sister was Cynthia. My cousins were Constance and Christine. He liked the name Nancy, so Nancy I became. And I’ve been tripping over invisible things ever since.
When Dennis and I named Corinne, we didn’t look through name books or websites. As we walked into our doctor’s office one afternoon, I happened to notice that her first name was Corinne. I told Dennis that I thought that would be a pretty name if we ever had a girl. We hadn’t even started planning to have a baby at that point, but the name definitely stuck.
Drawbacks to her name? It’s almost always spelled wrong. We never find anything personalized unless we special order it. It gets mispronounced a lot. And every time I have seen someone on television with the name Corinne, she is inevitably the villain. But at least it’s unique. I don’t know another Corinne besides the doctor we named her after. I had a boss named Corinna, and I regularly mistyped both of their names, but that is another issue altogether.
I just finished a book with a character named Nancy. It’s not often that happens, and I’m always surprised when it does. I wasn’t crazy about the book. I wasn’t even crazy about the Nancy. But it gave me a fun idea for a blog post, so I guess that’s something.😊
Book Review
⭐⭐½
2.5 Stars for The Whispers by Heidi Perks
320 pages
Publisher: Gallery Books
Publication Date: March 8, 2022
I received an advance copy of this title from NetGalley and Gallery Books.
Publisher’s Description
Anna loves Girls’ Night with her friends. With the kids safely in bed, it’s a chance for the women to let loose, enjoy some wine, and just laugh. But after one lively evening, Anna doesn’t arrive for school drop-off the next morning—or the next, or the next.
Everyone, especially her husband and young son, are frantic with worry but none more so than Grace, her childhood best friend. Grace is certain that someone is hiding the truth about Anna’s unexplained disappearance. As rumors fly and accusations are whispered among neighbors, Grace decides to take matters into her own hands and find out what happened to Anna…or die trying.
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Main Characters:
- Grace Goodwin – mother to 8-year-old Matilda, her husband Graham has stayed in Singapore for work, Grace and Matilda moved back to Clearwater in England where Grace grew, Anna’s best friend until Grace’s family moved to Australia when the girls were 14
- Anna Robinson – has lived in Clearwater all her life, married to Ben, mother to 8-year-old Ethan
- Nancy, Rachel, and Caitlyn – Anna’s current group of best friends, all have children in 4C with Ethan and Matilda
The story of Grace and Anna’s friendship and Anna’s disappearance is told from three perspectives—the “whispers,” which are a handful of italicized chapters of the third-person chatter of other parents in the schoolyard; Grace’s perspective in the third person; and Anna’s perspective in the first person. Some of the chapters are numbered, some of them are dated, and some of them are numbered and dated. There were chapters that went back to when Grace and Anna were children. Honestly, the back and forth of the timeline was ridiculously distracting for me.
This book started out with a Big Little Lies meets Broadchurch vibe for me, both series that I enjoyed. This one was so complicated, though, that I couldn’t enjoy it. It felt like the author added elements to the story just to throw off the reader, and it just became too confusing.
All of the characters were shady. None of the characters were likeable except maybe Grace’s husband Graham, who I didn’t even think was necessary to the storyline. There were so many references to some big secret thing that had happened when Grace and Anna were teenagers, but by the time I got to the end of the book, I really didn’t care anymore.
And the whispers were pretty much irrelevant. They added a schoolyard gossip element to the storyline, with everyone trying to figure out what was going on with the five women. But it’s the title of the book. I expected that perspective to be prevalent throughout. It was literally a handful of chapters. The main focus was Grace’s and Anna’s chapters, and I still don’t think I really know everything that happened.
I think the author tried too hard to make this one suspenseful and fell far short. It was a miss for me.
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