To be quite honest I expected something completely different from this novel after reading the blurb. Instead of the thriller and crime novel I expected, „Whistle in the Dark“ explores a family‘s changing dynamics and relationships after the daughter‘s disappearance and subsequent reappearance.

Unfortunately, none of the characters are all that likeable and I kept expecting the plot to really get started but it never really did in my opinion. The story just kind of plodded on without a real climax. The two main characters don‘t really manage to resolve anything and the conclusion just didn‘t do it for me.

Overall, I enjoyed the writing of this novel more than the storyline and the characters.

Whistle In the Dark by Emma Healey a sublime five-star read. What a book, I missed the authors first book Elizabeth is Missing but I will be going back to read it as the writing was so great, it was descriptive and honest without being over the top. The story is mainly about Jen and her 15-year-old daughter Lana but there are other characters that bring the story to new levels of depth older daughter Meg brings another facet to the story. The story’s main focus is the four days that Lana is missing, and those four days cause Jen to unravel trying to find out what happened during them. I promise you will be just as crazy as Jen to find out what happened by the end of the story.
This was a read that I couldn’t put down and I know when someone asks for a good gripping drama this will be the one I will be recommending, it shows the complexities between family’s especially mothers and daughters. The author also deals with issues of mental health amongst many of the characters in a great manner it shows the true reality behind it not the glossed version we so often see in writing.
I can’t wait for more to read from this author, there is a talent at putting words on a page I love seeing.

Was an interesting read. The issues of teenage years can be complicated and Lana was finding it difficult. Teenagers like to have secrets and hers was a big one when her Mother found out. Compelling read

An enjoyable read, but not as much so as her first book. The ending was somewhat predictable. There were real flashes of brilliant, but Healey surely has the capacty a bigger, deeper book in her than this one.

An unflinching depiction of how depression can affect a family, and an intriguing and original mystery. Healey is great at exploring the delicate and often tangled dynamics of a family, and for me this was the greatest strength of the book. The book is subtle but gripping.

When Jen's daughter, Lana, disappears whilst on holiday in the Peak District, Jen is relieved and thankful when Lana reappears 4 days later, relatively unhurt. But Lana's strange disappearance hasn't solved her depression and has only made Jen worry more for the safety of her daughter. What did she do whilst she was gone? Why can't she remember? Why does she sleep with the light on? What is she hiding?

This novel beautifully charts not only the experience of a teenager struggling and suffering with depression, but also the worries, fears and paranoia of a parent who wants to show that she understands but can't stop asking the wrong questions.

Healey poignantly covers the desire to know 'why' when answers aren't easily given whilst a combination of clues, paranoia and imagination point towards a thriller-style answer for Lana's disappearance.

Neither of the main characters are particularly likeable; they are both extremely flawed, anxious and inconsiderate, but this is what fleshes out Jen and Lana so well and makes this such a compelling novel.

I work with children who struggle with their mental health and, somehow, this book never feels judgmental or critical. Instead, this novel feels much closer to the truth.

This sophomore outing by Emma Healey has all the lovely, descriptive flavour and eloquence of Elizabeth Is Missing but is somehow without an essential ingredient which made her debut so powerful. Perhaps it's the autobiographical element, the simple, raw truth of the first book? I found myself distanced from the mother and daughter here, in turn irritated with both, and unsure as to why. It might be that the themes are a little mystical and hard to grasp for my taste - maybe I just didn't believe in the characters.

An excellent,compelling read,examining modern family life and the problems presented by a teenager suffering from depression.The characters are beautifully drawn and realistic,and the small details described are exquisite.
The plot hinges around the 4 day disappearance of Lana,the teenage daughter of Jen and Hugh, during a painting holiday in the Peak District.She returns, but claims to have no memory of what happened to her .Jen ,her mother,cannot rest till she finds out what happened and resolutely continues in her efforts until she does. The plot builds to a wonderfully written and very satisfying ending.
Highly recommended-a wonderful piece of writing.

the book explores some very important and relevant topics in society today. the story is narrated by Jen, whose daughter Lana goes missing for 4 days. When she is found, Lana is won't tell anyone what happened to her, and she has changed. Whistle in the Dark follows Jen as she tries to reach out to her daughter who has been struggling with depression, whilst trying to find out what happened to her in those 4 days. I appreciate the topic of this novel and how in depth depression was discussed and addressed, however I felt the narration to be quite exhausting to read and I found myself willing for the book to end as it was a bit stale throughout. I did enjoy the story, and I found both Jen and Lana to be relatable, I just felt that Jen's narrative was almost unreliable and i felt perhaps Jen was the mentally unwell person in the story. I feel Whistle in the Dark may suit readers in their late teens perhaps, and it may help a lot of people understand their depression and learn some healthy ways to address it.

I loved 'Elizabeth is Missing', it was captivating and compulsive. I looked forward to reading this follow up a great deal, but somehow I just cannot get on with it. I think it is well written and is investigating a difficult subject with great sensitivity but I realised 50% of the way through I didn't care at all about any of them. I wanted to shake Jen, and Lana was rude, disrespectful and infuriating. I will try again with this book but it's just not my scene.

Very different from her previous book, 'Elizabeth is Missing' about dementia, this novel explores the complexities of teenage depression and the effects on the family. After an unexplained disappearance of her daughter, Jen is obsessed with discovering how and why this terrifying episode has happened, whilst desperate for her daughter to return to some sort of normality after her ordeal. In revisiting the months and weeks leading up to the disappearance, Jen analyses her daughter's state of mind and tries to make sense of the events. An absorbing read with a range of insights into teenagers, depression and varying reactions to both.

Story of a troubled teenager who goes missing for four days, and her relationship with her family. Good insight into family complexities, twist at the end.

I read this book because I so much enjoyed Emma Healey's first novel and this looked intriguing. It is a slow-burning psychological thriller that turns on the relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter, won or lost following a cathartic holiday. It seems to take a very long time to build to any sense of action, but maybe that's the point. It allows the characterization of Jen and Lana, and later Meg, to develop and they are all three-dimensional, fully fledged characters. Jen is infuriating; all my sympathies were with Lana and Meg (the one that got away). Really, Jen, if you hadn't been so self-obsessed and controlling, you would have come to this conclusion much earlier.
So, exceptionally well crafted and narrated - I enjoyed the unusual narrative structure - and seemingly either very well researched and transcribed, or authentically reflecting an intense adolescent experience.

This book was too grim for me. The main story thread involves a teenager who self harms so it might be good to start a discussion but it hadn't moved on much by a third of the way through so I stopped reading it. Lana was not a character I felt any sympathy for at all.

Emma Healey tackled the subject of teenage depression and the effects on the whole family/friends very sensitively in this novel. It follows the life of Lana, a teenage girl suffering with depression, who goes missing for a few days whilst on holiday with her mother, Jen. Lana is found but does not know where she has been or whom she has been with....or does she? Jen is trying to help her daughter to cope with the emotions she is feeling and to help her with her feelings and her underlying depression. You are drawn into the story and as a mother of a teenage daughter I could understand all the emotions Jen was going through.

"Whistle in the Dark" begins with an ending, of sorts. Lana, a depressed fifteen-year-old who has been missing for four days, having disappeared from a holiday in the Peak District, has returned safely, much to the relief of her frantic parents. But Lana won't say where she's been, only repeating rather unhelpfully that she "got lost". The story follows Lana's distraught mother Jen as she struggles, mainly unsuccessfully, to communicate with her daughter and unravel the alarming mystery of what's happened to her during those four days,

I loved this book, Emma Healey's second after the highly successful Elizabeth is Missing. "Whistle in the Dark" is very different but, for me, an equally compelling read. It's a difficult story to categorise - not a psychological thriller, not a family drama although there are elements of both, along with a definite dash of the dark and sinister. It seems everyone has their own ideas, some very bizarre, about where Lana's been. Where does the truth lie, and what has the effect on Lana been?

There's a hint of the unreliable narrator about Jen, who admits to having apparently hallucinated people and conversations in the past. Random appearances of a cat they don't own, overheard conversations in Lana's room - what's real and what's imaginary?

Ultimately Jen's distress and frustration at her strained relationship and failure to communicate with Lana are very believable - the situation she's in is awful and it's no wonder her imagination runs riot at times. Some reviewers have complained of finding Lana unlikeable - I don't think she's meant to be all that likeable for much of the story, as she certainly doesn't act in likeable ways, even if we can sympathise with her mental distress. But maybe that's the point because love never falters, even when constantly challenged.

The story is written in quite a fragmented way with lots of little interludes and ruminations on various things, and I really enjoyed this style of storytelling. All in all, a great read which I found very satisfying,

This seemed like a rather long book, with mostly annoying characters! I felt I’d like to shake Jen, the mum, more than once, to tell her to be less irritating to everyone - no wonder her spoilt daughter, Lana, got so annoyed with her!
It seemed far fetched too, although I suppose some families must be like this...all talking, no listening, and no discussion.
All in all, a frustrating read.

I had listened to the authors first book ‘Elizabeth is missing’ and was pleased to see her second book on Netgalley and requested it . Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the book in exchange for an honest review. I was eager to read her book about teenage girls and the relationship with their mother, it isn’t an easy book to read and it starts with the disappearance of Lana from an art workshop which mother and daughter attend. Lana eventually reappears after 4 days and can’t say where she has been.
The book goes into great detail about the mother/daughter relationship between Jen and Lana and also the older daughter Meg. It is a serious book about family relationships and how each member responds to other family members. It is only at the end that the truth is known about Lana’s disappearance.
An interesting read about teenagerdaughters and mothers relationships.

This was a bit of a tricky one for me. I loved Elizabeth is Missing and part of the problem for me with this book was that I picked it up thinking it would be on the same lines. And in some ways I can see some resemblances, but it just didn't grab me. I enjoyed this book, and I wouldn't tell anyone not to read it, but I also wouldn't be singing from the houses about it.

Mental health is a really complex issue, and I think Emma Healey for the most part tackles it incredibly well. I just don't feel that it was incredibly captivating, and based on other reviews I think I'm in the minority. But for me, Lana was quite unlikeable, Jen was quite unlikeable and Grace was incredibly unlikeable. I feel it's one of those stories that you really need to gel with the characters in order to get the most out of the book.

I think it said it all when I had less than 5% of the book to go and I didn't stay up to read it, and just waited to the next morning. I wasn't disappointed as such, it just wasn't really what I was expecting.

What is going on? You ask this question right from the start and it continues for much of the book. Normally this is the type of plot for me. One which I cannot put down and finish within a few days. However I found this script hard to get on with. It was very 'wordy' with longer sentences and more description than the narrative required.