Yes, fans of the Hazelwood will definitely love this. It took me a hot minute to get the Knives Out reference but I see it now. I ONLY wish everyone had been aged up - it would have made the story better. Esp except when convenient, none of the teenagers are written as teenagers. However, I really did enjoy it - I love a good fairytale - and think this could've even been a duology.

I loved the premise of this story and it absolutely had potential, but there were a few things that fell a little flat for me. The writing style and the descriptions of the amusement park were great and that's what kept me in the story for the most part to be honest.

There were flashbacks that got a little confusing at times if I wasn't 100% invested in just reading the story. Which is hard for me to do because I generally have many things going on at the same time. I wish there was a bit more depth into the plot of the story, like maybe more explanations of why things were/had happened.

I will have to say there are some gorey bits in this story that although didn't bother me, might be something for other people. Otherwise, I had a pretty decent time reading this book, but the atmosphere of the amusement park definitely was the game changer.

thanks NetGalley for the eARC

⭐️=2 | 😘=2 | 🤬=4.5 | ⚔️=4 | 14/15+

summary: so there’s like this theme park based on these popular fairy tales written by some German guy in the 19th century and all his descendants are like fighting over a will but then also it turns out the fairytales are real and alive?? idk

thoughts: so like… this isn’t great? I think at any given point it was either boring or confusing or both, and by the last 20% I was just reading as fast as possible so it would be over since I’d already gotten that far. the love interest’s twist wasn’t super foreshadowed, and even after all of his actions were explained I still thought he was a creep tbh!

I did appreciate some elements of the ending?? kinda? it wasn’t totally a happy ending, which is good, but tbh I would’ve preferred if Jem died or something because they did NOT match each other’s freak enough to be a good couple

anyways I didn’t really like this lol

This gave me major the inheritance games meets the christmas murder games, which isn't bad! i just personally could not click with the magic and secret family problems part of the book

A nice debut. This book read a bit young for me but I can see how it would appeal to the target YA audience. The lore and the worldbuilding were a bit flimsy and the romance never felt fully realized, but the characters were bold and I'm interested to see what the author does next.

The Whisperingwood Legacy follows Frankie has she goes searching for Virginia when she goes missing. Frankie works with Gem and her cousin Rhodes to uncover what happened along with a few other cousins. During Frankie's journey to over what happened to Virginia she is through a journey of Whisperwood and the family legacy.

The cover of this book drew me in. The story sounding exciting. I am just not sure if I just wasn't in the mind set to understand this book and everything that took place. I would constantly find myself reading and then wondering I think I missed something because I would not understand why the story went the way it did or what I was reading. There are still fairy tales that were told throughout the story that I am not sure that they had to do with the story line. I think this story could have been executed a lot better.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy for an honest review.

"But we are not simply a sum of the wrong things we have done." Darkly whimsical and set in a creepy, rundown theme park: sign me up!

Frankie is over being a Strauss. The Strauss family has been living off the profits of their family theme park, The Whisperwood, for decades. That all came to an end 18 months ago when the matriarch of the family, Virginia, decided to shut the doors of The Whisperwood for good. When "Oma" goes missing after an outburst one night, Frankie suspects that her family may be the ones to blame. With the help of groundskeeper Jem, she searches for Oma in the sprawling theme park where she learns that The Whisperwood is not what it seems — and that could be a deadly thing.

The Whisperwood seems so creepy and I love it. I really enjoyed the history of the theme park itself, with the fairy tales behind some of the rides included in the book. I had a great time uncovering new stories and new secrets the more I read, and I loved the magic system in this. Also really enjoyed Frankie's relationships with her cousins! Truly dysfunctional family dynamics, but it's obvious they loved each other.

I did feel the ending was kind of rushed, and I would have loved to have more times with the park attractions in the last 1/4 of the book. The magic system was super unique and I don't think we got to see enough of Jem and Frankie interacting with it. I also felt that the adults seemed to be more important to the story in the beginning, but as it progressed I felt like they mattered less and less and I really just didn't care for them.

Thank you NetGalley and Little Brown Books for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

“Why do you break your own heart before it even has a chance to beat?”

“The Whisperwood Legacy,” by Jo Schulte

The biggest thing I liked most about this book was that it was about a shutdown family amusement park, that stuff is right up my alley. There was a ton of mystery and family drama mixed with magic lore and YA vibes throughout the entire book. The fact that the entire family was so cutthroat about the inheritance was really interesting to read about. 3 out of 5 stars.

-Amusement Park
-Mystery
-Family Drama
-Magic

Thank you for the ARC, Netgalley.

This book reminded me of playing a Mystery Case Files game from like a decade ago. This sort of german, gothic Appalachian vibe. (Granted the video game was full of hidden-pictures puzzles, but I digress). I absolutely loved the setting and the magic of this story. The characters, plot and relationships/family dynamic were all really compelling and well-paced. Overall, this was a really great story and I'm looking forward to more from this author.

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. Unfortunately, The Whisperwood Legacy just did not do it for me no matter how much I wanted it. It reminded me a lot of The Hazel Wood, but it didn't keep me as enthralled as I wished. I feel like I just wasn't the target audience for this one, to no fault of the story or author.

I've read this dark fantasy as an ARC reader for an honest review. I was drawn to this book because of the cover and the amusement park theme. I discovered while reading that I had difficulty getting into the story. I found some parts of the story to be confusing. Also, I'm not really into gore and there's a couple of scene in this book.

Overall, I think this story just wasn't for me, but it might appeal to many readers. If you like the mix between thriller and fairytale, maybe this is for you. Thank you to NetGalley and the author for this ARC.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Jo Schulte for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for The Whisperwood Legacy coming out May 27, 2025. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author. I really love gothic stories. I thought this book would be really spooky and fun. It wasn’t quite what I thought it would be. It wasn’t for me. I would check out other books by this author though.

The Whisperwood Legacy is a genuinely creepy YA fantasy/mystery by Jo Schulte. Released 27th May 2025 by Hachette on their Young Readers imprint, it's 346 pages and is available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links.

This is a surprisingly horror-filled dark fantasy, uncomfortably full of jump scares and unlikable characters. They all *loathe* one another, and the narrative is told in staccato interludes woven between the current day and flashbacks. There are glimpses of some impressive world building (the chapter headers are full of whole-cloth German fairy tales which are interwoven in the plot as it plays out in real life).

The abandoned creepy amusement park with dangerous rides and extremely scary nightmares-come-to-life is well done and the author definitely has a knack with setting. That being said, it's quite graphically violent in places and might be a tad too explicit for young readers (or more sensitive ones) in the lower end of the target audience (12+). The language is also quite gratuitously rough (f-bombs every other sentence). It seems unnecessary.

The climax, denouement, and resolution are self contained in this novel, it's a standalone, but they're not particularly well resolved or satisfying.

Three stars. It's unclear who the target audience really is. It's too scary for younger readers, but too juvenile and not engaging enough for YA readers at the higher end of the range.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

A year and a half after Whisperwood’s closure, the Strauss family is falling apart at the seams. The Strauss family is known for their long and strange history as well as their popular theme park, but now that Whisperwood is closed, there’s even more public interest than ever. What the public doesn’t know is that the family’s money has dried up without the theme park’s income, and the fighting has begun. Insert Frankie, one of the Strauss grandchildren, who is slowly learning the ropes of controlling the magic that is weaved throughout Whisperwood. When her grandma goes missing, the entire family discovers the real reason Whisperwood closed.

I was really looking forward to reading this, so it’s unfortunate that it ended up being a total miss for me. I think it has an interesting premise, but it had way too many characters and not enough world building. I ended up being far more interested in the few entertaining characters just because the majority of the characters were either extremely bland or very unlikable. I’m also not sure why Uncle Preston cusses almost every time he speaks. It was funny at first just because it was always so out of place, but it just kept taking me out of the story.

I kept reading because it was interesting enough that I wanted to see where the story was going, but Ella and her blog post when her grandma goes missing was the last straw. I finished that chapter, shut the book, and decided I was not going to continue. Her looking to capitalize off her adoptive grandmother’s disappearance was the final straw for me, so I shut the book at 48% and ditched it.

Ultimately, I think this book has an interesting plot, but it’s weighed down by too many characters and random bits of information that didn’t add to the story. We were being told too much and not enough at the same time, and it suffered some pacing issues that the memory flashes didn’t help. I probably would’ve still found a way to enjoy it if there weren't so many unlikable characters and a romance plot with an unsettling vibe.

This book definitely earned its HAZEL WOOD x KNIVES OUT comparisons! It's an unpredictable, lush, and surprisingly funny tumble into a world of fairy tales and family secrets, with a dash of theme park horror tossed in for good measure. There were so many disparate threads in WHISPERWOOD that, looking back, it really shouldn't have worked as well as it did. But I had SO much fun cartwheeling through Schulte's world. The fairy tales themselves were actually the thing that tripped me up the most (I found them a little slow and dry, which is unusual for me, and I guess I had a hard time believing that they'd catapult the family to such heights of fame and fortune?) and I kept accidentally skimming. And, yeah, there were times when the tone/magic all felt a bit discombobulated (I love that word). But overall, this was a wonderful and wild debut, and I will definitely be keeping my eye out for whatever this author writes next.

A great premise, but a disappointment in execution.

Nothing intrigues me more than a creepy amusement park, which is the setting for this novel. Or at least it is in theory.

There’s so little mention of it and almost no attempt to build any kind of sense of place, such that it feels like it could have been set anywhere. Occasionally we get a mention of an abandoned attraction or some such, but the story is largely devoid of any kind of world building related to setting and atmosphere, which takes away any hope of getting immersed in the story, which is (at least for me) a requirement for Fantasy.

The story itself was a good idea in theory, but never really lives up to its publishers summary. I liked how the author interspersed fairy tales between chapters as a structural device, but it’s quite the let-down when the fairy tales don’t actually have any role in driving the plot of the book. That said, they’re clever and the most well-crafted component of the novel, though unfortunately ultimately useless.

The magical system is both confusing and not especially original, and it’s hard to discern both how the magic works and why we should care that it exists. And though I wouldn’t call the characters unlikable, they’re fairly uninteresting, and a schlocky romantic subplot bogs down a lot of text that could have been better allocated to developing some atmosphere or fleshing out the magical system.

As a lover of fairytales and horror, this book sounded like it was right up my alley. This book has an amazing concept. Fairytales brought to life by a family at a theme part created around modern day Grimm's style which I found extrememly unique.

When reading this book I found the plot to be lacking for my taste. With almost a horror style cover I expected more of a thriller but landed in a magical realism world.

I loved the fairytales in this book more than the actual story, and I would read an entire book about the Whisperwood fairytales. The book was written well, just the plot stakes were to low for me to be completly invested.

Thank you to Netgalley for sending me an advanced copy in return for my honest review.

I definitely enjoyed this book. I loved how all of the stories from the family's legacy were interwoven throughout the narrative, I thought that was a really nice touch and they really helped provide context for a lot of the things happening within the plot. I also really enjoyed that the book took place in North Carolina! Because of this I definitely imagined the setting being similar to Maggie Valley and the abandoned amusement park there. I also really liked how the family dynamics played a lot into the conflict of story, and even worsened the conflict. The concept, to me, was unique and the German folklore themed amusement park in Appalachia was really cool, even though I struggled to pronounce like most of the words.

There were, however, a few things that missed the ball for me. I felt like the horror aspect of the story wasn't as prominent as I was hoping. I think it could have been pushed much further and made the conflict much more daunting for the characters to face. There were also a lot of things left unsaid. The fact that the reader didn't know that Frankie knew all along (from even before the start of the book) what was happening to the magic, but it wasn't until much much later that she revealed it even though the book was in first person and we're constantly seeing her thoughts. She should have brought that up sooner. The first half of the book and the second half also almost feel like two different books because of this. It also kind of bothered me that the family wasn't more stunned by the stories coming to life when the only ones who know about the magic were Oma, Frankie, and Jem. The forgetting tea also kind of felt like a cop out. Also, what was that ending? The plot was compelling, but I think it could have benefitted from a lot more development to really push the concept.

This was an enjoyable read and I'm sure I'm going to recommend it, but it definitely does have its issues.

I had high hopes for this book about a supposedly haunted amusement park based on German fairy tales (though not Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm's). The longer the book went on, the more bummed and then angrier I became because it JUST KEPT GOING and there never seemed to be a satisfactory end coming.

Hopefully this will change in the edits but I hate the repeated use of words in books and if I had to read how her stomach "roiled" one more time, I was going to have a roiling stomach of my own. Thesaurus is your friend.

The plot is about a beloved theme park, Whisperwood, that has suddenly closed it's doors with no warning eighteen months prior to the beginning of the story, The family matriarch, affectionately known as Oma, has closed her tight fist around the family legacy and won't explain herself to anyone. However, due to the significant public following the park has, her family (without her knowing) throws a centennial celebration for the park, hoping if Oma sees how much it's still popular, she will reconsider and open. This plan backfires spectacularly and soon the family learns the dark whispers and characters from stories are much more than they thought...

I didn't honestly really like any of the characters, even when we got some redemption arcs, I still felt like they were all a bunch of greedy grubbers and had complete lack of appreciation for the family legacy. There needed to be more monsters and fewer family whining sessions for this book to be successfully called 'horror." I thought with the vast German fairytale lore to be drawn on, this book was a ginormous disappointment. I was bored by the end.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC. I am happy not to have wasted money on this book.

Such a fun read! The amusement park, folklore, and fairytales were all combined in such an interesting and atmospheric world. The flashbacks were a bit confusing at times, and the ending wasn't quite what I was hoping for, I loved the characters and the writing style so much!