Whalespeak: A Novel
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Pub Date Sep 4 2026 | Archive Date Sep 18 2026
Sibylline Press | Sibylline Digital First
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Description
Told from above and below the ocean’s surface...
Whalespeak follows Gaelic singer/long-distance swimmer Sloane Murphy into the underwater world of humpback whales. When forty-one whales wash ashore on the New Jersey coast, Sloane realizes one is attempting to communicate with her. The large scar above his eye brings her to her knees with memories of a tragic boat accident. She knows this whale. His fitful, fragmented message is urgent. Whatever he wants to tell her is critical. She will not let him die.
Tending the beached whales is Eiden, a cetacean language specialist, who finds himself irresistibly smitten. As much as Sloane is equally attracted, childhood abandonment makes meaningful connections elusive, that is, until the sacred wisdom she gains from the whales opens her to a kind of love she has never experienced. When Eiden suddenly goes missing, and Sloane looks into his disappearance, she is shocked to uncover a plot that could not only destroy the whales and their untold knowledge but threaten the entire planet. Where is Eiden?
Underneath the surface, Shwona, the humpback leader, has been told that the long-distance swimmer is someone of great interest. Stay with her, the dying whale on shore instructs. Keep her in your sights. Which proves to be more important than they know.
Advance Praise
“Whalespeak is a tantalizing eco-mystery wrapped in a love story—and one you won’t expect. It’s the story of a woman who seeks to communicate with the whales she loves, to help save them from a modern technology that threatens their lives.”
—Leigh Calvez, author of The Breath of a Whale and The Hidden Lives of Owls
“In Whalespeak, author Liz Collins pulls us under the rising tide of tension between technology and the natural world, gasping as hope threatens to vanish for the future of life both underwater and on shore.”
—Cindy Ellen Hill, author Elegy for the Trees, Love in a Time of Climate Change, and Leeds Point
“A compelling, vivid, and important book.”
—Sands Hall, author of Catching Heaven, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology, and Tools of the Writer’s Craft
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9798897409211 |
| PRICE | $5.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 366 |
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Featured Reviews
kbeans b, Reviewer
THIS IS A NETGALLY ARC
I fell in love with Whalespeak:A Novel by Liz Collin’s first and foremost because she’s not only an incredibly talented writer but because I have been an extremely passionate lover of whales since I was a child and as I’ve grown older, that love and passion has only grown stronger.
This main character in the book nearly drowns when she’s a young child and is saved by a whale that had crashed into the boat during a terrible storm and her father dies in the storm but the whale manages to bring her to shore and she vaguely remembers this moment as a fact yet throughout her childhood and into early adulthood she is told she was simply traumatized by the drowning of her father and near drowning of herself and it was likely a board from the wreckage that brought her to shore.
Then all that doubt changes when 41 whales beach themselves and one of them has a gash that’s been healed over its eye and she recognizes him while she desperately tries to keep him alive. While she’s doing this, there’s a pod of humpbacks watching these other whales, the right whales die up on the beach and as the one with cut telepaths his message to the humpbacks he also sends the now grown woman a series of snapshot like memories of her own boating accident and she also sees an extraordinary miraculous divine message when he opens his mouth for her to give her his last parting message that will be the focal point in the book. It is an absolutely beautiful story of a human working tirelessly for whales to demand other humans listen to the crisis that’s happening to them, how to rectify it and continue to make it better for them and their environment they’re being poisoned and harmed in due to humanity’s ignorance and indifference to these brilliant and profoundly empathetic creatures whose intelligence and knowledge is far more wiser and should be revered in a much greater extent than any of us have realized.
Enthralling and truly lovely story about the importance of humanity and our need to respect honor and revere all other living beings we share this universe with and the dire and irreparable consequences and suffering others are facing due to humanity’s actions and lack of respect and awareness.
Thank you to #Netgalley for this amazing opportunity of receiving this #ARC, to the beautiful writer with such lovely prose, #LizCollins for writing such an inspiring and engaging story with profound insight and wisdom #Whalespeak:ANovel and to the publishing company who has made this book available for all of us readers who adore it, #SybillinePress
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