Publisher: TCK Publishing
Date of publication: February 20th 2022
Genre: Horror
Goodreads Synopsis:
In a silent, sleepy castle, evil has awakened…
Famed British lawyer Gerard Woodward is summoned to an ancient Welsh castle to assist a dying lord in his final affairs. But as his host slips closer to death, Gerard begins to feel less like a guest and more like a prisoner. When he finds himself locked inside his room, he realizes he must escape.
After finding his way out of his room, Gerard begins to wonder if he was safer locked inside. The labyrinthine halls echo secrets. A terrible wail and the rattling of chains sets his nerves on end. Something sinister is happening within the walls of Mathers Castle, and when he descends into the dungeons, he discovers a horrible secret…
In nearby London, children vanish into the night, animals are horribly mutilated, and a savage creature stalks the shadows. When Gerard’s wife, Raelyn, becomes the creature’s next target, his need to escape reaches a fever pitch. He must get out alive so he can dispel the evil that threatens to destroy his beloved Raelyn… and the rest of us.
Fans of epistolary Gothic horror classics like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray will devour The Devil’s Whispers.
First Line:
To His Eminence the Archbishop of Canterbury, I lie here on my deathbed with a terrible secret, one that hangs heavily upon my heart and belongs locked away in the archives of the Vatican.
the devil’s whispers by lucas hault
It has been a while since I have read a horror book. While I like the horror genre, I tend to avoid them because I mainly read at night. But, when the author emailed me and asked me to review The Devil’s Whispers, I accepted. I had decided that when I read the book, I would read it during the day. And I kept to that, believe it or not. While I am glad that I read The Devil’s Whispers, I was “meh” on the storyline and how the author presented the book.
The Devil’s Whispers had a slow-paced storyline that stayed pretty steady throughout the book. There was some lag in the middle of the book (during Jayda’s entries), and the book never recovered from that.
The Devil’s Whispers is not a traditionally written book. While it does have a plotline with the main characters, it is instead told through journal entries. I enjoy reading books written this way, and I feel that it is a different way to present a story. But, when there were more than two journal entries, I started getting confused and a little bored. I would have been thrilled with just reading the book through Gerard and Raelyn’s POV (with maybe Jayda’s popping in to clarify some scenes).
The Devil’s Whispers is a rewrite of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I have read many books that attempt to rewrite or write their take on that story. This book is no exception, except the vampires are different. They can give birth, but their babies need to be raised by humans to survive. They can shapeshift into various animals. They can go outside in the sunlight and survive in the water. I found it fascinating that while these vampires could travel, they could only do it within a certain radius of their vases (where they lived). And to kill them, you needed to break the vase.
I do want to touch upon trigger warnings. I usually do not include these in my reviews, but I feel that I need to make an exception in this case. This book is very violent, very bloody. There is gore (oh so much), animal abuse, excessive violence, and child death. I like to think that I have a high tolerance for things like that, but there were scenes where I had to put the book down because it was just too much.
I liked Raelyn, but I felt she didn’t match when the book was written. Her thoughts and actions were more of a modern-day woman than a woman of that era. Not to say I didn’t like her (I did), but it didn’t jive with me and made it hard for me to connect with her. I will say that she was very driven to find Gerard and help Noah, but she was also blind to what was happening around her.
I liked Gerard too. He was the real MVP of the book. He had escaped the vampires once, and he was willing to do whatever it took to beat them. He also loved Raelyn and was ready to do whatever it took to free her from the vampires. I loved those later chapters (that last battle was a doozy) because they breathed life into the book.
The end of The Devil’s Whispers was a little anti-climatic. I did like that everything was resolved. But, I wondered about something mentioned at the very end and if the threat was over.
I would recommend The Devil’s Whispers to anyone over 21. There is extreme violence, language, and sexual situations.