The Whispers" by Heidi Perks, is about Anna and Grace who are childhood best friends. Grace has a picture perfect family and they take Anna under their wing due to her tough home situation. Eventually, Grace and her family move to Australia. They lose touch with Anna. Years later, Anna and Grace reconnect, but soon after Anna goes missing. Grace suspects someone close to Anna may be responsible and will stop at nothing to find out the truth about the disappearance. Tight-knit and cliquey, she and the other women, Nancy-Rachel-and Caitlyn-are constantly linking arms, saving seats and whispering amongst themselves on the other side of the playground from the other mums from year four. Loneliness is a primary driver for people to cultivate friendships. Perks distinguishes between two different aspects of loneliness in the book with reference to the central characters. While one, with a deceased mother and absent father, is lonely in the traditional sense, the other struggles with receiving attention and validation even in an ostensibly happy family. Their respective feelings of isolation draw them together but also damage them in different ways. I really loved it. The Whispers is a big-hearted psychological thriller about the dark corners that lurk in even the closest of friendships. Heidi Perks reads like Liane Moriarty at her Big Little Lies best as she brilliantly mines the jealously, spite and rage that lurk behind the polite smiles at every school gates. Highly recommend' TONY PARSONS Grace has had enough of all the women and especially Anna for treating her so poorly until the next morning when she drops her daughter off at school and hears that Anna never made it home the night before and when she questions the other women they all seem to have different stories about the end of the night and facts are not lining up properly. Why? Why wouldn't the women be truthful, what would make them lie? As the day progresses and Anna still has not surfaced, Grace feels lost and thinks something very bad has happened to Anna and someone in that group knows what really happened late, last night. What happened to Anna?

I was riveted by this plot. So much so I never wanted it to end, yet, on the flip side I wanted more, I needed more. Oh, I got much more!In 1997 Anna and Grace were the best of friends. Sure, Grace was more of a mother hen to Anna, who lost her mother early in life, and in turn rebelled with a seemingly constant need for attention, but they're as close as can be. When new girl Heather moved to town and strikes up a friendship with Anna, Grace feels threatened and paranoid she'll lose her bestie to another more exciting girl. Fortunately for her fate intervened when Heather disappeared, never to be seen again. Or was it fate or something else?? The disappearance was never solved and the case went cold.

She has a loving husband and a son she adores. Surely she wouldn''t abandon them and her perfect life... A very original, clever and gripping thriller about toxic female friendships with a killer twist. Highly recommended'' CLAIRE DOUGLAS Heidi Perks' new novel takes 'sinisterness at the school gates' to a scary new level. You'll be watching your step' JANE CORRY The thriller flirts with a psychological condition but doesn’t delve deep thus ensuring the plot does not turn any murkier. Perks tactfully leaves the question hanging: Is this character struggling with an inherent, clinical condition and if so, do such people ever change?I went into this blind and for me, it’s the best way for a thriller. I don’t want to know much at all, I want to go on a journey unknown.

THE GRIPPING NEW THRILLER FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF NOW YOU SEE HER*** 'Razor-sharp and impossible to put down' DAILY MAIL _________________________ A MISSING WIFE. FOUR FRIENDS. WHO IS TELLING THE TRUTH? Anna Robinson hasn't been seen since she went on a night out with her four closest friends.She has a loving husband and a son she adores. Surely she wouldn't abandon them and her perfect life. . . Whispers is the first book I have read Heidi Perks but if the others are as outstanding as this, I expect more of the same. Her characterization tells a tale of broken psyches with a story to tell with deep and dark histories. I constantly had a feeling of a creeping shadow of desolation running through out the story, it had me hook, line and sinker. The truth is that if Grace wants it to happen, then there is every chance a murder enquiry might open up.Despite her new friends, not warming to Grace, Anna reluctantly invites her to join them at their next “girls night out”-one that Anna won’t return home from. She doesn’t arrive for the school drop-off the next morning either-or the one after that.