A very good fantasy-historical young adult novel. It is a blend of action, mystical and historical and I am glad the author, Kimberley Starr, did not romanticise the violence and brutality shown by the crusading pilgrims in their “holy” quest.

The characters Luca and Suzann are likable and the villains appropriately villainous!

The story develops at a good pace and there is enough action and romance to keep a young reader engaged. The only comment I have is that I found there was just too many demons and descriptions of them early in the story – I found that a bit tedious at times.

I can see a future for a sequel.
( )

Setting aside circa page 75 with more of a meh than a nope. There's simultaneously too much and too little going on--lots of things happening, but too many crossing threads hang loose and it's hard to pick which are important. I'm quite interested in Suzan's circumstances, but we're spending the bulk of time with Luca, who can't even be bothered to talk with his father about his sister's panic about a sexual predator, despite repeated entreaties and promises to do so, so nuts to him.

There is a story there but it was not for me. I like reading about demons but in this story they are talked about but not really developed. The boy can see them but his interaction is limited and nothing about them or why he can see them is explained, The characters personalities were rather shallow. Reading about the crusades, corrupt priests and people treating people poorly made me not want to finish reading this book. I only made it through about 50%. It was well written but it was not for me. ( )

Took a little bit to get into but once the 2 main characters were established, this was quite good. Set during the time of the crusades, this is about a wealthy italian prince called Luca who sees demons attached to everything he looks at. On telling his family, they have had the Church perform an exorcism on him - a traumatic experience that didn't cure him of seeing demons but Luca keeps his mouth shut so they think he is cured. His father decides that he needs to go on a Crusade to the Holy Land. He tells Luca not to go and entrusts him with a special Book prior to departure. Luca, fearing his malicious cousin will try and do something to his father to inherit Luca's father's lands, decides to go anyway and takes the book with him.
Meanwhile, in a convent along the way, a girl called Suzan lives with her mute mother who has become a nun. Suzan, fearing that her tongue will also be cut out to make her mute, pretends to be so until the convent is threatened by raiders. She runs away, fearing the fate of her mother, now that her secret is discovered and joins Luca on the crusade.
Suffice to say, Suzan has the gift of language and can read the book Luca has, the two fall in love and along the way to the Holy Land, they battle demons, meet death in a human form, stop the cousin and other evil princes from exacting their terrible plans and generally solve the mysteries of the book of whispers. Not a bad stand alone effort for readers who like fantasy and quests. ( )

Thanks to NetGalley for giving me an ARC of this book! 😃

I didn't know a lot about the crusades, so this book has left me shell-shocked!

The characters of Luca and Suzan, and the romance they share are all the sweetest things possible in the mayhem of the demons and all the evil that surrounds the pilgrims to Jerusalem.

There was history and there was fiction, there was comedy and there was romance. There was suspense and there was sarcasm.

So all in all, The Book Of Whispers was a power-packed, utterly interesting and awesome read! ( )