by K. Webster
First published 2016
Yara has a system. Close her eyes and the monster cannot see her. Sing a silent song and he cannot hear her. Turn her bedroom into a hiding place and he cannot find her. The darkness she lives inside does not frighten her the way it probably should. She has built a world within her own mind where he cannot reach her, and that interior world is the only place she feels safe. But surviving inside your head is not the same as living. Outside that refuge, the abuse is real and it is graphic. K. Webster does not soften what happens to Yara or skip past the violence to get to something easier to read. The story sits inside the hard parts and stays there. Whispers and the Roars is a dark romance published in 2016. It carries strong sexual content and explicit depictions of abuse that may cause emotional distress. The book is direct about this. It is not written for every reader. For readers who do choose it, the emotional core is simple and brutal: a person can be trapped in a body and still find one place no one can take from her.
Genres: fiction, adult, adult-fiction, psychological-thriller, dark-romance
Vibes: dark, emotionally-harrowing, intense, intimate, introspective, unflinching
Tropes: dissociation-as-survival, emotional-core-driven, internal-refuge
Period: 2016
284 pages · Paperback · K. Webster
Content warnings: abuse, child-abuse, domestic-violence, explicit-sexual-content, graphic-violence, physical-abuse