Ashley Audrain is a Canadian writer whose first novel, The Push, debuted in 2021. Her sophomore novel The Whispers, published in 2023, is a twisty psychological thriller with a particular focus on the Sacrifices of Motherhood, marital relationships, Female Rivalry and friendship, and the Effects of Willful Ignorance. The protagonist of The Push, first-time mom Blythe, experiences anxiety over society’s expectations of mothers and how her own lived reality differs from them. Similar tensions plague the four main characters in The Whispers: Blair, Whitney, Rebecca, and Mara. Audrain explains that she got the idea for the novel after hearing Gayle King on Oprah’s podcast: King described being a busy mother and journalist who one day discovered that her husband was having an affair. Oprah challenged King’s contention that she had no idea of her husband’s infidelity, asking if there wasn’t “some sort of whisper of something going wrong in [King’s] marriage” (“Ashley Audrain on Her Latest Thriller Novel, ‘The Whispers.’” Global News, 6 June 2023). This way of describing intuition becomes a motif in The Whispers, whose characters similarly suppress their misgivings to maintain the illusion that they are leading ideal lives.

This guide refers to the Viking hardcover edition, published in 2023.

Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of miscarriage and child loss, as well as discussions of self-harm, suicide, child abuse/neglect, and suicidal ideation.

Plot Summary

Employing a rotating third-person limited perspective, The Whispers follows the lives of four women—Whitney, Blair, Mara, and Rebecca—who happen to be neighbors. The novel begins with a description of an unnamed man who has returned home after cheating on his wife. Something happened involving the child of his lover while the man and woman were together, but it isn’t clear what.

The narrative proper begins just after Whitney’s oldest child, Xavier, falls from his third-story window during the night. When Xavier arrives in the emergency room, Rebecca is the attending doctor. He’s put in a coma to slow the brain swelling, and much of the action occurs in the hospital, where his guilt-ridden mother waits. The shame and responsibility she feels for what happened to him and for her defects as a wife and mother threaten to overwhelm her. Interspersed flashbacks, particularly to a party that took place nine months ago, reveal Whitney and Xavier’s troubled relationship. At this party, Whitney lost patience with Xavier for eating the party favors and screamed at him before realizing that all her guests could hear. Blair and her husband, Aiden, were present, as were Rebecca and Ben, another couple from across the street.

The events of the party further complicate the relationship between Blair—a stay-at-home mom who is consumed by her daughter’s needs—and Whitney—a business-savvy mother who seems to have it all—that develops throughout the narrative present. Blair feels that her life is inconsequential and unappreciated and envies Whitney’s marriage. She has a habit of sneaking into Whitney’s house and snooping through her belongings. On one such excursion, shortly after Xavier’s fall, she finds coffee splashed all over Xavier’s bedroom and Aiden’s key in Whitney’s drawer. She suspects Aiden and Whitney of having an affair but still tries to support Whitney by visiting her at Xavier’s hospital bedside. Her presence makes Whitney feel wretched because she does not enjoy motherhood as Blair does, and she rebuffs Blair’s overtures of friendship. Whitney eventually grows so fearful that Xavier will remember what happened that she attempts to suffocate him in his hospital bed, only stopping because a nurse nearly catches her.

Meanwhile, Rebecca copes with her latest pregnancy: her fifth, following four miscarriages. Rebecca’s inability to carry a fetus to full term makes her feel like a failure, leading to guilt and feelings of inadequacy. Several months earlier, Ben told Rebecca that he wanted to stop trying for a child, but Rebecca simply lied about when she was ovulating in order to conceive. She is now close to four months along and dares to hope this pregnancy might be successful.

Rebecca is the only woman on the street who has taken the time to get to know Mara, an older Portuguese American woman. Mara was one of the original inhabitants of the recently gentrified neighborhood. Her marriage is miserable, and her son, Marcus, died as a teenager. Mara feels responsible for his death. When her husband, Albert, collapses on the kitchen floor, she waits until she knows he will die before calling paramedics.

Blair begins to suspect that Whitney was somehow involved in Xavier’s accident. During a conversation with her daughter, Chloe, about Whitney’s treatment of her son, Chloe admits that she bullied Xavier the day of his accident. Chloe now feels guilty and asks Blair to bring a card and a present to Xavier in the hospital. When she does, Blair glimpses a moment of intimacy between Ben and Whitney. She tries to tell Jacob about their spouses’ infidelity, but Jacob is only interested in protecting his wife from the repercussions of Xavier’s fall; he alerts Blair to the fact that he knows about Chloe’s bullying, tacitly warning her to keep quiet about Whitney. Nevertheless, Blair spreads rumors on message boards about Whitney’s responsibility for Xavier’s accident.

Meanwhile, Rebecca has begun to miscarry. As she arrives home, Mara, who often spies on her neighbors, hints at Ben’s infidelity, leading Rebecca to learn the truth about him. Rebecca confronts Ben and throws him out despite his protestations of love.

A flashback confirms that Ben, not Aiden, has been sleeping with Whitney. On the night Xavier fell, he was awake, throwing paper airplanes into Mara’s yard—a kindness to remember her son, Marcus, that Xavier performed every Wednesday night. Xavier saw Whitney and Ben having sex in the back yard. Earlier that evening, he and Whitney had had a terrible fight, and he had said he didn’t want to be her son anymore. In response, Whitney had said she would leave him. When Whitney and Ben were interrupted by Xavier’s shouts, they ran, and Xavier leaned too far out his window, leading to his fall.

When Xavier finally wakes up, Whitney avoids being alone with him for two weeks, during which time he remains silent. Eventually, she tries to manipulate him, speaking kindly and suggesting that he might be confused about the night he fell. When he speaks, Xavier asks what will happen to her when he reveals everything. Blair, meanwhile, has gone back to Aiden despite evidence that he is having an affair, albeit not with Whitney. Mara regrets her interference in her neighbors’ lives, which served as a distraction from her unhappy marriage. Rebecca is wounded, but free of her philandering husband. Presumably, she can move on now and perhaps find another way to become a mother.