Shaykitteh's World of Books

Stacey R. Campbell takes a very unique approach with her Lakeview Academy novels. While the first novel, Hush, was a take on a fairy tale and a mystery, her second novel is a ghost story. Both Novels have the ties of family members and romance, but other than that, each novel shows a different side of Lakeview Academy and the students there.

Whisper starts out with Leigh, who was (and still is) one of Blakely's friends and was a secondary character in the first Novel about Blakely & Max. Here she gets to star, though the supporting roles go to Blakely's sister Halle and an old beau of Leigh's, Calum. But the true star of the story is Elsie, the daughter of the original Headmaster of the school. Even though she died in 1914, she is as present in this book as any of the other characters after Halle finds Elsie's journal and learns some shocking facts about the fire that took place shortly before her death.

This novel is wonderful because it has so many stories intertwined into one, and it all works well together. You have Leigh and Calum, who have been attracted to each other for five years, yet can't have a civil conversation because of hurtful words shared in the past. You have Halle, the sister of the Queen of Tamura, who is haunted by the ghost of Elsie after reading her journal. Mixed in with this, you have all of the students trying to make it through their normal school year.

I am very impressed by this series. It's difficult enough writing a good YA Romance series, set in the same location, but Stacey R. Campbell manages to create the atmosphere of the school while making the stories completely different from each other. You also might expect the second book to be primarily about Halle, since she is the sister of Royalty, but she is just a normal school girl... well, if you ignore the ghost and haunting. But Stacey instead uses Halle as a major character in the story... but not the main character, which leaves room open for Halle to have her own story in the future.

NOTE: I received a free copy of this book through netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

If Whisper is a book that interests you, you can find the kindle version available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J0CWVRY/?tag=shasworofboo-20. While you don't have to, since the stories can be read separately, I also recommend that you read the first novel, Hush. You can read my review for Hush at http://shaykitteh.booklikes.com/post/944976/review-hush-lakeview-series-book-1-kindle-edition.

If you enjoyed my review, I would appreciate if you could mark it as being helpful on Amazon as well, as this is useful to both the reviewer and the author. I have included the link to the Amazon review in the Source section at the bottom of this review.