“[An] absorbing thriller. . . . Healey writes movingly about motherly love, and the pain that comes when you can’t protect your own, even from themselves.” — The New Yorker
“For those who like their thrillers a little more literary, this one’s for you. Healey’s follow-up to her breakout Elizabeth Is Missing promises a psychologically arresting mystery surrounding the disappearance of a 15-year-old girl. Intriguing commentary on mental illness, trauma, and family life abounds.” — Entertainment Weekly, “Summer’s 11 Hottest Thrillers”
“What starts with a thrillerish seteup—missing teen—takes us to a more familiar but equally disturbing place. Trying to understand what happened to her daughter, Jen learns that we may be our own greatest fear.” — Family Circle, “Summer’s Best Books”
“You have to read Whistle in the Dark. . . . A powerful novel about shared trauma, the effects of mental health on the family, and the pressures of motherhood, this is a slow-burning and utterly unsettling domestic thriller you will have a hard time putting down.” — Bustle
“Gripping psychological suspense pitting a hostile teen who won’t explain herself against a mom turned detective who’ll risk even her sanity to reach her daughter.”
— People, “The Best New Books”
“An absorbing view of a family, with the emphasis on the mother-daughter connection, in which—flaws aside—love shines through.” — Booklist (starred review)
“I don’t know anyone else who writes like this. Emma Healey’s voice soars, sings, and startles as she takes you right under the skin of her characters. She ‘magics’ the ordinary into the extraordinary and, just as impressively, transposes the extraordinary to the ordinary. Unforgettable.” — Jane Corry, author of My Husband’s Wife and Blood Sisters
PRAISE FOR ELIZABETH IS MISSING: — :
“[A] knockout debut...Ms. Healey’s audacious conception and formidable talent combine in a bravura performance that sustains its momentum and pathos to the last.” — Wall Street Journal
“Spellbinding.” — New York Times Book Review
“Elizabeth is Missing will stir and shake you: an investigation into a seventy-year-old crime, through the eyes of the most likeably unreliable of narrators. But the real mystery at its compassionate core is the fragmentation of the human mind.” — Emma Donoghue, author of Room
“Part mystery, part meditation on memory, part Dickensian revelation of how apparent charity may hurt its recipients, this is altogether brilliant.” — Booklist (starred review)
“A poignant novel of loss.” — Kirkus Reviews
“British author Healey draws on her own grandmothers’ experiences to create the distinctive narrator of her first novel… an absorbing tale.” — Publishers Weekly
“Bold, touching and hugely memorable.” — Sunday Times (London)
“What’s truly astonishing about the book is that its author—a web administrator at the University of East Anglia—isn’t even 30 years old. How can she know what it’s like for a person to lose herself, bit by bit? How can her descriptions of World War II, with all the shabbiness and rationing and black-market intrigue, be so vivid? Of course, Healey is able to imagine and empathize on such a level because she’s simply a brilliant writer. Let’s hope we hear much more from her over the years.” — BookPage