Whisper Falls

Gr 7–10—While training for a mountain bike race, 18-year-old Mark Lewis sees a beautiful girl standing behind a waterfall near his Raleigh, North Carolina home. She is wearing odd clothing, and when she questions the strange machine he rides, Mark is intrigued. The girl claims to be Susannah Marsh, a 17-year-old indentured servant from the year 1796. Mark and Susannah continue to meet in secret, and Mark soon discovers that Susannah and her sister are in danger from their brutal master. As they grow closer, Mark determines to help Susannah before it is too late. Whisper Falls is a time-travel novel steeped in North Carolina history, and in some ways, the plot works well. The history is well researched, and readers will enjoy the realistic portrayal of southern life in the late 1700s. Susannah's story is far more interesting than Mark's, and at times, it makes for compelling reading that is difficult to put down. At other times, the narrative falters; Mark is a little too golden, continually sacrificing his future to save a girl he barely knows who, in his time, has been dead for 200 years. The writing is uneven in places, and extraneous story lines, particularly on Mark's side of the waterfall, detract more from the plot than they add. Despite minor flaws in execution, Whisper Falls is a fun, action-packed story that will appeal to fans of Tamara Ireland Stone's Time Between Us (Hyperion, 2012) and Rachel Harris's My Super Sweet Sixteenth Century (Entangled Teen, 2012).—Leigh Collazo, Ed Willkie Middle School, Fort Worth, TX