The Whispering Dark by Kelly Andrew

Delaney dreams of going to college, and proving to everyone that she is entirely capable of achieving great things. Colton Price has been ordered, specifically, to stay away from Delaney at any cost, which is hard to do as the teaching assistant in one of her college classes. The college is no ordinary school, focusing on the fantastic much more than the academic, and preparing students with extraordinary gifts to face the mirror worlds just beyond our own. Strange things are happening- to Colton, to Delaney, and to the students who are winding up dead under suspicious circumstances. Colton and Delaney find themselves drawn together to look into these deaths, but their proximity may reveal more secrets than either know how to face.

The Whispering Dark is a unique book in that there's so much happening, but trying to add any plot point to a summary gives many of the book's twists and turns away. Kelly Andrew's detailed and imagery-heavy writing style takes a few pages to get used to, but it's the very thing that makes this dark fantasy so absorbing and different from other books in the genre. The creepy vibes of the book hold together the plot, which is sometimes hard to follow on purpose, due to events in the story.

Andrew, who lost her hearing as a child, gives readers a glimpse of what it is like to be deaf in an academic setting through Delaney's experiences. Delaney faces misunderstanding, ignorance, and frustration as she tries to navigate her disability with her professors and classmates. This also factors largely into the plot of the story, adding a unique paranormal element to the book.