Antonia Bernardin

The second book I read in 2025 was The Whispering Night by Susan Dennard, the third and final book in The Luminaries Series.

Read my review for book 1 ‘The Luminaries’ here

And book 2 ‘The Hunting Moon’ here

Fair warning, as this a review of the last book in the series, there may be spoilers in this post but I have done my best to avoid them.

A sort of summary

Now that some of the secrets on the ‘things Winnie does not know’ list’ is getting smaller, there’s just the big ones of ‘who are the Diana’s in this town (the Luminaries enemy) and ‘what did they do to her dad’ to solve. Plus ‘the whisperer’ seems to be appearing more frequently and now she knows it’s a Diana spell gone wrong, she has to figure out how to fix it. Except, while are this is happening, she expected to be trotted out like a trophy at the Nightmare Masquerade. Except Winnie does not excel at mingling and smiling pretty for cameras but, once again, this small sacrifice could save her family, so she decides to get through it, whilst trying to save everyone.

When it’s revealed that one of the visiting dignitaries is the Diana that threatened her in the woods in book 2, who has come back to threaten her again: Winnie must find her Erica’s sister’s power source, or she’ll start hurting her friends and family. Pretty soon though, she starts to figure out that there’s more at play to the Diana’s plan, it seems like they are finally going to do it, they are going to wake the sleeping spirit under the forest, which could potentially end the world and no one will believe Winnie, so she’s left to figure all this out alone, again.

My thoughts

The imagery in these books is just stunning, it’s totally unique world and these books definitely deserve more hype. The nightmare creatures in the forest and the whole description of how they act as Winnie tries to stop the Diana’s was so visually impactful and the entire end conclusion had so much tension, it was just… fucking good, to put it bluntly. I love Winnie’s character, I love a FMC that isn’t designed to be entirely likeable and who isn’t perfect. I liked the conclusion to this series, even if I don’t fully understand how things were resolved, it was satisfying nonetheless.

In short, please go read these books. K, thanks bye.