Why The Lies We Whisper Begins with Trauma
Before the investigations and the betrayals, there was trauma—quiet, unseen, and buried deep. The Lies We Whisper begins not with a crime, but with a survivor learning that control can be just another form of fear.
When I first started writing The Lies We Whisper, I didn’t set out to write a story about trauma. I wanted to write about a woman who spent her life trying to understand monsters — until she realized one had been living inside her all along.
But as Hanna’s voice grew louder, it became clear: Book 1 isn’t a crime novel dressed in psychology. It’s a study of survival. It’s trauma wearing a lab coat, pretending she’s fine.
Hanna’s Origin Story: The Making of C-PTSD
From the very first page, we see the truth about Hanna’s past—not in explosions or headlines, but in the quiet moments that broke her.
Her trauma “started in a living room where adults forgot she was there and in a bedroom where the door didn’t always lock.”
She grew up believing she was the reason for the chaos that she wasn’t enough to make them stay, or good enough to make them love her right.
So she adapted. She became “quieter,” “sharper,” and learned to “disappear inside herself.” That’s the heartbreaking genius of Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—it teaches you how to survive by vanishing.
The Career That Became Her Armor
By the time we meet her, Hanna’s turned her pain into a profession. She studies the very kind of people who once held power over her.
She tells herself she’s doing it to help others, but deep down, she’s trying to decode her own history—to understand what made them tick, and by extension, what broke her.
Her “calm expression she wore like armor” and her mantra—maintain objectivity, show no emotion, never let the inmate steer — aren’t signs of strength; they’re symptoms of control. The kind that comes from never wanting to feel helpless again.
When the Past Finds Her Anyway
Then comes Richard Hale — the killer who looks at her and sees her.
He knows her tells. He mirrors her pain. And when he turns her husband’s death into a weapon — “Your husband wasn’t taken by accident, was he?” — her armor cracks.
That’s the moment The Lies We Whisper stops being about catching a killer. It becomes a story about confronting your own ghosts.
Hanna isn’t losing control—she’s being stripped down to the raw truth of what trauma really is: unfinished business buried in the body.
Why I Started Here
Book 1 had to begin this way — with the psychology of survival. Before the investigations, before the betrayals, before Hanna’s story collides with those who will eventually change her trajectory — readers needed to understand why she is the way she is.
Her calm. Her detachment. Her drive.
They’re not character quirks. They’re scars that learned how to walk and talk.
And that’s why The Lies We Whisper will always be the quietest — and loudest — book in the series. It’s the one where we meet the broken version of her. Before the rebuilding. Before the voice. Before the scream that finally breaks the silence.