Wildhaven has secrets. The Wild family has questions. Somewhere inside Wild Industries, there may finally be answers. Chase has spent plenty of time being the easygoing one in the family, but now he has a reason to prove there is more to him than the jokes and charm everyone expects. Abi has her own reasons for keeping people at a distance, which makes putting these two together at this particular moment very interesting.
As the Whispers Echo by Steffanie Blais
Series: Secrets of Wildhaven #4
Genres: Women's Dective Fiction, Psychological Fiction

Wildhaven is anything but predictable, so it shouldn’t be surprising when the town’s notorious playboy proposes to the woman who seems to hate him the most.

Chase Wild doesn’t believe in happily ever after. Abigail Bennett doesn’t believe in relying on anyone but herself. Yet when Chase offers Abi a marriage of convenience, it solves both their problems: Chase proves to his family that he’s capable of stability. Abi gets a place to live and the health insurance she desperately needs.

The rules are simple: no unnecessary touching and definitely no falling in love.

But as buried secrets surface inside the Wild family empire, Chase and Abi find themselves caught in a dangerous web of betrayal and unanswered questions.

And when everything they’ve built together is put to the test, they’ll have to decide whether uncovering the truth is worth losing the one thing they never meant to find.

Tropes:💍Marriage of Convenience 🫦Reformed Playboy ❤️‍🩹Hurt/Comfort 🌶️Steamy 🔥Slow burn 💫Quirky, Small Town 💬Sibling group chat 🫣Suspense 💖Found Family

Triggers:Murder, chronic illness (diabetes)

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I received this book for free from in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

As the Whispers Echo was my first book from Steffanie Blais, and Chase and Abi had me laughing almost immediately. Their banter is SO GOOD. Abi can throw Chase’s charm right back at him without missing a beat, and there were conversations between these two that I wanted to highlight from beginning to end.

Chase is the Wild family’s playboy and comedian. He’s easygoing, always ready with a joke, and not exactly the first person everyone thinks of when the word responsible comes up. Underneath all of that, though, he’s carrying things he doesn’t talk about. He wants his family to see that he’s capable of more, especially when their investigation into Wild Industries gives him the chance to step up.

Abi works with Chase’s sister Eden as a pastry chef. She’s fiercely independent, private, and used to handling her problems herself. That includes her type 1 diabetes. Without health insurance, she’s been stretching her insulin and supplies because she can’t afford what she actually needs. She knows how dangerous that is, but knowing the risk doesn’t magically put money in her bank account.

When Abi has a serious blood sugar crash and Chase happens to be there, he finally sees just how bad things have gotten. She also needs somewhere to live. Chase needs to convince the Wild Industries board that he’s stable and capable of taking on more responsibility.

Obviously, they should get married. I LOVED this setup. Abi gets health insurance and Chase gets the respectable married-man image he needs for the board. It’s practical. It’s temporary. They can absolutely handle being married without all that chemistry becoming a problem.

Sure they can. The banter gets even better once they’re thrown into a marriage of convenience. Chase has spent years flirting without meaning anything by it, except his flirting with Abi doesn’t feel quite so harmless anymore. Abi gives as good as she gets, and neither one wants to acknowledge that something real has been growing underneath all those jokes and smart comments.

The wedding was especially fun because these two were already fooling absolutely nobody. They could call it convenient all they wanted. Everyone else had eyes.

What surprised me was how much I liked seeing beyond Chase’s sunshine personality. He’s funny because that’s genuinely part of who he is, but humor also gives him somewhere to hide. Abi does something similar in a completely different way. Instead of joking, she builds walls and depends only on herself. Watching Chase stop performing for everyone and Abi slowly accept that needing someone doesn’t make her helpless gave their relationship more weight than I expected from all that early banter.

And the found family got me. Abi has spent so much time believing she has to handle everything alone that watching the Wild family make room for her hit me right in the chest. They don’t simply tolerate her because she’s suddenly Chase’s wife. They pull her into the family, care about what happens to her, and show her what it feels like to have people ready to catch her.

Of course, Wildhaven has much bigger problems happening around them. The mystery surrounding the Wild patriarch and whatever has been going on behind the scenes at Wild Industries continues to unravel. Chase becomes involved in trying to get answers from inside the company, which lets us see that capable side of him he’s been trying so hard to prove exists.

I was taking mental notes and coming up with suspects while also laughing at Chase and Abi, getting emotional over the Wild family, and waiting for those two to finally admit their marriage wasn’t nearly as convenient as they claimed.

Then came that twist. I had theories. I thought I had a pretty good handle on where things might be going. Apparently Steffanie Blais didn’t care about any of those theories because the ending caught me completely off guard. Now I have new questions, new suspicions, and a sudden need to know exactly what this family uncovers next.