This kept me on my toes! The pace and writing style reminded me a lot of Lisa Gardner and Lisa Scottoline. Their thrillers are what brought me into the genre, and Girls of Glass is one that will keep me interested. I hated the characters I was meant to hate because Labuskes wrote them in such a way that it was very easy to hate them. I didn’t know who to like, though, and I enjoyed that part of the reading.


Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC. All thoughts are my own.

4.5 suspenseful stars for this taut thriller centered around the kidnapping of a five year old girl - a girl who is also the granddaughter of a prominent judge. When Det. Alice Garner catches the case, the similarities to the kidnapping and murder of her own daughter a few years prior start to bring up old emotions - in both Alice and me as the reader! I thought Labuskes hit it out of the park with this one and I was eager to find out who was to blame here!

***Thanks to NetGalley for providing me a complimentary copy of GIRLS OF GLASS by Brianna Labuskes in exchange for my honest review.***

Alice, a detective, investigates the kidnapping of a five-year-old girl, five years after her own daughter was kidnapped and murdered.

Based on what I enjoy and dislike about thrillers, I shouldn’t have been glued to GIRLS OF GLASS, holding my breath in anticipation. On the surface most of the characters were truly unlikable and unsympathetic. Ruby’s mother Charlotte and aunt Trudy made me cringe, until I got to know them. Then, I could root for them, hope they weren’t the perp, while still not actually *liking* them as individuals. Rudy’s physically and emotionally abusive grandmother and her grandfather who may have been worse were as one dimensional as villains can be, yet somehow I bought into their awfulness. My favorite character was Zeke and Trudy grew on me in the second half of GIRLS OF GLASS.

Labuskes drops twists seamlessly into the plot, making sense while creeping me out. My theories on the perp never felt strong enough to make me certain. I didn’t see the very satisfying end coming.

GIRLS OF GLASS is a must read, edge-of-your-sear thriller that I will reread to see which clues I missed.

This January 15 sees the release of the second brilliant, intelligent, intricately-spun jaw-dropping psychological thriller from stellar storyteller Brianna Labuskes. Centred around broken lives driven by the force of desperation. Shattering and triumphant. Not to be missed.

Ruby Burke, granddaughter to St Petersburg's 'reigning king', the powerful judge Sterling and his 'Ice Queen' wife is found murdered on the beach after her kidnap a few days prior to the opening scene. Assigned to the case are detectives Joe Nakamura and his recent partner detective Alice Garner, recently transferred to Florida from DC who despite all evidence to the contrary is all too reluctant to cast blame on the victim's mother. Instead she believes that the evil they search for hides behind the guarded Burke mansion and with the help of her partner Nakamura, she sets forth to substantiate her narrative.

It's not long though before the case starts to take its toll on detective Garner whose daughter, we soon find out, suffered a similar fate to Ruby's. Lila, Garner's daughter, had also been five years old when she was taken on an early November day, later found 'discarded by the side of the road as if she hadn't been worth the time to hide'. Unlike Ruby's murderer though, Lila's murderer was finally caught and we know is serving life in prison. And so it is taking all Alice's willpower to keep it all together in order to carry out her crusade in revealing 'the monster who could do such a thing to a little girl' especially that the accumulating evidence seemed to clearly indicate that Ruby had known her killer.

As the investigation proceeds we are introduced to the list of possible suspects headed by the schmoozing Judge Sterling widely known for his congeniality but who nonetheless is far from perfect with a rumoured reputation 'for going easy on Frat boys while sentencing anyone to the max with a skin colour darker than pure white'. His domineering presence shadows the course of the investigation and detectives Alice and Nakamura have to tread carefully where this powerful man is concerned.

Under Alice and Nakamura's scrutiny fall the 'isolated' and peculiar Burke women. The mothership Hollis, who Alice first meets at a station fundraiser and observes is one who revels in the anxiety, the nervousness, the fear' that being in her presence caused those around her; Older daughter, 'expensive but somehow gaudy' Mellie who, like Charlotte, did not have a job, outside of a few select charitable boards approved by their mother. She lived at the Burke mansion with her combative teen daughter Trudy. And finally the troubled Charlotte Burke herself, beautiful, kind yet aloof and suffering from 'dissociative episodes'.

The scope of investigation soon extends to suspected friends and acquaintances and the novel shifts between points of view of the Burke family members so that we are given privileged access to inside information regarding the Burke women's secret complex lives and the people they associate with - information the two detectives are not privy to until a few chapters down in the novel. An effective tactic by the author that allows readers to become actively involved in the search to pinpoint the eventual villain.

As Alice and Nakamura desperately race to stitch together the patterns and connections that will lead them to Ruby's killer, they not only find their lives more intertwined with the Burke's complex story but they also risk lifting the lid on secrets the Burke family members will go to desperate lengths to keep hidden in a bid to preserve the family's pristine image. It becomes only a matter of time before we realise that ultimately it is the driving force of desperation that spurs the entire cast of players right up to the novel's sensational, jaw-dropping reveal at the end.

'Juries,' Alice tells Nakamura at one point, '... wanted to be told a story. Facts didn't really matter to them, but narrative did. There needed to be an engaging plot, a hero if possible, and, the most important part, a villain. Someone to blame.' - 'Girls of Glass' ticks all the boxes delivering that and so much more. Brace yourself for one hell of a ride.
Brianna Labuskes is an Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of psychological thrillers. She lives in Washington, D.C., working for media organisations that cover the minutia of Capitol Hill and the White House. 'Girls of Glass' is her second novel. Her first novel 'It Ends With Her' was released in May 2018.

This is the second book in the series and I didn't realize that when I requested it. I did have some questions about different things as I started reading so if you are going to read this then start with book 1 "It Ends with Her". The characters were likeable and well-written and there were plenty of suspense and some twists and turns. I will have to go back and read book 1 and then read this one again,

Slow burner, not a fast page turner. It’s not that I didn’t e joy this book—this mix of Casey Anthony meets a combo of SVU episodes—it’s just that after all I went through to get to the end, it was a let down. This story can def stand up to more edits, less references to the title, more angst and thrill, less soap opera. There are such stirrings of great potential here, but it’s just not quite great as it is.

Let me introduce you to the players aka The Burke family:

Sterling Burke - The most prominent judge in Florida. He's such a charming man that he has everyone from the mayor to the governor in his back pocket. Nothing bad ever happens to Sterling and nothing ever will.

Hollis Burke - Sterlings wife and mother to Charlotte and Mellie. She rules the house with an iron fist and spews vitriol to anyone that dare disagree with her. A loving mother she is not.

Mellie Burke - Oldest daughter, mother of 18 yr old Trudy, she spends most of her days self medicating with alcohol while laying about her parents house.

Charlotte Burke - Youngest daughter, mother to 5 year old Ruby, a shell of a woman really. Her fathers favorite and her mothers nemesis.

It appears the Burkes like to keep their children close. Why else would two grown woman and their children still live at home? Clearly something is amiss.

Then one day Ruby goes missing and soon her body is found on the beach. Detectives Alice Garner and Joe Nakamura are called in to investigate. What exactly goes on behind closed doors of the Burke mansion? It appears everyone has secrets.

"It was curious how so often people saw only the surface of one another. They filled in the blanks they didn't know or couldn't understand with preconceived notions that had no grounding in reality."

The chapters alternate between "Before" and "After" where we get the perspectives of Alice, Charlotte, and Trudy. This was a little bit confusing at first but after a few chapters I was able to grasp the back and forth. While in the Alice chapters we find out in flashbacks that her own daughter was kidnapped and killed which is the driving force behind her solving this crime.

I really enjoyed the banter between Detectives Garner and Nakamura. Garner is tough as nails after losing her daughter while Nakamura was the surprisingly kind and understanding older seasoned detective. They really seemed to have a deep connection even though they were complete opposites.

My one complaint is that for some reason I never felt any real empathy for the Burke girls and I most certainly should have. It's a strange feeling when you read something like this but feel emotionally cut off from the characters.

The book was a slow burn but an interesting one. The twist and the ending were a complete shock. Like, never in a million years would I have predicted this outcome. Well played! 3.5 stars!

Girls of Glass by Brianna Labuskes is a pretty good mystery novel. I have never read this author before and was excited to read this book. The main problem I had was the layout of the chapters. It jumps from 5 days after the kidnapping to a month before to 2 days after, etc. The time was hard for me to decipher. I had to concentrate a lot to get the timeline right each chapter. The overall story/mystery was good but a little slow in it's reveal. I was halfway in before I got interested. I will definitely give this author another try. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved it right away but then my interest decreased for some reason. I found it a bit slow and a bit confusing as it's told in 3 points of views.

3.5 stars. Well written, interesting, captivating, but also confusing and slow.
A good read, but not my favorite.

My first time reading that author.

Wow! What did I just read?! This is the second book I've read from Brianna Labuskes and she is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. Her attention to detail and the way she weaves in small clues - her writing is the definition of a slow burn. And I did not see that ending coming! This was a great book and I recommend to anyone that enjoys suspense, mysteries, and thrillers.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Girls of Glass is easily one of my favorite crime novels of 2018! It was a page turner from the moment I picked it up! I love thrillers, but I often find that I have figured out the ending before the novel’s end. This was not so with Briana Labuskes’ Girls of Glass due to her careful crafting of the plot. Labuskes allows the reader to see both the events leading up to the crime and the aftermath within the first few chapters. This intentionally scattered narrative contributed to the feeling of suspense, and left me questioning motives of all the characters up until the very end. This was my first novel from Labuskes, but it will not be my last! Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting mystery with a lot of twists and turns. It is about a difficult subject- child abuse and the lengths people will go to hide it to maintain social and political power,

Holy wow! Brianna Labuskes may be one of my new favorite authors! I love crime/suspense novels and she does such a great job. I didn't see the ending coming, and that is one of my favorite things (and hard to do to me lately)!

Told from three different points of view, Girls of Glass goes about the days before an after little Ruby Burke went missing and was found dead on the beach. Hear from her mother, aunt and Detective Garner, who also lost a daughter of her own.

As the book goes on, everyone is a subject. And more and more secrets come out about the Burke family, who is well known to the community as the patriarch, Sterling, is the judge in the area.

Deceit, betrayal, and the terribleness that can come from a close family are constant themes in this book. If you like detective and/or suspense novels, I highly, highly recommend. The only reason for a bit of a downgrade was the content was a bit hard to stomach at times and disturbing.

Thank you to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer, and Brianna Labuskes for the chance to read this amazing book.

I have come to realize that I am not a huge mystery fan, and when I novel is categorized as such.. I am very picky as to which I like, and am harder on them rating wise then other genres. But this, this was incredible. It was twisted, disturbing, and you really never knew where the next page was going to take you. I got everything wrong, and that's exactly what I loved and hated, all at once. A MUST READ for any mystery readers.

Whoa- not what I thought I was getting into. I am still not over the ending.

The tragedy of a child abduction and death is impossible to minimize and the reverberations hit everyone. When another child is found, the pressure to figure this out is immense. As the search goes on, more and more family secrets are revealed, undermining the beliefs that many in the neighborhood have about each other.

Flashback sof an earlier child abduction interferes with the police investigation and reveals some really twisted and damaged people; and the harm they can inflict.

The mother of the missing child is the obvious first suspect and as the story unfolds, the real killer faces her.
Moves quickly but a bit tragic.

What happened to Ruby? Is her mother Charlotte reponsible? Alice, the detective working the case, is more sympathetic that others because of her own experience but little does she know, at the outset, how many horrible secrets there are in this family. Being rich and powerful does not protect you- eventually that wall is going to come down. Told from multiple perspectives and back and forth in time, this is well done suspense. There are enough twists to keep you guessing. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I was very excited to read a suspense book set in Florida. It had the makings of a great story with an unspeakable crime and tremendously flawed characters. The story itself was good with some nice twists. What detracted from the story was the setting. When reading a book you don’t realize how much that plays into a story until you read one that just doesn’t work. When picking an actual city that exists you need to have little landmark references even if there are only a few. This story was set in St. Petersburg and I came away feeling that it was a seedy place to be with no redeeming qualities which is so far from the truth. Even if it was just mentioning seeing the pink Don Cesar Hotel in the distance on the beach that would have helped. It would have been better to have the setting in a fictitious Florida city. Once I got into the heart of the twists and turns the book was better. Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book was good! It reminded me a lot of Law and Order: SVU. It read like I was watching Olivia Benson try and solve a child murder case. It had a lot of different points of view and the timeline was a little wacky but still manageable to follow. It was full of twists and turns. I read it in about a day so the readability is good on it too. If you're into twisted families, crime, and solving a case this is a good book for you!

Throughout this story, detectives tried to piece together the clues to solve a kidnap-murder of a young girl. Everyone was suspect.The detective told each other stories to try to place the pieces together. Eventually, the stories came together-in a shocking conclusion- in this well written and executed plot. It was not what was expected….it was one of the best mystery/thrillers I have read this year.

I thought I knew where this book was headed about halfway through the story. I am so glad that I didn't put it down because the end brought about a twist that I didn't see coming. It was a fantastic surprise. I like the way the author wove the characters together and always found a way to tell a story.