I struggled a bit with this book. I usually enjoy the psychological fun house aspect of Ward's writing, but this got almost too convoluted with a lot of past and present events getting muddled, identities changing, and book within a book (within another book?) confusion. Also, since the story started when the MCs were teens, the first part read YA to me, but even as adults they seemed childish. To Ward’s credit, though, this is an ambitious and highly creative plot, and once again, she blew my mind with that ending! As usual, her writing is stellar.

I read along while listening to this on audio, with Christopher Ragland and Katherine Fenton narrating. I loved Ragland’s narration for The Last House on Needless Street, but not as much for this one. Harper is a British female, but she sounded neither British nor female, Wilder often sounded angsty or unhinged and Nat’s New England accent felt like a caricature. I did enjoy Fenton’s narration of a different female character and wondered why they didn’t have her voice Harper as well. Men voicing women almost always sounds off (and vice-versa).

It wasn’t my favorite of hers, but I’d still highly recommend it to those who love a book within a book story (with a twist!) and enjoy the mental challenge of a more complex plot. Catriona Ward’s unique blend of psychological horror, mystical elements and atmospheric writing are an appealing combination!

I am a big fan of Catriona Ward, and will continue to read her books going forward. However, "Looking Glass Sound" was a big miss for me. It started well enoguh and I fell into the story - she's an excellent writer in many ways: setting, language, but in the second two thirds of the book, I was lost. It's a book within a book kind of story, but told in a way that is confusing and because there is necessary repetition of aspects of the story, I grew bored and didn't care to try to figure out the intertwined storylines. I also will say, I was also taken out of the story when American characters used British-isms like "aircon," "dandelion clocks," and "motorbike." A minor quibble, but these small things tend to get to me and pull me from the story, making me very aware of the writer.

Looking Glass Sound is an atmospheric, Russian Nesting Doll of a story. It surrounds three friends whose lives one summer were changed by a local serial killer. I recommend going into this one blind and enjoying the journey the book will take you on. The story is very character based with a little bit of magic thrown in. If you love atmospheric and character based stories, grab this one immediately!

Thank you @tornightfire @torbooks and @netgalley for allowing me to read this one ahead of publication in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Tor Nightfire for gifting me a copy! I also listened to the audiobook via @scribd 🎧

In my humble opinion, Catriona Ward is indisputably the Queen of psychological horror! Every single of her books is a genre bender encompassing thriller and horror vibes in unique prose. ᴛʜᴇ ʟᴀsᴛ ʜᴏᴜsᴇ ᴏɴ ɴᴇᴇᴅʟᴇss sᴛʀᴇᴇᴛ was my top favorite book but 𝑳𝒐𝒐𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑮𝒍𝒂𝒔𝒔 𝑺𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒅 is a close second. With both books, you’ll need to focus on the reading in every page and I still managed to get my brain into a pretzel with this book! It made for a formidable buddy read as we all pieced this book together as a group because this book has twists WITHIN twists! A beach read this book does not make!

Beyond saying that the book revolves around young Wilder who befriends Nat and Harper on a beautiful Maine summer, Looking Glass Sound is a story that cannot be summarized without spoilers, and the official synopsis is deliberately misleading for good reason. I would strongly suggest you don’t read reviews that may contain spoilers because going in blind is the only way to experience the wild emotions you’ll feel in the end…which may be good or bad. 😉
I can’t wait for Catriona’s next book!!

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy of Looking Glass Sound. The story begins as a coming of age tale with an eerie, mysterious air and I was instantly engaged. Three teens meet one summer in coastal Maine where there have been unexplained happenings, including the creepy photographing of sleeping children as well as drownings off the coast. Mixing in some witchcraft added to the strange nature of the book.

At about the half way point, the story felt as if it had reached a pretty strong conclusion and made me wonder what more was in store. The second half of the book is where I got lost. While I admire the descriptive passages, I found the story very convoluted and hard to follow. I have to admit that I’m still not even sure what was real and what wasn’t. “The book is a mirror and I am stepping through the looking glass.” That’s how I felt reading Looking Glass Sound.

Thank you so much for the early read! Wildly ambitious and cleverly played out, Catriona Ward at her best!

'Ghosts don't exist,' she says gently. 'They're just in your mind telling you things you don't want to know.'

Though intriguing, much of this was confusing as hell. The multiple, unreliable narrators left me feeling more frustrated than entertained.

Real Rating: 3.5 / 5 Stars

This is the first time a Catriona Ward book has let me down.

When I started out this Russian nesting egg of a novel, I absolutely loved it. I was digging it. However, the longer this book went on, and the more layers Ward unveiled, the less I enjoyed it. Simply put: It became messy. It became less interesting. It became hard to keep track of. It lost propulsion. The pacing lacked off. I simply started to lose interest. By the end, I didn’t really care how it ended as long as the book just finally ended. I haven’t been this disappointed in a book in a very long time.

For the entire first act or so, I did truly enjoy it: the set up, the characters, Ward’s truly incredibly creepy prose and incredible world building. The book felt like it held so much potential in its pages…only for it all to fizzle out like the whole book has been rained on and it to become a damp mess.

The 3,5 stars I’m awarding this book comes purely for the portion of the book I loved and the passages here and there after that part that I thought were really beautiful. I’m not willing to go so far as to give this book three stars, because it’s not a simple, average novel I’d just toss away. It’s still Catriona Ward. It just doesn’t feel like her best effort.

I was provided a copy of this title by NetGalley and the author. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone.

File Under: Gothic/Horror/Meta Fiction/Murder Thriller/Occult Horror/Paranormal Horror/Psychological Thriller/Supernatural Horror/Suspense Thriller/Thriller

I loved the first half of this book. Ward does a fabulous job drawing you in with the setting. It was creepy and atmospheric right from the beginning. The second half was MIND BENDING to the extreme. I thought there was one too many twists. It left me confused at the conclusion. I do love that this was not your typical thriller, it was absolutely unique. I think lovers of Catriona Ward will enjoy this book. Thank you Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this arc!

Catriona Ward’s latest psychological thriller is just at twisty and turny as her The Last House on Needless Street.

It starts off as a slice of life story about a boy named Wilder Harlow who spends the summer with his parents in a cottage off the coast of Maine. He meets Harper and Nate and together they hang out-building bonfires, catching fish and boating in the ocean.

But that summer horrifying things begin to happen. The Dagger Man, so named by the locals, takes polaroid pictures of children sleeping while he holds a dagger to their necks. And then something else even more horrifying happens that changes Harper, Nate and Wilder’s lives forever.

Like Ward’s other novels, the novel’s structure can leave you a bit confused at times. Actually, the confusion will only build over the course of the story.

But the last 15%? It made all the confusion worth every second! I was blown away and how intricately plotted this was. Little things that you think don’t matter? Oh, they matter all right!

Just like with The Last House on Needless Street, I wanted to immediately start back at the beginning so I could better appreciate how Ward crafted this story of trauma, obsession and revenge.

Ward is an all time favorite horror writer for me because she’s so unique. She’s doing things with structure and storytelling that I don’t see anyone else doing.

As much as Ward’s structure can often be choppy and scenes often jut up against each other without any transition or flow, there’s a haunting beauty to her sentences that work perfectly to tell this story. She makes so many astute observations about writing: how stories can preserve us, transport us and completely change who we are. It’s rich in themes and ideas that beg to be dissected and discussed.

Looking Glass Sound is now my favorite book by Catrinona Ward. It plays with structure in the way that The Last House on Needless Street did, but I believe her characterization is more mature and better crafted here.

I’d highly recommend picking up Looking Glass Sound if you’ve loved Ward’s previous books, if you like psychological horror that is unique and different, and if you’re ok with not knowing what’s happening for most of the book and just going along for the ride.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the digital arc. All opinions are my own.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Happy pub day to @catward66 and Looking Glass Sound!

This book was wild! It was creepy and kept me reading with all the twists and turns. Definitely getting Maine ghost story vibes from this one! It also had a very meta vibe.

In my opinion, it’s a complex story about love, loss, found family, but there are also themes of pedophilia, child kidnapping and abuse, witchcraft and murder. It was an intriguing read and the twists were so good! If you’ve loved her precious works, I think you’ll really enjoy her newest.

Thank you @netgalley and @torbooks for my copy of this story which is available today!

This novel is, as we’ve come to expect from Catriona Ward, tangled, terrifying and mesmerizing. The interconnection between the characters coupled with reality versus fiction within the book become a story, within a story, within a story. The twists and unexpected revelations come throughout but they are so deftly and subtly delivered that they feel more like an organic part of the novel. They way it always had to be.

16-year old Wilder leaves behind his life in NYC for a summer vacation upstate with his parents. Lonely and bullied at his private school, he finds freedom and friendship with Nat and Harper.

Wilder gets involved in the hunt for a local prowler nicknamed The Dagger Man. When the Dagger Man’s identity is revealed, it changes all their lives, forever.

I don’t want to say much more about the plot because I don’t want to spoil anything. Twisty chapters jump between several versions of the story, demonstrating how the “truth” can be viewed through different lenses and appear different for everyone.

I did have a little trouble keeping everything straight while I was reading. The characters and relationships became tangled in my brain, the thread between them all twisted.

But this book had my head spinning in a delightfully unexpected way. The author plays with form in a way I’ve never seen before.

The characters float and form and reform around different perspectives and POVs, and what you think you know will be turned on its head by the end.

The story blurs the lines between friendship and romance, between platonic and romantic love.

Check out this book if you like twisty stories that explore themes of love and betrayal.

Thanks to @netgalley for the eARC.

This was my Catriona Ward read though I have several books on my TBR. I loved the mystery and intrigue. I loved getting lot in the characters, thinking I understood their story only to discover by the end of the book that I was very wrong and very confused. But I love how all the characters were interwoven and their stories intertwined and practically collided with each other in the end. The setting was mysterious and eerie and it set the tone and mood of the book perfectly. There were parts were parts that I needed to re-read, towards the end simply for the fact that once they stories blended trying to decipher what was true, a characters perception, or figments of a characters imagination, or just lies, became more convoluted and harder to determine. Reading this has made me crave reading other works of Catriona Ward.

Wilder returns to his parent's summer home on the Maine coast to write about his time spent there with friends Harper and Nat and a local serial killer's legacy. As he crafts his novel based on his experiences, Wilder recalls adventures that led to gruesome discoveries and terrible secrets. The process makes him question his memory and sanity as strange occurrences plague his days and nights.

This one drew me in immediately with Wilder's tales of his childhood summers in Whistler Bay. The first third of the book had a deliciously slow and steadily building tension, and I loved the atmosphere and nostalgia. Then came the point where the story took a confusing turn for me, and I became a bit lost during the middle third of the novel. Things came back together towards the end, but I had some unanswered questions niggling at the back of my mind that made me feel that I needed a reread. Hmmm.

I'm a big fan of Catriona Ward's novels. I did enjoy this one, even with the disconnect I felt in the middle of the story. And to be honest, it could have been me missing something. The horror element is less intense than what Ward typically serves up, and I appreciated the focus on other elements of the story.

LOOKING GLASS SOUND is a marvel.

Unfortunately, it didn't really work for me. I was engaged at first and then the story turned into a weird fever dream. The reader isn't sure what is real and what isn't. Problem is, that for me? I didn't care what happened to any of these people.

Everyone has their secrets and ever since THE LAST HOUSE ON NEEDLESS STREET, I know that Catriona Ward likes to spring those secrets on you at the very last minute. In this case, though, I found the secrets to be disappointing. Plus, did I mention that I didn't like any of these people? I can enjoy a book with no likable characters, (WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN proved that to me), but for me, this particular book just didn't work.

The language used here is descriptive and lovely, I love Ms. Ward's style of writing. In this case, I just didn't care for or feel connected with anyone during the last half of this book.

It appears that I'm the standout here and that most everyone else loved this book. Take what I have to say with a grain of salt and try it for yourself, because your mileage may vary.

I remain a huge fan of Catriona Ward and will still be reading anything she puts out. I guess I can't love everything all the time from a certain author, but I cannot deny my disappointment here.

*Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it

It’s a #PubDay review for a book that I probably should have DNFed.
True story coming at you. I was about 40% of the way thru when I saw a friend get a copy of Looking Glass Sound in her stories and decided to DM. We chatted and I said, “this book is way less confusing than Little Eve” and then I continued reading…
What started out as a suspense-building summertime adventuring between new friends turned into a trauma-induced fever dream that left me scratching my noggin wondering who’s who, who is saying what, and why am I still reading this.

The newest psychological horror book from Catriona Ward is a true-blue mind bender. It’s a fictional memoir within a fictional memoir within a fictional memoir and packed with intention(I think) into this twisty-turny horror story. Here’s the synopsis in a sentence…
Wilder Harlow writes the story of his childhood summer spent in a small New England town where women disappear and the “dagger man” takes Polaroid pictures of children sleeping and about a college friend who steals his unfinished memoir and turns it into a bestselling novel called Looking Glass Sound, but then slips into a trauma incited mind riot and things get blurry real fast(and legitimately confusing).

Catriona Ward megafans might enjoy this story more than I did. There is the one sentence that I caught within the story that explained Ward’s intention, thrown in just in case the reader was truly lost. Overall by halfway thru I was invested in the plot, became disappointed with the repetitiveness and disjointed page layout, and celebrated the finish of a book I probably should have called it quits on.

In the past year I’ve grown to enjoy a good psychological horror, but Looking Glass Sound was not my jam. Hopefully it could be yours. I’m still looking forward to reading future books & the backlist books I’ve missed from Catriona Ward.

Thank you to the publisher for providing me the opportunity to read & review.

Looking Glass Sound is the latest release from one of my favorite voices in the Horror space, Catriona Ward. I respect her work so much and feel she brings her own unique brand to my favorite genre. This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2023 and damn, was it impressive.

I went into this novel without knowing too much about it and I'm glad that was the case. It was exciting watching it unfold without having many preconceived notions. I knew it was set in Maine, my home state, and involved a writer, but that was about it. I recommend you go into it not knowing much more than that.

I'm not sure I can adequately describe my time with this story, it's just something you need to experience yourself. It's definitely a bit of a mindf*ck; pardon the expression. I can't wait to read it again someday. I think upon reread, I could end up enjoying it even more. Ward is too smart and honesty, I'm in awe of her brain. I'm probably going to dream about this one for a while...

This delivered such beautiful Coming of Age Horror story vibes initially, it hooked me from the start. Eventually, it evolves into something a little more. It's Coming of Age Plus. Honestly, there are so many different elements contained within this story that are cause to celebrate.

For me, one of the highlights was the different types of relationships explored and the characters were all so well done. I did listen to the audiobook and recommend that format as the narration style fit the characters fantastically. I don't want to say too much more about the actual story, I think you can tell from my reaction that I really enjoyed it. You may be wondering though, with all the accolades, why I didn't give it a full 5-star rating.

I guess I would just say that in the second half, I did find some of the perspective jumps and overall narrative shifts a little hard to track. There were moments I felt I should have been having an a-ha revelation and I was having more of a head-scratching marathon trying to connect the dots.

I would absolutely read it again though, as mentioned above. I think I would pick up more the second time through and may end up enjoying it even more. There's definitely a lot of details I would like to revisit knowing what I know now; aka. having read the end.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone who enjoys, well, a literary mindf*ck, featuring great atmosphere and nuanced characters. Also, this is a must for Coming of Age Horror lovers, or Readers who enjoy a book-within-a-book.

Thank you so much to the publisher, Tor Nightfire and Macmillan Audio, for providing me with copies to read and review. I'm very excited to see what other people think of this one!

This was just a little too weird of a book for me. I felt like I was on some sort of strange trip while reading it and definitely felt a little bit lost while reading it. This is most likely a case of this style of book/subject matter just isn't for me.

I just finished Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward and here are my thoughts!!


Whistler bay has its dark past and when Wilder Harlow returns to write his last book, it brings back memories of the past.

As a youth, the place where he met his two friends, Nat and Harper. The summer was the best and worst of his life. A terrible evil that they discover in the coves off the bay.

Problem is Wilder is starting to lose his mind. He is finding things in the cabin, things that shouldn’t be there and a woman who keeps calling out to him for help. Who’s writing the chapters he keeps finding upon waking?

Was coming back a mistake? Will it be the last thing he ever does?

This book was so weird. You know that feeling you get where you can’t trust what you are reading? I had this all the way through and when it finally got to the crux, I still felt that feeling. It’s one heck of a complex book and the journey was stepping into a building that is so dark you cannot see a thing and not know which way is what!

The character development was the saving grace for me. Each character story wove itself back onto each other and it was so intricate but it worked for me. I have never read such a mindF of a book before. I don’t know how I feel even now and I finished it a couple of days ago. I turned to my husband and said, what just happened! I even gave him the cliffnotes and he was like OMG!

I did really love the idea of the storyline but I was a little confused in places which I know was the point but it was hard to wrap my head around. I am not going to lie, I need more books like this. The kind of books that takes all the rules and throws them out the window. I’m sure others will hate it. It is not the kind of read that you can leisurely read, this is far from a beach read but if you like those complicated storylines that are beautifully written by an author with a gift for the unusual…. Grab this book right now.

Trying to rate it was a nightmare. This book had me second guessing myself!

4 stars. I couldn’t read books like this all the time but it was worth the read for me.

Thank you @netgalley and @torbooks for my gifted copy!