Book Summary:

Wilder Harlow was never very good at making friends. But the summers at a cottage are all it takes to change his life. First, he makes two friends, perhaps the best (and really, only) friends he's had in his life. Second, this time threw him neck-deep in a mystery.

As an adult, Wilder is trying to look back and understand everything that happened. Everything he went through. In doing so, he hopes to get a book out of it. But only time will tell how much of that novel is fact or fiction.

My Review:

Woah. Looking Glass Sound was such a mind-bender! This book had me all sorts of twisted up. First, there's that creepy crawly feeling. That started pretty much right away. But soon after, that feeling was replaced with something more – something deeper.

As it turns out, Looking Glass Sound is a layered horror/murder mystery novel. Whenever I felt like I had a handle on what was happening, something else changed, warping my perspective.

In other words, Looking Glass Sound is perfectly on point with the rest of Catriona Ward's writing. It's part thriller/psychological horror and part mystery, and it will send you into the deep end (pun slightly intended).

This is one of those books that will linger with you, for good or ill. So be prepared before diving in.

Highlights:
Spooky/Creepy/You Name It!
Layered Storytelling
Dark Murder Mystery

Trigger Warnings:
Stalking/Break-ins
Pedophilia
Suicide

I always loved Ward's writing, and Looking Glass Sound did not disappoint. I liked the concept of a book within a book, as it kept me on my toes in figuring out which story I was reading. Like Ward, the tension was up all throughout and I didn't see the ending coming.

LOOKING GLASS SOUND by @catward66 is out today! And you guys, what can I say that hasn’t been said already by reviewers? This book is something else.

Its almost 🤏🏽 like Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN where it’s a story within a story within a story, and you’re trying to figure out who’s the monster. (Yes, I know I sound like I’m reaching lol.)

Despite having read two different kinds of synopsis for this book, I still felt like I had no idea what the story would be about. And as I read it, I still wasn’t sure what to expect in the next parts. No lie, I got a little confused at each section, but the more I read the more I got it and it made sense. Then the ending came and it was kind of like when you finally get that one loose bit in a ball of knotted up thread and everything untangles. That’s how great my mental relief was when I understood the final story😂.

Stories of childhood friends, especially those bound by a traumatic incident, will always be a favorite of mine and this one made me feel nostalgia for experiences I never had. You can feel the yearning of Wilder for acceptance and friendship and love. And I really feel like he got screwed in so many different ways in all the stories. Ward really knows how to get undesirable characters under your skin. 🥲

I would highly recommend this if you’re a fan of (or don’t mind) mental gymnastics when it comes to stories. You don’t get a straight story from this author and I love that about her writing.

I was extremely happy when I got approved for this ARC since I love Catriona Ward's writing. However, when I read this book, I was so lost. Since I don't like giving away any plot/info on the story, I will not be able to explain why it was confusing. I gave the story a 3.5 stars as my rating.

Looking Glass Sound
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Author: Catonia Ward

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley, Tor Publishing, and Macmillan Audio and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: In a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow begins the last book he will ever write. It is the story of his childhood summer companions and the killer that stalked the small New England town. Of the body they found, and the horror of that discovery echoing down the decades. And of Sky, Wilder’s one-time best friend, who stole his unfinished memoir and turned it into a lurid bestselling novel, Looking Glass Sound.

But as Wilder writes, the lines between memory and fiction blur. He fears he’s losing his grip on reality when he finds notes hidden around the cottage written in Sky’s signature green ink.

My Thoughts: Ward is known for mind bending fiction, as well as fiction within fiction and this latest novel does not disappoint. Wilder Harlow and his two close friends have the summer of their lives before Wilder’s parents divorced. Wilder is also working on a novel, which we get pieces of. This small town in Maine, also has a known serial killer, the Dagger Man of Whistler Bay. There are also a vast amount of women missing from this sleepy small town. Fast forward to Wilder’s college years when he is befriended by Skylar, does this friendship come at a cost? The cost of his novel that he has been working on for years? This coming of age story with ghastly horrors will have you second guessing your thought process.

This is a book within a book. Those are the hardest novels to write but Ward does it so well. There are two presenting mysteries here of the serial killer and the missing women. The characters were well developed with depth, mystery, and intriguing. The author’s writing style was complex, multifaceted, very twisty, mind bending, thought provoking, and suspenseful. You think the story is going in one direction, then boom it switches gears and throws your brain for a loop. Your brain 🧠 cells will get a workout in this novel. The terrors this novel outlines goes deeper than a slasher flick, the tragedies are more than a mire surface level, and the who, what and when will throw you for a loop over and over.

I had the pleasure of having both the digital book and audiobook. I think the audiobook was better, easier to follow along. The narrator chose for the audiobook was perfect, had amazing voice affliction, voice variation between characters, and really brought the characters and plot horror to life from the pages into your brain. This is a compelling, unique, unpredictable, tragic horror suspense novel that will keep you guessing until the very end. There are a vast amount of books that are one and done, you read once and it would not benefit you to read again. However, with this novel, I think it could be read over and over and each time, you would gain new insight into the mind of Ward. I would highly recommend picking up this book.

I have read and loved all of Catriona Ward's books by now and while this one has been my least favorite of hers, I still really enjoyed my time and would give it a solid four star rating. I can see how her writing has developed across her work as this was her first book, but I still got her signature vibe and atmosphere and although I'm not 100% sure I understood what was happening... overall .I enjoyed my experience.

Thank you so much NetGalley and Tor Nighfire for my review copy!

Thanks to the Publishers and Netgalley for the Arc! I've had a hard time thinking of how to review this book. The writing is AMAZING. It's clear that Ms. Ward has some serious writing skill & talent. The concept of the book was great. The thing I didn't like was how confused I was, but that was really the point of it! The spiral into madness, not knowing what's real, questioning if I missed something or if I read this part already. I did really enjoy this and would HIGHLY recommend others to read this one. I don't think there's been a book of hers that I didn't love yet!

Absolutely enchanting. I couldn't put it down. Catriona Ward knows how to spin a tale in a way that makes you know that something isn't quite right and yet, I never expect where her books will go. I enjoyed "Last House on Needless Street" and thought it was a studied and kind portrayal of an often mischaracterized illness.

Here, I knew something was off, but I really did not expect where this went at all. It felt like a cozy read that was speaking more deeply about narrative and stories within stories and who really controls the narrative. I loved the ending, but also felt confused and disoriented. Ward's writing style is perfectly plotted. She is playing with several storylines and expertly constructs in a way that I have never seen done so well.

I don't think I enjoyed reading the ending as much as I will enjoy seeing it made into an A24 movie. It is pure bait for some director looking to twist us up into a ball of mirrors. It's a really hard book to talk about, but it was enjoyable to read and get swept away inside.

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy!

Unfortunately, this was not for me. I was unable to get into the story and did not finish it. I encourage others to give it a try for themselves!

The narration of this one was great, but I don't think it's the best on audio. It's a really slow burn and jumps around in time. It was a bit hard for me to follow for those reasons. The narrator was great though and the story was fine. But just not the best for audio, in my opinion.

Nope. Did not enjoy. I really liked The Last House on Needless Street and its twists, I skipped Sundial due to animal cruelty on the page, I've heard not great things about Little Eve. But the twists in this book were just dumb. Sorrynotsorry. It started out interesting enough but got too weird and confusing and I just didn't jive with it.

I had difficulty reading and following what was happening in the book. The plot is layered and there is a lot going on. It starts as a memoir from main characters pov then shifts. It was full of love, murder, and betrayal. She had vivid descriptions and it transported me into the story but unfortunately it just wasn't for me.

Looking Glass Sound is another remarkably different shock/horror/thriller from the creative mind of Catriona Ward. Its creepiness is overshadowed by the disturbing narrative and storyline development, not knowing where the plot is going but then it all come together, for an extraordinary ending.

When Wilder’s uncle passes away, his parents inherit a cottage on Whistler Bay in Maine on the water. They decide to go on a vacation there during the summer before selling the property. Wilder meets Nat a local and Harper who vacations there every summer, both who it seems have known each other forever. As they begin to include him in their outings, Wilder feels there is something they are not telling him.

During the time he is there Wilder learns of Dagger Man, who was all the talk from the past summer who allegedly killed people and left polaroids of them. This topic seems to bond the three teenagers as they try solving who he is and imagine what he did and why. They also tell him about a victim named Rachel, the first to disappear. She had gone to the beach with her family and as they set out lunch she went for her daily swim and never came back. Some say she still haunts the Sound.

At the end of the summer, Wilder’s parents decide not to sell the cottage but rent it out and use it as their own vacation home. But the next summer will be Wilder’s last with both his friends. Dagger man is captured, and it throws the town into a chaos of which Wilder will not only ever be able to forget, but he will never be the same.

He goes to college and begins to write down his thoughts as to what happened during those summers. He can’t particularly function well but then he meets someone who helps him. But they have a terrible falling out which leaves Wilder devastated.

Years pass and Wilder decides to face his demons and goes back the cottage to try and write a story about what happened, what he witnessed and how it impacted his life. To his surprise he finds Harper living on the Bay.

As he tries to write, strange things begin to happen. He finds notes in the cottage he knows were not written by him. He smells things he knows he should not and sees things he knows cannot be there. He discovers he has written chapters of his story which he can’t remember doing.

This is too much for Wilder. His life was never the same after what happened, and he is not sure just how much more of life he can handle. Or even if he wants to anymore.

Looking Glass Sound has continuous suspense, mystery, despair and dysfunctional friendships and family secrets with so much more mixed in with such an incredible ending your only thought will be the need to read this again!

Thank you #NetGalley #TorNightfire #CatrionaWard #LookingGlassSound for the advanced copy.

This was my third read from Catriona Ward and my second five-star book from her! I am absolutely captivated by Ward's writing style and unique concepts, and Looking Glass Sound blew me away!

Looking Glass Sound is a slow, haunting story that creeps up on you, and it's far more character-driven than plot-driven, so readers beware if that is not your preferred style. I went into this story unsure of what to expect so I was just letting the story unravel before me and it was a spell-binding experience.

The story teeters on the edge of the real and surreal, which creates an atmosphere of tension and unease that continues to build with the story. By the end, you start to put together the main themes Ward is tackling with Looking Glass Sound and it leads to some really intriguing discussions around authorship and the craft of writing. I can't wait to see what Ward does next!

I held a book club discussion with my channel members here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjIE91sPlmk

Thank you to the publisher for granting me access to an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

The premise behind this book was oh so promising, and I rapidly consumed the first half. If it had kept to just that I would have loved it. But, half way through it takes a twist, and I struggled to stay invested in the story and the main character. He has nothing endearing to him, and it becomes a painful struggle to care about what happens to him.

Thank you to Tor and NetGalley for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I have never read a Ward novel before because the genre isn't usually what I gravitate towards. But this was a great mix of something I love (horror, gothic, insane family drama that's violent) and something I'm not great at -- a mystery. I thought that the way the plot evolved was great and when the twist was spelled out I went AHA. I think it was good and scary and upsetting but also gritty and truthful.

4 stars.

We Haunt Each Other--The Emotional Horror of Looking Glass Sound
Ward, Catriona. Looking Glass Sound. Tor Nightfire, August 2023.
Words: 800

“If you don’t bring up those lonely parts
This could be a good time”
-Interpol, “Leif Erikson”

Since the 2015 release of her debut novel Rawblood, Catriona Ward has established herself as a writer to be watched. Subsequent novels have been unleashed in rapid succession, bringing her numerous accolades. She is the three-time winner of the August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel, for example, an achievement unmatched by any other woman writer. Her 2021 novel The Last House on Needless Street is still enjoying a great deal of buzz among readers and critics, and new release Looking Glass Sound seems destined to keep Ward’s name at the vanguard of the horror fiction community.

When his father inherits a cottage in coastal Maine, 16-year-old Wilder Harlow finds himself caught up in a summer that will forever alter the course of his life. Socially awkward and painfully sensitive, Wilder nevertheless finds himself swiftly drawn into an intense friendship with two local teens, Nat and Harper. Abandoned by his mother, fisherman’s son Nat spends his days outdoors, seemingly reluctant to spend time at home. Harper plays at witchcraft—perhaps to exert more control over her troubled family life—and has already developed a thirst for alcohol that goes beyond her friends’ youthful experimentation with drink. The three lonely friends discover the companionship that they so desperately need in each other, vowing to meet again in future summers. Despite their optimistic oath, the triad is short-lived, however. People have been quietly disappearing from Whistler Bay for years, and threatening Polaroid photos of a knife held to the throats of sleeping children have turned up on multiple occasions. When a shocking link between the teens and the so-called Dagger Man of Whistler Bay is revealed the following summer, the friendship is torn asunder. Even after going their separate ways, the events of Whistler Bay follow the trio for the rest of their lives.

Looking Glass Sound involves a great deal of literary experimentation. Unreliable narration in particular plays a prominent role. Wilder becomes a writer, his entire career fixated upon the summers in Whistler Bay and their aftermath, and much of the text is presented as chapters from his unpublished memoir. Perspectives shift throughout the book, and there’s also a recurring thematic emphasis on storytelling. When Wilder asks Nat about a quirk of Harper’s, he casually responds that it’s “not my story to tell.” It’s a brief passage, presented without any obvious significance, but the concept of ownership of stories—who has the “right” to tell them—is one Ward returns to again and again within the book.

While the puzzle-like construction and misdirection of Looking Glass Sound are clever, I found myself more struck by the emotional dimension of the book. The way the characters interact with each other feels brutally real and raw, and because the book follows them over the course of decades, the reader sees Wilder and friends change and grow. The explosive, white-hot infatuations and arguments of their younger years give way in adulthood to frustrated longing and smoldering grudges. Looking Glass Sound has an intimate cast of characters—one could even call it crowded, even claustrophobic—and their separations and reunions over the years result in a melancholy mélange of missed opportunities, interrupted romances, regrets, and awkwardness. The circumstances surrounding the Dagger Man tragedy leave each of the characters laden with trauma and grief, but they find themselves not just haunted by the dead, but each other. Words unspoken, kisses unstolen, and disagreements unresolved all take on weight as years accumulate in the story.

The initial premise of Looking Glass Sound feels a bit like it could have been taken from a scrap filched from Stephen King’s desk, and some readers have expressed frustration with how Ward blurs the line between actual and imagined events. However, despite Ward’s trickiness, attentive readers should be able to navigate the layers and twists. My central complaint would be that the book tends to neglect the horror half of literary horror. Apart from infrequent moments of supernatural peril (which do include an excellent climax, to Ward’s credit), this book left me more sad than frightened. That being said, the empathy and authenticity with which Ward’s walking wounded characters are rendered is thoroughly engrossing. It’s never stated in so many words, but “we haunt each other” is the core message I took away from the book.

Catriona Ward has broken my brain…again. I’d love to give you a well-written synopsis of what happens in Looking Glass Sound but I’m not sure I can—you’d think I was insane. As with so many of her books, Ward creates an unsettling and otherworldly reading experience and in Looking Glass Sound we get part coming-of-age, horror and mystery all mixed into one haunting psychological ride. Her jarring jumps from one point of view to another in a narrative that’s a story within a story within a story leaves you at “wtf” by the end. Her characters are odd and off-putting but you get addicted to them as you wait for what are sure to be twisty or sinister arcs. I’ll read anything Ward writes, regardless of my constant inability to fully comprehend what I read. Whether I love them or not, her books always live rent free in my broken brain after I finish them. 3.5 stars.

Catriona Ward made me a bit nervous with the amount of books she has published in a short time, and yet, every single one has wowed me. I've thought I knew where each one was going, but I was so so wrong. Looking Glass Sound is chilling, has fantastic sense of place, and will keep you wondering and guessing along the way. Good luck sleeping at night!

3 Stars!



Catriona Ward impressed me with The Last House on Needless Street, so I was eager to read something else from her. Looking Glass Sound appeared to be a similar type of novel that would play games with the reader’s mind and make them question reality. I was happy to slip into the book in hopes of finding another bizarre read.



It seemed like an idyllic summer for Wilder Harlow. When his uncle died, he left his cabin in the New England coast to Wilder’s parents. Now the teenager was going to spend a summer by the sea. While there, he meets two friends that he feels will be his friends for life and their friendship grows over the summer. Even the local legend of the Dagger Man could not damper the summer. When Wilder returns the next year, everything seems to have changed and the friends are no longer so close. Then the horrible secret of the Dagger Man comes to light and nothing in Wilder’s life will ever be the same.



Years later, Wilder is still trying to find the peace that he lost that summer as he enters college and finds a friend in Sky. Sky’s motives, however, are not what they seem and Wilder again finds himself adrift in his own mind. As the years pass, Wilder decides to go to the small, coastal town once more to search for the answers that have forever eluded them. As he begins to write a book about that summer, the line between reality and fiction blurs and he is thrown into a whole new world of questioning and suffering. The past holds Wilder in its iron grip and he realizes that he may never be able to leave it behind.



There are a lot of similarities between Looking Glass Sound and The Last House on Needless Street, and readers who enjoyed the first book will find a lot to like in this one as well. Ward does a good job of keeping the reader guessing as to not only what will come next but what is real throughout the course of the novel. It is an uncomfortable read in that it is difficult to get in the flow of the story. It is not easy to unravel the twists and turns Ward throws out that just as it is difficult to discern what is real and what is happening only in Wilder’s mind. Ward asserts that there is power in the written word and sets out to prove it in this novel so that fact and fiction really become meaningless as the world becomes all about perception.



It is this mind-bending story, which is taken to a whole new level in this novel, that keeps it from reaching its fullest potential. While The House on Needless Street had a revelatory ending that brought everything together, Looking Glass Sound ends with just as much of a tangled mess as it started with. Ward weaves a story that takes place in reality, in the mind of Wilder, the writer, and in the pages of the book he is writing. This is all interesting while the story is unraveling, it also becomes the novel’s weakest point. By the time I reached the end of the novel, I really did not care too much about what happened because it had gotten to the point in which I did not think the characters really cared either. It had reached the point where I felt as if I was reading a novel about a fictional novel which made the climax feel interesting than compelling. I think I know what Ward was trying to accomplish in this novel, but the payoff did not match the investment of reading the novel to make it great. It is an interesting novel and one that is worth reading, but I did feel just a little bit let down in the end after the great conclusion to The Last House on Needless Street which, in my opinion, gave it the punch it needed to rise above the level that Looking Glass Sound stayed at in the end. I would still recommend the book, but just feel as if it could have been so much more.



I would like to thank Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for this review copy. Looking Glass Sound is available now.