A twisty, mind bender of a story. Who is writing the notes? Why the green ink? Is it Wilder's former best friend, turned enemy? Set in Maine, in a lonely cottage, this book is creepy vibes!

I will never fully understand how Catriona Ward's mind works. This was a wild ride. I started out listening to the audio which was really well done, but alternated with the physical copy which I think was a good choice otherwise I may have been confused. The way the books within the book all wove together was so intriguing. As always, Ward includes a great setting that adds so much to the story. My only gripe here is that I was expecting there to be a bit more about the serial killer in the bay. Overall, I still liked it and Ward continues to be an auto-buy author for me.

I can't wait to discuss this one with our buddy readers for PM Reads.

Looking Glass Sound is a psychological horror novel about the power of memory and the dangers of nostalgia. The story follows Wilder Harlow, a man who returns to the small Maine town where he spent his summers as a child. He is there to write a book about the summer of 1989, when he and his friends Nat and Harper witnessed a horrific crime. But as Wilder begins to write, he starts to question his own memories. Is he misremembering what happened? Or is something more sinister at work?

The novel is told in two alternating timelines: the present day, when Wilder is writing his book, and the summer of 1989, when the crime takes place. This structure allows Ward to explore the ways in which memory can be unreliable and how the past can come back to haunt us.

Looking Glass Sound is a beautifully written and atmospheric novel that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. It is a story about the power of secrets, the dark side of nostalgia, and the dangers of forgetting.

Here are some of the things that I liked about the book:

The writing is beautiful and atmospheric. Ward does a great job of capturing the feel of a small Maine town in the summer.
The story is suspenseful and twisty. I was kept guessing until the very end.
The characters are complex and well-developed. I felt invested in their lives and wanted to know what would happen to them.
Overall, I thought Looking Glass Sound was a great book. It is a psychological horror novel that will stay with you long after you finish reading it. I would definitely recommend it to fans of the genre.

Catriona Ward has such an incredible way of weaving a suspenseful story and her newest release, LOOKING GLASS SOUND, is no exception!

One of the reasons that I love Ward’s novels so much is that each one is so different from the last. In LOOKING GLASS SOUND, this was a slower burn that had more of a psychological feel to it. I really enjoyed the story within the story and how, as the reader, I was left questioning what was real and what was imagined.

There are so many elements of LOOKING GLASS SOUND to breakdown and digest after you finish reading. This is certainly a book that will have you thinking back on earlier sections to pick apart and analyze. I know I will be thinking about this one a lot more but encourage readers to pick this one up, especially if you’ve been a fan of Ward’s past work! I cannot wait to see what this incredible author has in store for readers in the future!

This book utterly blew me away. I admired so much the meta quality of the story. I won't write much about it, in large part because I don't want to give anything away, but also because I want to spend more time piecing together the meaning hidden within it. I will say that -- although the story is entirely different, the style and layers within this really reminded me of House of Leaves, which is one of my favorite books. I absolutely love when a book or film makes you go back and recontextualize and reexamine everything you've read, and it is no small feat for an author to pull that off successfully.

Layered plot had me struggling to keep up, but tied it all together in the end very nicely! This was my first by Catriona Ward, and the setting of a New England town is all it took to get me excited for this one. Towards the end, some of the narratives became confusing, and it may be even better if I get around to reading it the second time!

Thanks NetGalley for this arc, all opinions are my own.

Thank-you NetGalley for the ARC!

Catriona Ward has done it again! I absolutely LOVED this book and I cannot stop thinking about it. If you are a lover of gothic fiction, this is the book for you. I was not prepared for the twists and it was pure perfection.

Catriona Ward is an ambitious writer, and the plot constructions of her most recent novels prove that. With "Looking Glass Sound," she has taken on the challenge of a book within a book within a book structure, and it works pretty well for the majority of the story. Ward was holding a lot of different plot threads here, but she made the fatal mistake of having the least interesting storyline be the book’s anchor and ending. Things just didn’t come together in a satisfying way for me. That being said, there’s a lot to admire here. Ward’s writing is pretty great, and she does a good job of bringing the locales to life with vivid imagery.

Told in 1st person from Wilder’s unpublished memoir, 3rd person of Pearl. Was good until about 75% in then got weird and confusing. Wasn’t a fan of the ending. Beautiful writing like always. Loved the characters, setting, and literally everything hence 3.5 rounded to 4 stars.

I think that I just need to come to terms with the fact that Catriona Ward is an absolute genius. At this point I need to accept that she is going to be an auto-buy for me, and hopefully for you too. Catriona Ward is, in my opinion, comparable to the likes of M. Night, she can take an incredibly simple idea and turn it into something complex and weirdly beautiful. Take "Looking Glass Sound" for example, she crafted something that was already a nightmarish coming of age but then she added layer upon layers of storytelling, making it into something I have never read in my life I truly applaud her for that. I can't reveal too much about "Looking Glass Sound" because it is best to go into it completely blind and hopefully have a *shocked Pikachu* moment I think a lot of us readers had reading this story. It's a truly brilliant story and I highly recommend it! Happy Reading! x

Catriona Ward is an author I feel that is best enjoyed knowing as little as possible before reading. Looking Glass Sound was the second book I have read from this author and I look forward to experiencing more works in the future. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for advanced copies of the physical and audiobook for review.

This book has a little bit of everything. Coming of age, horror, monsters, friendship and a psychological thriller. It is the perfect book club read for Halloween!! I loved it

Summary:
Reminiscing about a childhood killer from his childhood vacation town, Wilder writes a book/memoir about the body that he and his long lost friends find.

Title: "Looking Glass Sound"
Author: Catriona Ward
⭐ 1/5
🌶️ 0/5

Tropes:
Unreliable narrator
Serial killer
Small town horror

Deb’s Thoughts:
First of all, I really really like Catriona Ward. Her book, Sundial, was one of my favorite books last year, but this one just does not stand as solidly as her previous work. The story takes an extremely long time to get to the main point of the plot and the friendship between the children is not believable. While the narrator is supposed to be losing grip on reality, it reads extremely confusing in previous and current tense.

Triggers:
Serial killer
Murder
Pranks gone wrong

Book Review: Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

Looking Glass Sound is a mystery and suspense novel about a young man haunted by a series of murders that took place near his family’s summer vacation cottage.

Wilder Harlow was just a socially awkward teenager when he went to Whistler Bay for the first time and immediately made friends with Harper and Nathaniel. The three will spend the next two summers together until a series of revelations about a local serial killer and a “peeping Tom” tear their friendships apart. Wilder has barely recovered from the shock of the previous summer when he starts college and meets fellow student Sky. Sky helps Wilder through his debilitating insomnia and writer’s block but he’s keeping secrets and has his own agenda.

Like her previous novels Catriona Ward has filled this novel with unreliable narrators, twists and paranormal elements. The reader can’t trust anything that’s happening and the lines between villains and heroes get blurry. But it’s also beautifully written (I highlighted so many great quotes) and it kept my interest all the way until the end.

4 stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I don’t really know how to rate this. It was extremely confusing and it’s like, a book in a book in a book in a book with the same characters but with different names. It’s hard to tell what writing is part of what book/real life. And The characters read very young. I thought they were like, 12 not 17ish.

All that said, I enjoyed it enough and was curious enough to keep reading for the most part I was just confused.

Thank you net galley for the eARC.

A horror version of Alice Through the Looking Glass, but instead of Alice we have Wilder. This was not at all what I expected, but then again Catriona Ward has a knack for doing that. She takes the creepy and justifies it. She takes the unsettling and settles down in it. Once I understood what was happening, I was almost afraid to keep reading. She is a creator not just a writer!

I read Catriona Ward's The Last House on Needless Street last year and was totally blown away by it. I thought it was creative, inventive, and fully engrossing. I say that to say, my bar was set very high for this new novel; unfortunately, I was extremely let down.

Looking Glass Sound starts off strongly enough with a solid tale about a group of three friends at a coastal summer location. Then a couple of mysteries are thrown in the mix with some odd photographs and missing children. This was all working great for me...but then the story left the coast and moved forward in time and just completely ran off the rails.

I would 100% have DNF'd this book if I didn't want to read it in order to write a review. It was just such a mess. I can't figure out at all what Ward was trying to achieve or communicate. It read like meta-fiction, which I guess is intentional but it did not work at all for me personally. Plot-wise there was never a clear rising action, climax, or falling action and resolution. I'm still not sure exactly what I read in terms of what was real and what was imagined or created in the book/a book (still not sure how many books there were). Wilder himself could have been an interesting character, but even he fell flat without much clear development.

I'm really sad at how much of a miss this was for me because I think of Ward as being able to deliver a mind-blowing mystery or horror novel. Unfortunately, this was not it.

Looking Glass Sound commands your full attention. This intensely unsettling literary horror novel combines coming of age, serial killer, a little bit of witchcraft, and a lot of complex emotional trauma into the subgenres of both metaphysical and psychological horror. Ward will force you to question the reliability of every character, the blurred lines between truth and fiction, and whether or not memories are real or imagined.

I listened to the audiobook at different points in the book and enjoyed the narration by both narrators. However, the mind-bending complexity of this dark tale reads better in print. I often reread scenes or flags sections I *thought* would be essential to reread later in the story. I fully support the audiobook but caution that you should not leave your physical or electronic copy far behind for this clever tale.

This is one of those books that has your mind spinning by the time you finish reading. It's definitely multi-layered and I'm not sure I can fully understand or explain exactly what happened. The story follows Wilder Harlow, a lonely teen boy, who goes with his parents to a summer cabin on the coast of Maine. While there, he meets Nat (Nathaniel) and Harper. They become friends, sort of, and by the end of the second summer, events have wreaked havoc in their lives and the small Maine town. The writing is superb and the layers of this book-within-a-book suspenseful horror had me turning the pages until I finished.

The ending was a bit much and hard to follow but I wanted to know what happens with the characters even though I didn't like any of them. I finished this book but I can't say it's one that I enjoyed. That being said, I did like the writing style and will definitely be checking out more titles by Catriona Ward.

Thank you to Catriona Ward, NetGalley, and Tor Publishing Group for an advanced eBook in exchange for my honest review.

This started out so interesting and promising, but ultimately the twists and turns got to be too much. The setting was incredibly picturesque and the first half of the book was fascinating - learning the relationship between Wilder and his friends in the small Maine town where his uncle owns a home and how everything falls apart over a fateful summer. Then we move on to Wilder in college and his friend Sky and this is where things start to get a little tricky. Finally, the latter part of the book is Wilder back trying to finish his memoir and this is where the twists and turns start to come undone. Overall, intriguing but didn’t pull through for me.