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.

Book Review: Looking Glass Sound 🌊

“Writing is power…it’s a way of keeping someone alive forever…maybe the writer keeps them prisoner. You can trap someone in a book, their soul - make a prison of work. A cage”

⁉️: Would you ever write a memoir or novel based on something that happened to you?

Wilder Harlow, who remembers his childhood at Whistler Bay in Maine and the blood stained path of the killer who stalked their home. The lives of Wilder, Nat, and Harper as they spend their summers in Maine.

As the story progresses, the multifaceted thriller demands your attention as Nat and Skye try to make sense of their past by writing their versions of the events as they happened, but then details begin to get fuzzy as they remember the serial killer. Wilder, too, has memories of talking to him, but then as you read the unsettling novel - it becomes clear that his memory itself has become his nemesis. And, I think that’s part of the horror that the author calls attention to - that dark memories become horrific in time.

This was my first Catriona Ward novel, and I enjoyed her experimental, psychological thriller. This was a 4 star ✨ for me. The novel released on August 8th!

Thank you @Tornightfire and @CatorianaWard for the gifted finished copy!

Review of Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

Now this is the Catriona Ward I have come to know and love. I DNF’ed her last book Little Eve and so I was a little apprehensive going into this one. But the last house on needless Street is one of my favorite books ever so I will always give her another chance. Thankfully, this time I was not let down. I absolutely loved this book. I recommend a combination of reading a physical copy and the audiobook if you can do both. Her books definitely are intricate with lots of characters and timelines so it’s best if you can read along, but the audio also cannot be beat. I was engrossed in this one immediately and loved it all the way to the end. The only words that ever come to mind with her are unique and clever. Definitely give this one a try.

Synopsis:

It is the story about the sun-drenched summer days of his youth in Whistler Bay, and the blood-stained path of the killer that stalked his small vacation town. About the terrible secret he and his companions, Nat and Harper, discovered entombed in the coves off the bay. And how the pact they swore that day echoed down the decades, forever shaping their lives.

But the more Wilder writes, the less he trusts himself and his memory. He starts to see things that can’t be real – notes hidden in the cabin, from an old friend now dead; a woman with dark hair drowning in the icy waters below, calling for help; entire chapters he doesn’t recall typing, appearing overnight. Who, or what, is haunting Wilder?

No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to fear that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does.

This is my 3rd Catriona Ward book and, honestly, I've decided she can do no wrong. They're mentally tolling, but oh so worth it, and Looking Glass Sound is no different.

It is so intricately plotted, it's moody, and it'll have you wondering wth hell did I just read.

Wow, "Looking Glass Sound" really took me for a ride! Set in Maine, this book follows Wilder Harlow as he writes about his past, and let me tell you, it's filled with twists and turns.

Catriona Ward's writing is sharp and to the point. She paints a vivid picture of Maine's beauty while still giving you the chills with the horrors lurking around. The characters? They're complex and intriguing, especially Wilder, who's struggling with memory and reality.

The plot's a real puzzle, and I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure it out. It's not just a horror novel; it's a deep dive into friendship, betrayal, and the power of stories.

I'm giving it 4 stars because, while it's a fantastic read, it's not quite perfect. But if you're into literary horror with a twist, this one's for you. It's dark, it's enchanting, and it's definitely worth a read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a free e-arc in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed Looking Glass sound. For the first 65% of the book I found myself drawn in by the characters and their story. Then things took a bit of a turn and this book became quite the mental workout. Looking Glass Sound descended into madness in the second part of the book, and it seems to have been done well. For now, I'm left a little confused and can't share any strong opinion of the book. I have a feeling this is a book that will grow on me with re-reads as piece together more clues and plot points. If you're looking for an unhinged thriller with interesting characters, this is the one for you.

This is Catriona Ward at her Stephen King-iest, which is not a bad thing at all! I was so sucked into this multilayered, ever-unfolding meta novel, and I couldn't stop reading once I got a few chapters in. The serial killer plot is a bit of a red herring, with the real meat of the story being the push-and-pull of the friends' (enemies'? lovers'? all of the aboves'?) desires to 'own' the story of what they experienced (or perhaps what they were in proximity to?). Ward is so good at presenting a straightforward narrative and then twisting it and turning it so wholly over the next few hundred pages that by the end, you can scarcely recognize the book you thought you were reading -- that's not for everyone, but it's certainly for this reader!

I wanted to like this book more than I did. I tried to become interested in the characters but they were inherently unlikable. The beginning seemed to drag through the mendacity of their lives and the slight drama. It picked up. And then it went completely off the rails and became something of a mess. Weirdly, I was kind of more interested in the story and trying to follow it once this happened. The entire thing felt familiar, too. I'm left with the feeling that I have read this all before.

This is another one of those books that I think that I would have preferred to read in a physical form, rather than listen to audio. There’s just so many switches in timelines, viewpoints, and things I would want to go back and check and make a connection. Over all it is a good book, it just has a complicated storyline where things start making sense the farther into the book you go. It is an inceptionesque book, with murder and secrets and even a bit of romance all wrapped up in one.

In a cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow has begun the last book he will ever write.

It is the story about the sun-drenched summer days of his youth in Whistler Bay, and the blood-stained path of the killer that stalked his small vacation town. About the terrible secret he and his companions, Nat and Harper, discovered entombed in the coves off the bay. And how the pact they swore that day echoed down the decades, forever shaping their lives.

But the more Wilder writes, the less he trusts himself and his memory. He starts to see things that can’t be real – notes hidden in the cabin, from an old friend now dead; a woman with dark hair drowning in the icy waters below, calling for help; entire chapters he doesn’t recall typing, appearing overnight. Who, or what, is haunting Wilder?

No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to fear that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does.

Looking Glass Sound by Catronia Ward is a captivating read that intertwines intricate storytelling with a unique blend of suspense and supernatural elements. Ward's writing style keeps you engaged throughout, and her ability to create a haunting atmosphere adds depth to the narrative. While some parts may seem slightly convoluted, the overall plot is intriguing and thought-provoking. The characters are well-developed, and their struggles feel genuine, making it easy to empathize with their journeys. Despite a few moments of pacing issues, the book successfully delivers a sense of mystery and a touch of the uncanny, making it a solid four-star choice for readers who enjoy enigmatic tales.

I think I’m too stupid to understand and enjoy this book. Nothing made sense in all of the wrong ways.

It could just be me, but I found it very difficult to keep up with what was going on in the book. I feel like the pacing was kind of off, and I found myself struggling to keep up each chapter and also struggled to understand what was happening.

The story itself was haunting, mysterious, and very intriguing and I found myself interested in discovering what occurred in Whistler Bay. This is a story of betrayal, witchcraft, friendship, and a murderer named The Dagger Man. One thing I always love about Wards books is her writing style.

This was one of those “book within a book” stories and while I find those intriguing, this one missed the mark for me. I think if the entire story was JUST about The Dagger Man and didn’t include anything else, I would have loved it more. Despite that, the ending was shocking and it saved the story for me a bit. I truly didn’t see a lot of the twists throughout the book coming.

The story jumps from timeline to timeline and person to person and I think there were too many POV’s and timeline jumps. I was often confused about what I was reading, and would have to go back and re-read to get a clue as to what was going on.

Overall, this was intriguing, but the pacing was just off for me and there were a few too many plot points to keep up with. Other than that, I think this was a thrilling, interesting read!