Thank you for the arc, unfortunately I did not finish it, I just wasn't the right audience for this book.

Did not receive/read in time due to technical error on kindle/tablet. Not having left feedback has due to error has impacted my shelves. Leaving 4 stars.

Confession: NetGalley provided me with an ARC of this book YEARS ago...and I forgot and never read or reviewed it. Until now.

I can't believe this book has only accrued a little over 1,000 ratings since being published. In more ways than one, then, this is something of a sleeper, because once I got around to reading it, I found it to be pretty darn good!

The tone of the story gave me similar vibes as some Elizabeth Hand novels. The world within its pages seems to represent our own, but as you read on you begin to sense the existence of some really unsettling forces beneath the surface. Literally, in the case of The Glittering World!

The Fae in this creepy tale are not the ethereal beauties come to tempt you away to their dazzling court, to luxuriate amidst magical finery. These fae are covered in bark and leaves, and secrete addictive substances that both repulse and delight. They share a hive mind and live under the earth. And they leave changelings in our midst when they need to obtain humans for either purposes of manual labor...or reproduction.

The story follows four friends who travel to a remote colony in Canada when one of them has been bequeathed a house in his grandmother's will. The plan is to get a look at the home before selling it, but Starling Cove is unlike anywhere else these four have been, and leaving turns out to be much more difficult than they imagined.

Each of these four characters has their own section of the book following their POV, giving the reader some very different takes on what transpires in Starling Cove. This structure manages to do a good job of building suspense up until the finale. The secondary characters were engaging as well, many who are leftovers of a defunct artist's community and who also found themselves unable to leave the locale.

If I have one complaint, it's that I don't know that the ending 100% worked for me. As far as the hive leaving, going deeper underground and awaiting the rebirth of their queen, yeah, that worked. But even though the character of Gabe was interesting, I don't know that I was made to care enough about him to be really invested in a pivot in his life's direction as the conclusion to the story.

I am glad I finally got around to reading this, and I think more people should do the same. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC, and apologies for my extreme tardiness!

After what seems like a strong start, this book descends into all sorts of weirdness and just doesn't hold together. I'm a fan of weird, if well done, but The Glittering World did not work for me. It starts off as a changeling story, more or less, but then loses focus as each of four characters gets a section of the book. The narrative pretty much dribbles off, and the most interesting character of the four is barely heard from again after the first section. I forced myself to finish the book, but stopped enjoying it well before the midpoint.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

I really enjoyed this book very much but did not have time to review it before it was archived. Apologies.

I almost bailed on this one, not because of the fairy elements, which has been enough of a reason for previous bailings, but because the writing is so clunky at the beginning. Here's an example:

"Elisa settled on her sit bones in the passenger seat. She whipped out her vintage Konica—her constant companion of late—and shot a picture of her husband behind the wheel. Jason bopped his head and tapped his square, well-manicured nails....

I kept scowling at the page thinking, really, she settled on her sit bones? Why not just say she is in the passenger seat? And for much of the beginning, the author makes the mistake of spending too much time on the details that don't matter, to the extent that it is difficult to focus on what is important. Unless this is just some fae magic, I'm not sure. What I'm sure of is that this is a first novel, because passages like this give that fact away.

For some reason I picked it back up, giving it the benefit of the doubt, and found I somewhat enjoyed the story. The stakes seemed higher than in many faerie stories and I liked the complex relationships between the four major characters. I wanted to know more about Blue and I wanted to know about the "other folk" in the forest. I love the setting, Nova Scotia, so that may have saved it for me more than anything. Also this is one of the more beautiful book covers I've seen in the last few years.

I think if you are into urban fantasy or the fae, this will be more of a book for you than it was for me.

I barely made it through this novel. I don't rightly know exactly why. It was well written but I found myself outside of the whole situation looking in.