A really good story with good characters . I found it confusing in places but worth reading

Literary agent’s receive hundreds of submissions but when Peter Katz receives an unfinished manuscript entitled The Book of Mirrors, it stands out. The author, Richard Flynn is writing a memoir about his time at Princeton in the late 80s, documenting his relationship with the famous Professor Joseph Wieder who was brutally murdered in 1987.

Peter Katz is fascinated, he believes the full manuscript will reveal the murderer and make him a fortune. But Richard Flynn has died and the finished manuscript is missing, so he hires a detective to try and piece together the end of the story.

This is a very odd book, it is a murder mystery but it’s also an exploration into memory, love and obsession. It’s also odd because I really enjoyed it, loved every page and couldn’t put it down but then a week later I could barely remember it … Is this book trying to keep it’s own secrets but making me forget???!!!

I flicked back through a few pages and it all came back to me – vibrant characters, great pacing, good scene-setting, and terrific subplots. It has literary overtones too so if you like mysteries but you also like something a bit high-brow then this is definitely the book for you.

It might be a while but I’ll definitely re-read this one day – I just wonder if I’ll remember it afterwards!

4 Bites

This book kept me guessing all of the way through. After the doubt put into my mind by what Wieder told Flynn about memories, I realised that I couldn't trust anything the characters said. Memories can be altered and invented by your brain because of a conversation you've overheard or what you want to believe. Revealing this to the reader messes with their perception of the story and adds a whole lot more intrigue. It ensures that you want to read to the end and see if the truth is ever really uncovered.
I thought all of the characters brought something to the story in their own way and I loved the ending as well because it really explained why the killer did what they did. Where a lot of books simply reveal who the murderer was and skip over the details quickly, this book explained the motivation behind it. Additionally, it didn't leave me with lots of annoying unanswered questions.
​The only drawback for me was that the first chapter took me a while to get into. However once I had read to the end of Flynn's manuscript excerpt, I was hooked.
I enjoyed this book very much and would give it 4.5 out of 5 and absolutely recommend it. Definitely worth going and getting a copy. It was gripping, brilliantly manipulative and a satisfying read.

The Book of Mirrors is an intriguing novel of three parts. For me, Part One was the best and held my interest the most, which sadly waned as I got further into the novel.

Richard Flynn is a wannabe novelist writing his memoirs in Part One.

When they land on the desk of big shot literary agent Peter Katz, he immediately wants to know more and attempts to contact Richard, whose manuscript has been delivered unfinished.

But getting hold of Flynn is going to prove more difficult than Katz could imagine.

The reason for his intrigue? Flynn claims to know exactly what happened in the late 1980s to Professor Joseph Wieder, a long unsolved brutal murder.

But Flynn's story is only the beginning, and as the novel splits into its 2nd and 3rd parts we begin to wonder if anyone really knows the exact truth about the Professors death.

Packed full of unreliable characters, the Book of Mirrors has lots of twists to satisfy most thriller readers, but sadly for me it fell a little flat. Still, an enjoyable read. Just don't expect a lot of 'wow' moments.

Having said all the above, I have seen mixed reviews for this, so you may just love it...!

Peter Katz is a literary agent who receives an untitled manuscript ‘The Book of Mirrors’. Is this the confession of a killer? How can you believe what you read if you cannot believe your own memories? This is an unusual thriller which kept me enthralled from page 1. With twists and turns and unexpected dead ends this novel will keep you awake and reading into the small hours.

Thank you Netgalley, publishers and author for this advance review copy.

The Book of Mirrors begins by been a book within a book. Literary agent Peter Katz receives a manuscript called (funnily enough) The Book of Mirrors, the 'true life's story of a Princeton student and his relationship with a famous psychology professor. The professor ends up murdered. The culprit is never arrested,and the manuscript is seemingly heading towards an unveiling or possibly a confession. Katz is intrigued and sand the rest of the book but the author is dead and there is no sign of the completed book. So he hires journalist John Keller to either find the manuscript or find out what really happened over 25 years ago.

And for me that's where this book starts to go wrong. The first part, where we read Richard Flynns account I was pulled right in. But as we go into John's account of his investigation it began to lose me a bit. I was still engaged enough keep at it but a few things brought me out of the story. Firstly there are four point of views in this novel. the writer,the agent, the journalist and the cop but the pitch and tone of each narrative doesn't change. This makes for quite a flat reading experience. Then there's some pointless plot lines...why is Sam even in this story? What does she add? Her whole presence is a pointless distraction.

If you like thrillers you'll probably like this but it reads more like a self published novel rather than one from a big publishing house. 3 stars for the premise and first section.

A literary agent receives an extract from a book by a man called Richard Flynn.
In the book, Flynn describes the events leading up to a notorious murder in the 1980s, that of a Princeton professor.
Peter Katz, the agent, is intrigued, and wants to find more when the narrative ends, and he enlists a journalist to investigate.
The journalist then continues the enquiry, until it is finally taken over by a retired policeman.
The original narrative seems straightforward, but then other peoples’ versions of the event and surrounding times start to appear, and you start to wonder who is reliable and how much is memory and how much imagination.
How reliable are all those involved, and do they have their own agendas?
The end of the book was very satisfying, but still left some questions unanswered, which I found pleasing.
The title is very appropriate, when you stand in a hall of mirrors, which is the true image?

A very good, intriguing read.

Thanks to Random House UK Cornerstone for the opportunity to read this book.

I gave this a really good go, but unfortunately I couldn't finish. The authors voice just didn't work for me. I couldn't get invested in the story and as such found myself putting the book down after only a few pages at a time. I don't DNF lightly but this just wasn't for me. Sorry.

An interesting approach to story-telling, but not the gripping thriller I was expecting. 3/5 stars.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for the e-ARC of this book.

My review will be spoiler-free in the sense that I won’t talk about “whodunnit”. However, I will discuss what this book is not and that might be considered a spoiler by some. You’ve been warned!

Perhaps I went into this book with the wrong expectations. From the blurb and the intriguing first part of the story – full as it is of mentions of secret memory manipulations experiments – I was expecting the narrative to develop as a thrilling, complex, mind-bending mystery, something akin to Danny Boyle’s film, Trance.

Well, that’s not what this book is. In fact, The Book of Mirrors is more an exploration of memory than a thriller or mystery. If you’re interested in a meditation on the subjectivity and unreliability of recollection or memory loss, then this is a story for you. If you’re after an edge-of-your-seat whodunnit, then I’d pick up something else.

The story is divided in three parts, each told by a different narrator. The first is a partial manuscript, reproduced by the literary agent to whom it was submitted. This, in my opinion, is the best part of the book. The narrator promises to demystify an unsolved murder which happened over twenty years ago. In the process he gives us an involving story of love, loss, intrigue, cutthroat academia, rumours of dubious psychological experimentation and boozy late-night conversations. In short, when the manuscript cuts out, the extract ending abruptly before the murder, having set up many suspects but not giving us any answers, I couldn’t wait to read more.

This is the transition to Part Two, when the story is taken up by a journalist hired by the literary agent to track down the rest of the story. This part is full of dead ends and I started to think “the final reveal had better be pretty darn spectacular or I’m going to be disappointed”.

I continued to have this thought during Part Three, which is narrated by a detective who was assigned to the original murder case. His investigations at least lead somewhere, but are even more mundane than those of the journalist. And when the final reveal came, I was disappointed by its banality.

A three-part, three-narrator structure is a great idea and had the potential to inject dynamism into the story by letting us enjoy different voices and perspectives on a set of events. Sadly, I didn’t feel the three voices were different enough from each other to shake up the progression of the story, to inject some new life into the tale. They were all male, frustrated, nostalgic and melancholy. As a result, by part Three, I found the narrative tone had become somewhat monotonous.

Overall: know what you’re getting into before reading The Book of Mirrors. After Part One, this isn’t a gripping whodunnit, but rather a somewhat sombre reflection on memory and how we each construct our own reality through subjective and malleable recollections.

The Book of Mirrors is the story of a murder of a university professor which took place in the 1980s. The crime is unsolved and the case closed, until one of the professor’s students writes a manuscript containing their recollections of the situation. The student dies before they can get the manuscript published, but their initial draft of the first few chapters ends up in the hands of a literary agent. Tasked with completing the story, the agent attempts to decipher the many deceptions and complex relationships between the subjects involved in order to uncover the truth.

I’m aware that this book has been tipped to be one to look out for but honestly, I really didn’t enjoy reading it. I found it to be incredibly badly written. The authors first language isn’t English and I think this is the reason that the sentence structure is clumsy, confusing and sometimes downright pointless. As a random example:

“So on that morning (I hate sentences that start with so, such bad grammar) when his wife had been killed, Derek rang the professor whose home number he’d found previously rummaging through Anne’s stuff.”

See what I mean? You can understand what is meant but it doesn’t exactly flow. I found this very off-putting. There’s also an intensely annoying girlfriend character with an amazing ability to turn off her emotions:

“‘you know, a colleague told me today that she’s just found out she’s pregnant. She was so happy! I went to the restroom and cried for 10 minutes, I just couldn’t stop…(her boyfriend pats her hair)…Maybe now you ought to tell me that I’m not alone and that you love me, at least a little bit,’ she said. ‘At least that’s what would have happened in a chick lit book.’ ‘Sure, you’re not alone and I love you a little bit Hon’…(she doesn’t believe him)…’All right, I’ve pulled myself back together, I’m sorry. You know, you seem really caught up in this story.”

Because that’s how women react when they talk about longing for a baby with a partner who admits that he doesn’t love her.

There’s only a few female characters but they’re often described in terms of their attractiveness to men. Annoying! As most of the characters are older men (the literary agent turned sleuth, a retired police officer, his still serving friends, the professor etc.) it’s hard to work out who is who and in which timeframe they’re currently in. All the jumping backwards and forwards got quite confusing (however, this does get better as the book progresses).

I thought the story was incredibly slow to get moving. At almost halfway through the murder investigation was just starting to get going. Coupled with not knowing who was who I started to get quite bored.

The main issue that I had with this book was the outcome of the murder enquiry. As always, there’s no spoilers in my reviews but suddenly, a random piece of information is dropped in to the story which leaves no doubt as to what happened. There is literally no way that the reader can predict a major factor in the outcome of the investigation. What is the point of writing a whodunnit if you’re not given all of the necessary information? Surely these books should give the reader several options for the murderer, then a few red herrings, then slowly reveal what’s happened based on clues that the reader could have picked up on?

In conclusion, I found this book quite dull, quite confusing, a bit annoying and difficult to read. I wouldn’t recommend it.

Book of Mirrors

Peter Katz a literary agent receives a partial manuscript about an unsolved murder from 1987 at Princeton where famous Professor Joseph Weider was brutally murdered in his own home.
Katz is intrigued and decides to find out what really happened he tries to contact the author Richard Flynn who is unable to tell him where the rest of the manuscript is thus starts a trail full of twists and turns you won't see coming but with memories people remember things differently so just who you you trust?
This was my first book by E O Chirovici and I really enjoyed it wasn't what I had expected but made me realise people remember things differently especially when there's a time lapse. It doesn't mean a person is lying they just remember it in a different way.
I still have one question tho?

I had high hopes for The Book of Mirrors but sadly I was left somewhat disappointed with it.

I found this book to be a quite slow going and felt that nothing really happened. Even at the conclusion I felt somewhat disheartened by it.

I'm sure others will love this book but it wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK and the author for the chance to review.

Mixed narrator novel - a good read with a twisty plot and switches which work well.

Review is live on my blog, will show up on Goodreads sometime later.

In a Flutter: Interesting
Fluttering Thoughts:
Worldbuilding:There’s a 1970’s Princeton/New Jersey setting for the Wieder case, and a set of current NY, Missouri settings as the POV changes and the characters investigate. I didn’t get a sense of a particular atmosphere, tbh – except for the Potosi Correctional Center, which stood out for me.
Characters: The multiple-POV brought under the spotlight a few characters, as the one actively investigating the Wieder case/Flynn’s story changed. While they were interesting characters, pretty much all of them, with diverse backgrounds and stories, I didn’t really have an emotional connection with either one. I think my fav was Roy, but then again I have a fondness for detectives, particularly those who’ve screwed up a bit in their personal lives and managed to overcome part or all of those issues.
Plot: Aside the Wieder case, that was a story on its own that grew and became more layered and interesting as POVs changed and we learned more, there were the stories of the POVs themselves evolving as they did the investigating. It was an interesting and complex blend, certainly more intricate than a straight-forward Wieder-case investigation. But while reading things felt a bit static, more character-oriented than action-oriented for sure (hence the more literary feeling of the novel). It wasn’t a downside for me, because I love mysteries and things on that front kept becoming more nuanced and layered and interesting, so my mind was catered to even if my adrenaline level wasn’t.
Writing: First person, past tense narrative, multiple POVs. Can’t say I got a sense of different voices between characters. The style has a nice flow.
Curb Appeal: Cool cover, hooking blurb, but the actual hook for me was the fact that the author is a co-national of mine who’s published nationally and is now making it UK/worldwide. I wanted to read this novel, and I wasn’t disappointed.

I recommend The Books of Mirrors to fans of classic mysteries, with the mellow tempo and interesting twists and turns. In a way, it was a collection of stories about broken hearts, some mended some not, about people dealing with things that hurt them, about how one person perceives something (or someone) versus how others do. I enjoyed the layered view The Books of Mirrors presented, and how it turned an event and the people involved on all sides, revealing all sorts of facets.
I had a really good time reading it!

I had a good time reading The Book of Mirrors. This is one of those books filled with twists and turns that leads you in five hundred different directions until you don’t know where the hell you are or where you’re going. I love books like that, that confuse you and make you scratch your head wondering what’s going on. There’s something I really like about the prose in The Book of Mirrors. The language is flows easily and is engaging. The whole time I felt like a good friend was telling me a very crazy story over tea and muffins. This is the kind of book that sucks you in, holds you tight and doesn’t let go until you’ve reached the end. This is a very original and interesting murder mystery. I think this is the first time I’ve read a novel-within-a-novel structure and it works really well. I liked the fact each section of the novel is from a different point of view. I really enjoyed this.

In the author's own words this is a whydunit rather than a whodunit - the whole thing spins on unreliable narratives, and unfortunately for me there were too many voices.
It was really clever though and I predict great things but I just felt a little bit flat when I finished it.

You know those movies with a lot of exposition and little action? Reading The Book of Mirrors felt like watching such a movie. Add a noir feel to it, and you lost my interest (therefore it took me over a week to finish it).

Official blurb:
"Sold in 38 territories around the world, THE BOOK OF MIRRORS is a truly global phenomenon.
ONE MAN'S TRUTH IS ANOTHER MAN'S LIE.
When big-shot literary agent Peter Katz receives an unfinished manuscript entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued.
The author, Richard Flynn is writing a memoir about his time at Princeton in the late 80s, documenting his relationship with the famous Professor Joseph Wieder.
One night in 1987, Wieder was brutally murdered in his home and the case was never solved.
Peter Katz is hell-bent on getting to the bottom of what happened that night twenty-five years ago and is convinced the full manuscript will reveal who committed the violent crime.
But other people’s recollections are dangerous weapons to play with, and this might be one memory that is best kept buried."

I was extremely excited about reading a book by a Romanian author sold in 38 territories around the world. I even heard talk about a movie based on it, so I was sure it had to be great. Unfortunately, it's completely not my style.

I need to connect with at least one character in the book to like it. I thought that character would be Richard Flynn, even if his book within the book felt lifeless. I came to despise Laura Baines. And then I felt cheated because it turned out that Flynn wasn't completely honest in his manuscript. So I stopped liking/rooting for him.

Enter the journalist who felt indifferent in the end. Except for a phone call he had with Laura, he showed little emotion. Not even his f**k-buddy dumping him made him take action. So he made me feel nothing.

Then came the ex-cop who needed to solve the mystery of the murder as his last big thing. Now that I think about it, all the narrators felt like they had the same voice. They could have been the same person and it would have made little difference. And they were all talk, and no action. It was all very anticlimatic when the murderer was finally confronted. It felt like a bunch of old people fooling around.

Also, I disliked the ending. I need closure when reading a book. I need to know that everybody got what they deserved to some extent. It's hard to explain without giving away huge spoilers, so I'll just leave it at that.

Needless to say, I didn't like The Book of Mirrors. The second star is because it was written by a Romanian author, and I wish him all the best in the world. I hope he becomes known worldwide.

Wow! This book is so unlike anything else I've ever read. It's also extremely clever, well-paced and... addictive.
At first glance, "The Book of Mirrors" may seem to be just another old-timey mystery novel. But once you start peeling off the layers, you're shocked by how much is revealed to you.
I'm searching my mind, trying to find a novel I could compare it to but I come up empty. This book is one of its own kind. Thank you so much to both the amazing author and NetGalley.

Perception is reality?

This novel is a crime mystery in three distinct parts each written from the perspective of a different character and at different times.

So, does it work?

In short, for this reader it didn’t work. I applaud the author for attempting something new but not only was the format confusing but the style of all three sections was also insufficiently differentiated to assist in this respect.

On the face of it the majority of the book concerns itself with the search for a manuscript written by Richard Flynn (one of the main protagonists) related to the death of Joseph Wieder, a well-known psychology professor. Only the early segment is available and purports to be a real-life account of his death and the events leading up to it. So, the search is on for the remainder of the document

Another manuscript is also key to the plot and has established Laura Baines as an eminent psychologist after Wieder’s death. Did she steal his final book? Was she his lover, his killer or both?

The third and major section of the story is told from the perspective of Roy Freeman, a detective who was involved in the original case. 25 years after the professor’s murder the retired cop decides to investigate further. He makes progress but the facts are confusing and he struggles to make sense of the conflicting evidence. In fact, towards the end of the book there is an unexpected confession which clarifies much of what happened on the fateful day. Whilst this might be what actually happens sometimes in real life it was disappointing that the author had to resort to this solution.

The novel is therefore really a cross between a murder mystery and a commentary on what is reality and who knows the truth and how they see it. It’s well written despite this; the characters are well formed; the plot develops well but in the end, it disappoints. It’s a decent enough read for a rainy Sunday afternoon but it’s not likely to be remembered for long.

mr zorg

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

Finally finished this thoroughly dreary story....
Only finished it because I'm too stubborn to give up (no matter how bad it is!)