Catriona Ward has recently become one of my favourite authors, and although this wasn’t my favourite book they’ve written, it’s still didn’t disappoint. The author has such a gift with crafting dark and disturbing stories. The atmosphere was eerie and kept me in the edge of my seat the entire time. Thank you to Netgalley, the author, and publisher for a chance to read and review this book.

Another cracking read from Cat Ward who is one of the best Horror writers there is, this is a beguiling psychological thriller that is simultaneously atmospheric, heart breaking and frightening, I can't wait to see what Cat does next.

As with every Catriona Ward book i have read i loved this book. I dont know what it is about the authors writing but i just feel compelled to read and read and not put it down. The book so creepy and complex, the characters strange and intriguing and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Oh Catriona, why have you done me dirty like this? I've come to rely on you as my go to author for all things twisted and mind bending, but this new release was so damn dull. I actually feel offended by how much of a hot mess this was. It just didn't reach the heady heights of her other work and no one is more disappointed than me.

the character's were two dimensional, I cared for none of them. In fact I wishing them ill will just to liven the whole thing up. the plot was boring, nothing happened. And the constant addition of name changes for the same characters was so annoying.

The structure and the premise could have made for an explosive novel, but it just didn't go to the extremes hat it could have gone.

A fantastically atmospheric read that left me with goosebumps whilst I was reading. A brilliant read

Looking Glass Sound - Catriona Ward

Having previously read The Last House on Needless Street and Sundial by this author (and rating them 5 and 4 stars) I was so excited to read this new addition to this authors collection. I found that the atmospheric, dark and disturbing writing was there as with previous books but something was just missing from this one for me, and I can't quite put my finger on what it was. I really enjoyed the setting and story line, but I personally found that I struggled to connect with the characters and found the pace a little slow. Having said this I will 100% be reading more from this author in the future as this one was obviously just not for me.

Thanks so much Netgalley, Serpent's Tail, Viper and Profile Books for this e-arc in return for my honest thoughts and opinions.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward is a mind-bending and cleverly crafted tale that follows Wilder Harlow, who begins writing his final book in a lonely cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast. The story revolves around his childhood summer companions and the killer that haunted their small New England town. Wilder’s memoir is later stolen by his onetime best friend, Sky, who turns it into a sensational bestselling novel called Looking Glass Sound.

Wilder’s memories and fiction begin to blend together, causing his grip on reality to waver. This uncertainty intensifies when he stumbles upon hidden notes in the cottage, written in Sky’s distinct green ink. Catriona Ward adeptly delves into the protagonist’s battle to confront the haunting memories of his past before it becomes too late.

I gotta say, Catriona Ward’s writing is on another level. The pace is just right, and the entire atmosphere she creates is just so nostalgic and atmospheric. The plot is jam-packed with secrets, twists, and mysteries that’ll keep you hooked. And let’s not forget about the characters - they’re as captivating as they come.

But let me be honest with you, book lovers. This book had me scratching my head for most of the time. It’s like a book within a book within another book… or something like that. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I loved every single minute of it, but I still have no clue what the heck actually happened. It’s a real head-scratcher, you know? 🤷🏻‍♀️

And that ending? Oh boy, brace yourself. It’s like a fever dream that’ll leave you thinking for days. Trust me, it’s gonna take a hot minute to fully process it all.

All in all, Looking Glass Sound is an absolutely fantastic read that I can’t recommend enough. Seriously, do yourself a favor and give it a shot. You won’t regret it!

**ARC Via NetGalley**

So incredibly real dark, deep and disturbing. By the end I felt I knew the characters in-depth. Not my usual genre but I did enjoy this book. It grabs hold of you tight and at times you feel like you can't breathe. A atmospheric story.

A book within a book. I found this book at first to be addicting and interesting, but unfortunately for me, I feel I lost what was happening throughout the book. I love TLHONS and Sundial was a little more odd for me to get my head around. I think the author is brilliant at writing, but I like something I can grab on to when reading, and feel I was kept in the dark a little too long for me.

I did enjoy The Last House on Needles Street so I was hoping to feel the same about this new novel. I didn't quite feel the same about this one it wasn't for me unfortunately.

I think it is time for me to admit that The Last House on Needless Street was probably a one-off for me, and, outside of that one book, I do not gel with Ward's style. I have tried Little Eve, Sundial, and now this book, and I have found them near impossible to become absorbed into. I've been reading just to finish so I don't feel bad about reviewing a DNF.

The problem, I feel, is that Ward keeps us in the dark and unsure what we're reading for the vast majority of her books. While no book should offer up all its secrets immediately, I do need something I can grab onto-- a question, a conflict, that drives the narrative --or I will simply be uninterested in where it is going. That's what happened here.

I felt pulled all over by this story and, in the end, I never really felt immersed in it; I never came to suspend disbelief and feel the characters were real and worthy of being invested in. The Last House on Needless Street was weird and interesting. This one was just weird.

A novel within a novel, murder mystery, twists and turns and the agony of adolescence. I love Cat Ward’s writing; it’s visceral, weird and challenging. Whilst I really enjoy the feeling of being wrong footed and surprised in a novel, this one had me more lost than previous books so go in expecting to be confused and enjoy the ride!

This is Catriona Ward at her best.

A beautiful but harrowing story within a story.

Thank you for letting me review!

I started this one on the plane to Ibiza and read a good chunk in one go, then another 40% on the flight back meaning I started and finished it in three sittings. It was one of those kind of books that when you start, you are better dedicating time to rather than dipping in and out in order to minimise confusion.

The first half was much more gripping than the second half as it got a little repetitive from 50-90%. I even said during that main chunk that it wasn’t as confusing and wild as Sundial. Then the last 10% just flipped it on its head and I was baffled. I THINK it was a book, within a book, within a book, with some meta fiction elements. Confusing, just when I thought I knew what was going on. Undeniably clever though and she is undoubtedly a very intelligent author indeed.

If there's one thing I can trust Catriona Ward with, it's her ability to write a book that keeps me guessing until literally the last page.

Looking Glass Sound is split timeline and a lot of it is written via journal entries, letters or book passages. It's a book within a book within a book.
It's a book about writing and summers spent on the coast that end up shaping the rest of your life, for better or worse. It's a book about trauma and how knowing you'll never be a kid ever again will equal parts, motivate, and haunt you. But mostly its a book about stories and who gets to tell them.

"Anyway that’s often what writing is, isn’t it? What you leave out."

The Last House On Needless Street is one of my all time favourite books, so I had high hopes for this one. And even though it ended up more of a 4/4.5 star, I still really really enjoyed my time with it.
Like TLHONS, it's best gone into knowing little to nothing about it. The less the better imo

Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes with me knows I adore any book set around the sea. Especially when it's personified enough that it almost becomes a character in its own right like it does in this.

The plot itself is like a roiling ocean, deceptively calm one minute only for a sudden twist to drag you under the current. Once you surface, good luck getting your bearings again before another wave hits. You won't know left from right, or whose narration of the events is the true one.

I couldn't put it down. The only real gripe I have is that I wish the chapters were shorter. I think it really would've benefitted the pacing.

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. A good dark read of betrayal and horror. Not my normal style of book but it was quite compelling.

Wilder starts writing his last book about a killer and how his friend, Sky stole his memoir and turned it into a bestselling novel. But as he writes, the line between memory and fiction start to blur…

Things happened a bit too slow for me and I honestly have no idea what I've just read. It had me questioning so many things like the characters and the storyline which I still feel lost about. I really struggled to follow the storyline especially with the repetition and new narratives not indicated, which saw my interest dip. The ending also felt rushed, I would have loved for it to have been fleshed out more just so it would have had a greater impact.

I liked the concept of the book but I think the build up just took too long and I felt like the description in the blurb doesn't actually start until halfway through the book. I wasn't a fan of the execution of this book. I did like the writing style but I think this book just suffered from having too much going on at the same time. However, the book did grip me (due to the writing style) and I found it hard to put the book down.

Unfortunately I think books about books (or in this case, multiple books) are just not for me but I am still interested in reading the author's other work like The House on Needless Street.

⚠️ CWs: death, profanity, physical assault, alcohol use, vomiting, disappearance, gun, absent parent, mental health (depression), fire, blood, panic attack, murder, grief, suicide, self harm, abortion, spiders, poisoning, child kidnapping; mentions conversion therapy, drug use, drowning, cheating, sexual situations, ⚠️

After reading her other books I knew I needed to read this one, it was hard to put down. It was a dark and haunting story of love, murder and betrayal.

A complex, mercurial thriller with a shifting style that will either frustrate or fascinate. In many ways this is a story about the nature of storytelling, and about how we all make ourselves the heroes of our stories. No matter what we’ve done….

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.

Catriona Ward’s new novel, Looking Glass Sound, is an exploration of love, loss, and trauma viewed through the eyes of a man revisiting his formative years.

Even as an adult, the still lurking pent-up frustrations of teenage angst make Wilder Harlow the most unreliable of narrators. His entire life has been shaped by the events during the summers of his youth, and his perspective is skewed at best. It would be easy to pity Wilder, but by turns, he is both the hero and then the villain of the piece. The same can also be said of his friends. Their various actions and reactions are a constant reminder that humans are far from perfect. We’re all capable of doing good, being the sort of people we aspire to be, but we’re also more than capable of being just as bad. It turns out the only thing that makes us different is that some people are better at hiding their flawed tendencies than others.

You know that brilliant thing that Stephen King does when he writes a couple of pages about a character and you feel like you’ve known them your entire life? Catriona Ward manages the same impressive feat here. Wilder, Harper, Nat and Sky are so well realised, so rounded and human. That painful, jarring move from adolescence to adulthood feels visceral in every scene. When the book’s first major revelation hits no one escapes fallout. It struck me that no one ever really walks away from trauma unscathed. You don’t have any choice but to embrace the outcome of events, accept them and make them part of you. If you can’t do that they will control you from that moment onwards.

There are going to be many, many different interpretations of this narrative. Different readers will undoubtedly latch on to different themes. Ward is deftly picking apart the human condition. What makes us love, what makes us hate and everything in between. I found myself focusing on the idea of achieving closure and of opportunities missed. That desire to have just one more conversation with the person who you know you will never speak to again. This might sound a trifle morbid but it’s hardly surprising, I finished reading Looking Glass Sound a year to the day that my father passed away. The plot has coalesced a lot of thoughts that have been floating around unbound in my mind for a while now. It’s always fun when there is a flash of cosmic synchronicity and fiction manages to intersect with your own life. I love when fiction like this prompts introspection and demands you engage with the subject matter.

Hmm, is Looking Glass Sound a horror novel? I’ve been thinking about this a lot and the best response I can give is “Maybe”. There are certainly horrific moments. Wilder’s fragile mental state constantly erodes as the plot unfolds. Are the horrors he is experiencing genuine or the figment of an already damaged psyche? Again, I suspect this is an element of the novel that will be open to interpretation by every reader. If this is horror then it does fall firmly into the psychological category. If nothing else this is a novel about the monster we create for ourselves.

The plot drifts in and out of its own meta-fiction allowing the author to pull off some nicely timed surprises. In the hands of a less skilled writer this would be a risky approach but Ward pulls it off with aplomb. Flawless multi-layered storytelling like this ensures readers are going to come back to revisit it time and time again.

The New England location is ideal, and the passing of the seasons feels palpable. The languid summer days flow into grey autumn dusk and then the bleak winter nights. I was fortunate a few years ago to travel around Maine, very close to where the book was set, and there is desolate beauty to the coast in the darker times of the year. This dovetails perfectly with the novel’s overall tone.

I’m under no illusions, it’s highly likely that Looking Glass Sound won’t be for everyone. The idea of a book within a book may well put some people off. This is literary Marmite, you’ll either love it or hate it. Personally, my heart was smashed into a million tiny pieces and left in a small pile of dust on the floor. Needless to say, I hung on every word. This is genuinely affecting writing.

I was reminded of The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough. Looking Glass Sound has that same delicate exploration of humanity and the journey we all take. I’ll no doubt be accused of being a raging sentimentalist* but it’s quite beautiful really. This is one of those novels that you know is going to stay with you. It’s the sort of thing that when I finished I’m driven by the urge to go and find someone else who has also read it so we can spend hours discussing it.

You’ve probably already noticed this review is a bit all over the place. It’s one of those rambling, mildly incoherent, waffly efforts I post from time to time. I can’t help it. There is so much in this novel to ruminate on. Take it from me, if you were reading the unabridged, spoiler-filled version of this document it would be a whole lot longer and far more waffly. Catronia Ward has clearly made a host of very specific decisions about story structure, pace, and characters. All of this exquisite attention to the smallest details really pays off. I’ve heard great things about Catriona Ward’s other books, I’ve not read any of them so far but based on the experience I’ve had with Looking Glass Sound this is an oversight I need to rectify immediately.

Looking Glass Sound is published by Viper Books and is available now. Go and purchase it now, read it and then me know so we can have a long chat. Highly recommended.

My musical recommendation to accompany Looking Glass Sound is the sublime soundtrack to season one of The Sinner by Ronit Kirchman. It has a haunting, ambient quality that works well as an auditory companion to the novel.

*Guilty as charged your honour.