This book gives me major "Girl in the Mirror" vibes. While it was a good book, it wasn't as good at that book was. If I had read this one first, I would probably have rated it higher, but it just couldn't live up to my expectations.

The descriptions in this book walk the line of being too much and just perfect. I feel in most cases the lengthy descriptions the author gave was justified, but in some parts it seemed a little too much and I felt myself skimming details. Overall, this was well written for a debut and kept me hooked throughout.

This was a wonderful and twisty thriller. Each time I thought I had something figured out, an new twist was presented and kept me thinking. Loved the relationship between the two sisters, El and Cat. Their imagination was powerful and jumped off the pages. Thank you for the chance to read. I will be recommending this one!

Thank you so much for gifting me this e book for my honest opinion. Sadly I only made it 20% into the book. It wasn’t really my style. I didn’t know it was a fantasy book. I found it hard to understand what was going on. I’ve been told by people who read it that the girls have a made up world called mirrorland and that’s the first half of the book. Sadly I couldn’t get through the first half. I apologize.

“I used to think that people whose lives were stuck in limbo carried on only because it was easier. Easier than giving up. Easier than stopping But now I know it's because there's no alternative, no escape. That the tide will come, and all you can do is stay afloat. And wait for it to turn."

This was Carole Johnstone's debut novel and all I can say is WOW!!! I'm not going to give too many details about the book in this review because you need to go in blind. Carole knocked it out of the park with this book. It was everything I wanted and everything I needed in a book. Most of the time I had no idea what I was reading or what was going but when it all came together it was absolutely brilliant.

This is definitely the best book I have read of 2021 and now on my "favorite books ever" list. This book had me so intrigued I couldn't stop turning the pages. At first I didn't consider it a thriller but part two of the book really changed that. This book is so unique, you really have to read it yourself. Great debut novel and I cannot wait to read more from this author!

Thank you NetGalley, Scribner and Carole Johnstone for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

⚠️TW: child abuse, mental illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, death ⚠️

What an incredible and overwhelming book.

El and Cat are mirror twins. Once incredibly close, they have been estranged for the last 12 years and Cat has moved from Scotland to America. However, when El disappears, Cat must return home to try and solve the mystery of what happened to her sister.

The first half or so of this book can be a bit confusing. Cat and El clearly suffered abuse as children but what kind? from whom? what happened? Nothing is as it seems - it is clear that Cat and El created made up worlds to deal with their trauma. Cat easily and routinely slips between reality and her fantasy world and this can make the story difficult to follow. In addition, you know she had a falling out with her sister, which makes her even more unreliable as a narrator. For some folks, this reality versus fantasy could be a distraction to reading and enjoying. But if you enjoy metaphor and fantastical writing, you will probably enjoy this element.

Then there's the mystery. This is where the book really shines. While I had my suspicions about the origins and type of child abuse, there were so many other twists and turns that left me guessing - and gasping in surprise - until the very end. Seriously, the resolution of what happens is so clever and satisfying - I absolutely loved it.

I think the fantastical elements of this book could have been reduced, but overall they absolutely contributed to the overarching feeling of "what is HAPPENING?!" in the story. I highly recommend this book if you enjoy psychological mysteries.

TW: rape, incest, domestic violence, suicidal ideation

**Trigger warnings : Child abuse, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Incest, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Suicide, Stalking, and Toxic relationship

WOW !! If I could give this book 10 stars I would !! When I finished this book (just a few minutes ago) my heart was beating fast, I had tears in my eyes, and I am so so so happy I received this book to read from Netgalley and Scribner books!

El and Cat are Mirror Twins, exact reflections of each other. They feel each others pain, dreams, nightmares and are always together. When they are younger, they dream up Mirrorland....a magical place with pirates, clowns, cowboys and Indians....a place to escape. Mirrorland is with them until the very end, never really leaving their hearts. Something very horrible and traumatic happens, that causes them to completely stop talking or seeing each other....until El comes up missing and Cat goes home to figure out what happened to her sister. She knows in her heart she it not dead, now she just has to prove it. Little does she know she will be going on another adventure with the help of her sister. (thats all I will say to not spoil anything- its sooo good) The twists and turns in this book are unlike nothing I've ever read !!

This book was breathtaking. I am a huge fan of thrillers- especially the ones that leave you wanting more with every page, not wanting to even put the book down to go to sleep and this was all of that!! This book made me sad, happy, anxious, nervous, relieved, all of the emotions one can experience. The whole book has you on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next and then you are completely surprised!! It was such an amazing way of showing how people use their imaginations to mask the truth.

Luckily, I was also able to get my hands on the audiobook. The narrator was Scottish which was great because the book takes place in Scotland! Perfect touch to the perfect book!! If you are looking for your next favorite book this one is it!! Did I mention this is Carole Johnstone's DEBUT NOVEL!! WHATTT!!! It was incredible !! LOVE LOVE LOVED IT !!

Thank you to Netgalley and Scribner books for sending me an advanced copy of Mirrorland in exchange for an honest review. I look forward so much to reading all her books too come!!

Mirrorland was a dark twisted journey in the lives of abused women and the men who abused them.

It was a difficult read at the beginning - but if the reader sticks with it -they are amply rewarded by the way the story winds through to the end. Enough twists and turns for any mystery lover with the redemption of the live only sisters can share. Also loved Scotland as the setting.

Great book - great ending. Good first book - please don't let it be the last. This writer can only get better!

Mirrorland was a hard read for me... I found it very difficult to keep track of the time periods as the writing jumps back and forth from present time, to Cat & El's childhood adventures in Mirrorland. The adventures in Mirrorland are also very hard to follow as there was a LOT of description - almost too much. I found myself eventually just skimming over the pages set in Mirrorland to get back to present day.

I will say, once I got to part two I was a bit more invested in the story, though I was still skimming a lot. The book picked up for me towards the end and had some good twists, but overall it was not the read for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for the advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

To say this book was a tale of twists and turns would be an understatement. Although at first slow to grip my attention, when that grip finally took hold, it was relentless. A little too much detail into background and childhood did not a have a firm hold on my readership. The fantasy portion of the book was tedious to me, but the mystery and psychological thriller part piqued my interest at every turn. Cat’s twin intuition about her sister’s supposed death coupled with her suspicion of everyone regarding the clues she is receiving raised the hairs on the back of my neck. The grim truth about Cat and El’s childhood folded in with the surreal events of the present events plays out into the maze that their lives have become. The physical and emotional abuse from their childhood that has followed them into adulthood, casts a pall over the events as thick as the overcast skies of Edinburgh. Nothing is as it seems despite mirrors being a true image.

This was such a dark and twisted triller; I devoured it!! I love a good story about twins, especially where one has disappeared. There were times when I was a bit confused with the fantasy but I realize it was intentional. I was so intrigued by the second part of the book.

Family, betrayal and murder - sign me up! This book was compared to Gone Girl and although I can’t say I agree, I see the appeal.

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC!

Mirrorland is a psychological suspense/thriller following Cat returning to her home after her twin sister, El, disappears while sailing. El and her husband, Ross, have bought and now live in El and Cat's childhood home. The home where El and Cat would spend hours playing in Mirrorland - an imaginary world shaped by the books their mother would read to them. Not long after Cat's arrival, she starts receiving clues to a treasure hunt like the ones El would send her on while they were growing up. There are clues tucked away in almost every room of the house and they lead back to the world under the stairs - Mirrorland - and unlock the truth that Cat had long forgotten. TW/CW: child abuse, on page physical abuse, off page incest, suicide

This story was absolutely fantastic. It did take me a bit to get into it (which I'll expand upon later), but once I was in, I was in all the way. My absolute favorite part was the pacing - it was immaculate. It was the kind of book that, when I was done, I put it down and just thought back over the whole story and how everything came together at just the right pace for me to be 100% completely enthralled. The thriller beats are timed out perfectly for my taste and the pacing worked with the information we learn from the book in order to expertly ramp up the tension. This is Johnstone's debut novel and, to me, it reads like a seasoned thriller writer. The book opens up with Cat on her way from LA to Scotland so we are right in the middle of the action. There's no sitting around getting comfy with Cat before she finds out the news about her sister going missing - we're just thrust right into the story from the very beginning. From a quick skim of other reviews, it seems like most people put down the book because they couldn't get past the beginning. I had a bit of a rough time with the first 10-15% but once I got past that part, the book just flew by. It has been a while since I've had a book where it felt like I couldn't turn the pages fast enough and this one hit that exact target for me. I think the scavenger hunt Cat goes on gives a natural cadence to the story and really helps push along the narrative. At the same time, once Cat finds each clue, she often has a moment of reflection where she remembers something about her childhood and these quiet moments are really powerful in the context of the larger investigation.

My issue with the beginning wasn't the pacing - it was the writing style. This story has a very fantastical, some might say flowery, narrative style. The style is consistent through the book, but I found it the heaviest at the beginning and it leaned a bit too much toward the literary fiction side of prose for my personal liking. Very detailed descriptions, long paragraphs detailing Cat's feelings and thoughts and her surroundings. I know some readers will really enjoy this writing style, but it just isn't for me. However, once we got past that first 15% or so, the mystery side of the plot really picks up and it feels like the narrative has more to focus on rather than just feelings and setting. Besides the literary fiction type style, Johnstone also had a really interesting way of blending past and present. We get flashbacks of Cat and El as children growing up in this house and the games they'd play, but they aren't always formatted like normal flashbacks. It really felt like we were in Cat's brain as she sort of gets lost in her memories and then comes back to the present day. So there aren't always scene breaks or a new chapter to delineate what timeline we're in. I really enjoyed this narrative choice, but it won't work for all readers. Also, in these flashbacks, it is very obvious that Cat's childhood imagination was very robust. The descriptions of her surroundings and the activities her and El would do leaned quite heavily into a fantastical almost magical realism sort of realm. I think this choice was excellent and really helped ground the reader in the same world that Cat grew up in and in the mindset that she has in childhood. I'd say the writing style takes some time to get used to and sink into, but I really think it is a fantastic choice overall for the story and 100% worth the effort it might take getting through the first little bit of the book.

I really enjoyed the characters in this story and the way we slowly peel back the layers of characterization. Cat hasn't talked to her sister in 12 years so, in a way, we're discovering who El is right along side Cat as she tries to figure out what happened. Also, since this is the first time Cat has been back to Scotland in 12 years, she is sort of rediscovering parts of herself the longer she stays in town. I really liked how the scavenger hunt clues slowly revealed more and more information about their relationship and their upbringing in a very logical and methodical way. There are times where Cat will remember events one way and then find out some information that re-frames or causes her to re-examine her memories and what she thought was true. The clues to the hunt lead Cat to pages of El's diary that she kept while they were growing up so we slowly see how different the two sisters grow to be. These diary entries I think worked very effectively as lenses into the past and gave the narrative a lot of jumping off points for more flashbacks into their childhood. Cat and El knew Ross growing up as well so we also get views of him as a child and slowly find out the circumstances behind how he and El came to be married. I did wish the other characters in the story were a little more fleshed out and a bit more integrated into Cat's investigation but that didn't bother me too much.

Finally, let's talk about the ending in as general terms as possible. The majority of this book is Cat following the clues in the scavenger hunt and working through her memories of the past along with reconnecting with Ross (who was her friend growing up as well). But once we get to the last third of the book, all the strings start to get pulled and it feels like the story starts to unravel in the best way possible. Cat is finding gaps in her memories and the scavenger hunt is helping her fill them in which leads Cat to re-examine what she thought was true. How childhood trauma affects memories is a big theme in the last third of the book and it was fascinating for the reader to also have to change what we thought was true based on the information Cat is finding. It was heartbreaking to watch Cat grapple with finding out these hard truths and realize that her memories aren't whole but I thought it was well done and not over the top. In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Johnstone does note the doctor she spoke with who studies childhood trauma while conducting her research for this book. And while I can't speak on the representation from a personal standpoint, to me as a reader it didn't come across as gimmicky or played up for drama, it felt realistic and a logical explanation given the events that happened. I did appreciate how we get a lot of explanation and resolution after the final conflict so we can really see how Cat is doing after finding out all this information. By the end, I did find myself slightly more interested in finding out the truth about what happened in their childhood more than what happened to El but the two plot threads are connected in the end so it was satisfying on both counts. The one last twist was interesting but did feel a tad bit too convenient for my liking but I don't think it cheapened the overall narrative at all and I do think most readers will like it. I found the ending 10% to mirror the beginning 10% in that we are back in Cat's head and while she is physically going a lot of places and doing a lot of things, we get more of that literary fiction type of description as she works through the last few activities of the book. It felt like a very much needed long cool down after a very high stakes and high emotion third act.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story. The narrative style was unique and really fit the overall plot and mood of the story, the characters were complex and evolved during the course of the book, and the ending was incredibly well paced and plotted. I do think the narrative style can be hard to get into at first, but I think it is worth pushing through if possible to get to the body of the story because the payoff is 100% worth it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Publication date is April 20, 2021.

Very creepy. This is a psychological thriller you have to stick with and not blink twice because you'll miss something--spexifically, what's real and not real.

Happy Publishing Day!!

What did I just read?! That was crazy! This is such a creative, imaginative tale that has you guessing the whole time. Thank you NetGalley and Scribner for this digital ARC!

Cat and El are identical “mirror” twins who create an imaginary world under the pantry stairs, “Mirrorland” when they were young. With pirates like Blackbeard and Bluebeard, princes and princesses, witches and Andy Dufresne, this unique world was all their own.

Now adults, Cat is living in LA, but has to travel back to their childhood home in Scotland when her sister El goes missing.

She is sent on a scavenger hunt of sorts to solve the mystery. Along the way she is forced to revisit events of the past that have been buried and forgotten.

This debut novel by Carole Johnstone is one you don’t want to miss!

Twin sisters Cat and El have been estranged for years. When El goes out on her boat and doesn't return, Cat is obligated to return to her childhood home in Edinburgh, though every fiber of her being rails against it. The Mirror House, as it was always known to her. A house that was both a sanctuary and a prison, a means of escape and a dead-end. Despite El's husband Ross being utterly distraught over her disappearance, Cat is not convinced her sister is dead or even in danger. Her suspicions are reinforced when she begins receiving strange messages hidden throughout the Mirror House - messages with clues and information that only El would know...but is it really her? As evidence begins to mount which points to El's death, Cat slowly recovers childhood memories that had been long forgotten. Memories of Mirrorland, the imaginary world the siblings created together which could be just as brutal as it was whimsical. There are truths that Cat has buried deep, and only by returning to Mirrorland will she be able to uncover them.

This book was a wow for me. Johnstone creates a degree of depth and complexity both to the story and characters themselves, and she manages to do this without making the reader lose the thread of things. I found Cat a little difficult to sympathize with early on because it wasn't yet clear why she was so bitter and skeptical when it came to El. As the plot unfurled however (and ever so tantalizingly - Johnstone also has a way of giving the reader just enough to keep them guessing and completely on the hook), I became fully invested in Cat's unyielding quest for the truth. Reading about the girls' games in Mirrorland was fascinating; characters like the witch, Bluebeard, the Tooth Fairy, Mouse, the clowns, and the pirates transported me and kept me wondering about all of their significance as a whole.

My only slight hang-up was with the conclusion, and being the conclusion I guess that might not be considered so 'slight,' but it was something I could live with. There are some elements I found to be a little too fantastic for my taste though the rest of the book compensated.

Mirrorland is a highly original and intense look at the complicated dynamics between siblings, the weight of familial secrets, and the power of childhood imagination. A huge thanks to NetGalley, Scribner, and Carole Johnstone for the opportunity to read this ARC and provide an honest review.

Mirrorland is a dark thriller that started slow and confusing, but ended up being an enjoyable read.

We follow Cat whose estranged twin sister has gone missing. She goes to their childhood home where her sister, El, lives with her husband. El’s husband, Ross, is a childhood friend that both girls loved. The police and Ross think that El is dead. Cat is convinced El is alive because she’s getting strange emails that lead to notes and old diary pages from her. We follow Cat throughout the story as she tries to figure out what happened to El.

There were lots of twists and turns along the way that made me want to keep reading. My only complaint is that I didn’t enjoy the bits of the story that took place in Mirrorland. The girls used their imaginations to create this fantastical land, but I did not like the way it was woven into the story.

This book took me a minute to get into because in the beginning, I was not quite sure what I was reading. There were a lot of fantastical descriptions of imaginary games from the narrator’s childhood, which made the switching back between the past and present a bit jarring. This made the book seem longer than its 320 pages, and I almost put it down. However, I decided to keep going, and I’m very glad that I did. When I got to the last third of this book, I could not stop reading. Every time I thought it was over, there was another twist to be had. Some of them I had an inkling for, but others definitely shocked me. The ending definitely made up for a rough beginning, and I really enjoyed this one overall! These are deeply flawed characters, but you learn more and more about their motivations as the story goes on, and more deceptions are uncovered. I think certain elements of this book will stick with me for a while.

DNF at 16% - just not my cup of tea.

I was really excited to receive a copy of this book to review but after putting in more hours than I want to admit trying to read it, I had to call it at 16%. When I read the description, I thought it sounded like a really interesting story and, once I started reading, found that I struggled to wrap my head around the concept of Mirrorland.

Thank you to NetGalley and Scribner for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my review.

Cat hasn't spoken to her twin sister, El, in a long time, so when El goes missing, Cat feels like she's stepping back into a life she tried so hard to forget about. Cat especially feels herself drawn back to Mirrorland, the space in their childhood home they turned into a gothic conglomeration of fearful fits of imagination. El seems to be leading Cat on a dark treasure hunt, one that threatens to bring back memories Cat's not sure she wants returned, but she's already in too deep to walk away.

This is a strange book, but that's not a bad thing. At first, I thought this was going to be a DNF (do not finish) for me. The first chapter was already so confusing, and I had a really hard time getting into the story. In looking at other reviews, it seems I was in no way alone in this. This is a book that seems to really divide readers, a one star or a five star read.

I am definitely glad I kept reading. By the time I hit 20%, I was completely hooked. There were so many twists I never saw coming, and I was really invested in the story. This is a dark read for sure, so be prepared for that, but it is a fascinatingly creative and creepy read as well.

“Mirror land” is a wild ride. The book is about twin sisters that grew up in a house where they created a strange, fantasy world borne out of their collective imagination. When sister El goes missing, Cat begins to investigate and is pulled into memories of the past and back to Mirrorland. This is a creative, imaginative page turner and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I really want to like this book because it sounded so intriguing but I just can't. It moves as slow as molasses and is boring - something that shouldn't be possible with this type of book but there it is. I've gotten through chapter 5 (17% of the novel) and it still feels as if nothing is happening and nothing ever will happen. Its been a chore, one I face with dread every time I open it, so I'm stopping here. Two stars rather than one because it feels like it should be interesting. Perhaps a different person will enjoy it.