I requested a copy of the ARC from the publisher, TOR Nightfire, on NetGalley and was approved in exchange for consideration of a review. All opinions discussed are my own and are subjective to myself as a reader.

Catriona Ward has a long list of accomplishments from her works: Winner of Best Hardcover Novel at the ITW Thriller Awards for SUNDIAL, Finalist for the Bram Stoker and Locus Awards, Shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel and a finalist here on Goodreads for Best Horror!

After the mind-bending ride that was SUNDIAL, I knew there would be more Catriona Ward in my future and was delighted to discover NetGalley was offering ARCs for her newest release, LOOKING GLASS SOUND, slated for expected release August 8, 2023.

"Friends can break your heart, it seems, just like love."


Wilder Harlow will never forget when his family began spending summers at the cottage on Whistle Bay in New England. Due to his strange looks and tendency to keep to himself, Wilder had no friends and thought there might be something special about this cottage overlooking the Maine coast. He is quickly welcomed by the friendly, easy-going Nathaniel and his best friend, Harper. The three are almost inseparable - until tragedy strikes, which only serves to bond them closer together - forever.

"People around here don't seem to talk much, but they like to do small kindnesses."


The character of Wilder Harlow is written so well. His loneliness during the school year, unwilling to share the pain with his parents about the constant bullying. He was around the age of 16, Wilder was struggling to understand what love was and if it was tied to a specific gender. I found this confusion to be very relatable. The author made me feel the depth of this child's emotions. When he meets Harper and Nat in New England, watching their friendship form and strengthen was so endearing and charming. Not only did Wilder fall in love with his new pair of friends, he also fell in love with the small town and its people who lived there. I enjoyed watching him emerge from his shell. He had such a kind soul.

"Being scared is fun. But you have to make it feel real to be properly afraid."


In addition to the budding friendship, readers also learn this little town has a dangerous mystery shrouding it - the mystery of The Dagger Man. Who is this mysterious person breaking into occupied homes, yet takes nothing? In fact, the families never know The Dagger Man has been there until they receive the picture in the mail...and the picture is terrifying. As soon as I read my first bit about The Dagger Man, I. WAS. ON. BOARD! I love when a story has high stakes, where a life or lives hang in the balance - that sense of time running out, not knowing if/when this person may escalate or where they may show up next. This mystery, along with Wilder's character development were my favorite things about this book.

'Writing is power,' she says. 'Big magic. It's a way of keeping someone alive forever.'


Isn't this what we love most about reading? The ability to return to our favorite worlds, characters and scenes over and over and over as the years go by? Catriona Ward has once again written a book that impacted me with its insight at how stories we read can shape us in ways that can change us forever. This is only rivaled by how masterful she is at writing characters that mean something to you - whether it be because of shared personal experience or because someone close to you has - how she writes human fragility is utterly captivating.

Another hit for me from this author - I will continue to read more of her backlog as I wait for anything new she publishes!

The quotes in this review were taken from an ARC and are subject to change upon publication.

Rating: 3.5/5 — but could even be closer to 4 stars?? I think I need to reread the book (knowing what I know now) 😂🥲 This one was so meta that it was hard to grasp at times, but I also think I really enjoyed my reading experience? A book within a book within a book. A lot of tense & unsettling feelings. Unreliable narrator much? In the end, I'm pretty sure I understood everything, even if it was a bit of a struggle to get there. It definitely challenged me as a reader to fully understand the story in total. I need a re-read/to annotate. I loved the Last House on Needless Street so I was a little sad this didn't quite live up to the same expectation, but I'll definitely be reading more by Catriona Ward.

Ward's books are always creepy and creative and always an immediate buy for me! Utterly terrifying and mysterious!

This was my third book read by Catriona Ward. I loved Sundial and I’m a bit familiar with her writing style. I’m also a big fan of Literary Horror. The weirder the better!

I thought this book started really good!! Loved the atmosphere, the characters and the plot!! Was flying through it and then about the halfway mark, it started to lose me. I was getting confused and didn’t know what was going on. I was hoping the ending would have the answers on what I was so confused about but I just did not like it.

I think this book will work for people that love her books but for me it just didn’t.

Thank you Tor Nightfire and Netgalley for the arc!

I was really looking forward to this novel being one of my favorite of the year, but I found it extremally hard to get into this one for some reason. I am not sure if it was because I was having a hard time relating to the main character or if it was just the fast and then slow pace of the writing. Don't get me wrong it is still very much worth the read and I think that there will be a lot of people who truly like this novel. It just wasn't for me.

I had no idea what to expect going into this book. I was confused most of the time and every time I thought I figured out what was going on, I’d find out I was wrong. The settings were eerie, the characters were strange, and everything was super twisty. I actually really enjoyed it even though I spent the majority of the book thinking “what the frick…?” Ultimately I thought the story was great and the characters will stick with me for a long time.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire for providing me with this arc.

This was an absolute mindf*ck of a book. It was like four books in one and at no point did i ever know where it was going. I really though i’d figured it out. I did not. Any psychological thriller fan will love this.

This is my first book by Catriona Ward and it definitely will not be my last. This book had the perfect amount of spooky and I loved the atmosphere. I love that this book had multiple points of view. Overall I think this is a great book for anyone who likes ghosts and may be slightly afraid of the ocean.

A massive thank you to Tor and NetGalley for the ARC of Catriona Ward's latest novel, Looking Glass Sound. A couple book reviewers I follow suggested going into this one blind and I heeded this advice. I strongly recommend future readers do the same and I won't do much plot rehashing here.

What I will say is this book surprised me. At first I felt at home with the narrative, then I became unmoored. I was confused and had no idea what was going on. About 3/4 of the way though, I thought I had it figured out and by then end of the final chapter I immediately flipped back to the beginning and reread whole sections with new eyes.

I'll admit to being a bit underwhelmed at times but it was absolutely worth powering through. It's wholly unique and I suspect I'll be reading Looking Glass Sound again in the near future to experience all of it's layers afresh.

4 stars

What can I say? Catriona Ward does it again. She leaves my brain spinning with horrors and plot twists. I love her writing. Every time I read one of Ward's books I feel fully immersed in the story. Her world building is one of a kind, and her stories are atmospheric, creating new yet familiar settings we can all relate to. I love the nostalgia of growing up and going on adventures with friends. I also love how she incorporated a serial killer into the novel that gave me all the gore and depravity I needed to enjoy this book.

Kudos to the author for being inclusive and writing unique characters, each with their own quirks.
If you like character driven stories, she does not disappoint.

There is a fair amount of witchcraft in this book, and honestly I wanted more. But, for what its worth, it added a dark, mystical element to the story, giving me some folklore vibes.

Part coming of age, part psychological thriller this story had me GLUED to my kindle. I had to know how it ended and even then I'm still left thinking about what happened. If you enjoy books that twist and pull you down dark rabbit holes, read Looking Glass Sound.

Omg this was so good. The first part drags a bit until you see the layers of the storytelling towards the midpoint, then each reveal hits you like a punch to the gut. It felt like reading a kaleidoscope, each new paratextual element scrambled the narrative into something more interesting and provocative. I loved the witchcraft element and am absolutely obsessed with Harper. It's horrifying and genuinely shocking without relying on gore, which is my all time favorite kind of ghost story.

I love Catriona Ward and her books with my whole heart. This was nothing short of absolutely brilliant,

I wanted to like this book so much more than I did when I finished it. The story sounded amazing and the cover is beautiful. However the different storylines made it difficult for me to follow. At some points I didn't know who's POV I was reading from.

Much thanks to NetGalley and Tor/Nightfire for the ARC of "Looking Glass Sound" in exchange for an honest review.
Like countless others, I became a lifelong fan of Catriona Ward starting with "The Last House On Needless Street". And in her subsequent books, I loved the deep dives into lifetimes of horrific family histories, all unfolding amid landscapes both beautiful and threatening.
"Looking Glass Sound" does indeed contain all those familiar tropes, but in the book's second half, the author takes them to a whole new ambitious level of dazzling complexity. And there's no getting around it, the literary magic show on display here demands you give every sentence your complete attention.........or you won't even begin to comprehend what's going on.
I can understand why some readers grew impatient and exasperated, choosing to jump off. But I myself found myself so entranced by the book's hall-of-mirrors plotting and staggering risks. I hung on for dear life, taking the full ride. I'm not sorry I did.
It begins like a traditional Stephen King-like, easy-to-digest crowd pleaser. Three teens share a summer together at a Maine coastal town - Wilder, Nathanial and Harper, the wild child girl they're both obsessed with. But hanging over the teens and the town is the terrifying 'Daggerman' a serial killer who also takes Polaroids of the town's children while asleep in their beds.
The capture and reveal of the killer reverberates for decades to come, with the publication of different books that fictionalize the three teens' life changing summer. But how much did each author bend reality to make it suit their vision of what really happened? Are any of these accounts reliable in any way?
(This is the point at which readers must stay glued to the pages to fully absorb the tidal wave of twists and the darkest of reveals unleashed in the final chapters.)
Ultimately 'Looking Glass Sound' functions as a melancholic view of the power of books to offer their characters immortality in print, for better or worse......as well as a meditation on how the passage if years warp the truth of our memories, for better or worse.
This book's far from a zippy horror page turner, but I found myself willing to take on the challenges it threw down and the complete upending of its narrative. And that made it a 5 star read for me.

Oh this book was good! The end had hits of Last House - I NEED to talk about the ending to be sure I understand the book. As in the entire book.
Ward immerses you in these characters - their thoughts, weirdness, family drama, eerie coincidences and wayward feelings. They come alive - you become them; their feelings, thoughts and a hint of a cursed life.
Very creative, evocative and obsessive.

I am starting to believe that this authors writing style just is not for me. This is the third book I have read from her and just could not get into it. The sentences and structure of the story felt very choppy to me, which made it almost impossible for me to ignore and delve into the story. M There were some aspects that I did enjoy, like the setting but that was about it.

I never quite know what to make of Catriona Ward's books. I don't mean that in an uncomplimentary way, but I do think that this is one extremely talented author whose work I'm just not meant to vibe with. I loved how saltwater this book was, and there were sections and aspects of it that I really enjoyed. But that ending threw me for a loop and to be honest I'm still not sure exactly what happened/was happening. That being said, for people who enjoy their horror (or fiction in general) to be less concrete, with room for the reader to decide for themselves what's real and what's only in the character's head, Looking Glass Sound is going to be a must when it comes to summer new releases. There's a metafictional quality to it that doesn't appeal to me as a reader, but is going to gain real traction with fans of things like House of Leaves, for example, where reality is equally fractal and open to interpretaton.

3.5 - I remain convinced of Ward’s talent as a writer—both on a sentence level and in how she’s pushing the boundaries of her craft. I loved the first half of this book; I was intrigued, invested in the characters, and appropriately spooked by the deceptively sunny coastal setting. Unfortunately the second half got a bit too meta and lost me a bit—some twists delivered but a lot felt convoluted and confusing, which took away from the end sticking the final landing. I’ll continue to eagerly read Ward’s books and am grateful to NetGalley for the ARC of this one.

Catriona Ward is one of my favorite horror authors and maybe a general favorite overall. I feel like horror usually fits on a single plane that encompasses the different aspects of the genre. However, Ward seems to have created her own unique plane for her horror stories that really distinguishes her style from anyone else.

This story is not just horror. It pulled me in and touched every nerve, giving me such a full picture that I couldn't help but feel intense attachment to these characters. I really thought I understood where this story was going. I felt like I understood its route and destination, but I was not even close. By the end of this book, I was in pieces realizing just how brilliant and unpredictable this story is.

This is about three friends and what happens when they realize that their seemingly magical summer town is home to a serial killer and where this leads them throughout life.

Highly recommend this one!

Out August 8, 2023!

Thank you, Netgalley and Publisher, for this Arc!!

What an odd book. (Not in a bad way!)

I feel like this is a pretty standard reaction to a Catriona Ward book, but this one especially. I flew through the first half of this without realizing how quickly I was reading, and then I got a little slowed down by the many layers of Ward's puzzle box. Once everything clicks, it's a strange, wild ride to the end that turns this grounded, serial killer story into something else entirely.

This will absolutely NOT work for everyone, and many will find it convoluted and nonsensical (honestly, it's not that confusing, but it is very meta and will go over some readers' heads); I, however, really got sucked in. I do think it could have been simplified a bit, but it's a lot of fun, regardless.