I read this as I truly enjoyed the authors previous work, House on Needless Street. If you enjoyed that, then this is the book for you. You are left guessing as to how it all connects until near the end. Not to say the story is not gripping throughout.

A friendship is formed one summer between 3 teens in a sleepy coastal town. This bond, it seems, is one that will last regardless of the unforeseeable future that beholds them. I am sure in way none of them thought possible.

A serial killer
An author(s) writing a book
Witchcraft
What does it mean to truly be bonded?

I don't want to give too much away, but a must read for fans of the author. It all feels disconnected until it really really isn't.

My head genuinely hurts.

****.5

Looking Glass Sounds is a fever-dream of a novel surrounding harrowing events that happen in a sleepy beach town.

I tend to sway from thriller genre lately as I can predict what is happening about 1/2 way through. But this? I'll be sitting here reeling even hours after finishing. It just kept unfolding and unfolding… and just when you thought you figured it out, here comes another unfolding. I might need to lie down after all this brain origami.

This was the first novel I read of Catriona Ward’s and definitely not the last.

5 Stars!

It's a complete and utter shame that I have been sleeping on Catriona Ward! Wowza! What an impressive writer with an amazingly complicated mind!

This story has it all! It begins in the 1980's, there's a vacation home, coming of age friendships, the haves and have nots, a serial killer, ghosts, and magic. UH! I loved it all! This story will bend your mind around itself and then back again.....I finished it a few days ago and I'm still thinking about the characters.

Run out and grab yourself a copy!!

A special thank you to NetGalley, Tor Publishing Group, and Catriona Ward.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire as well as Ms. Ward for this ARC. It was delightful.
#LookingGlassSound #CatrionaWard #NetGalley #TorNightfire
Catriona Ward is always difficult to review because her books are always intricate puzzles. Looking Glass Sound is no exception. Pulling on one thread of this tapestry, if not careful, will unravel the whole thing. I will do my best not to include spoilers.
Looking Glass Sound begins as a coming-of-age story and ends up as an intricate mystery. Wilder Harlow is spending the summer at his recently deceased uncle’s cottage by the sea in a small Maine town. WIlder’s parents are always fighting, so he wanders the beach and takes a swim alone. This is when he meets Nat, a local boy about his own age and Harper, a beautiful, red-headed English girl. The three kids become friends and spend the summer days together. From his friends, Wilder learns about The Dagger Man, the local boogeyman. We are taken along as he learns some terrible secrets about those he thought that he knew. Later, Wilder meets Sky, a man who becomes a dear friend. Sky helps Wilder make sense of the events of the past. This is way less a horror story than a mystery.
There are a lot of things to like about this book. Firstly, it’s beautifully written. Ms. Wards choice of words as well as pacing is impeccable and unique. She has a gift for painting a clear picture using imagery and prose. Each chapter flows easily into the next. Secondly, the characters are all beautifully brought to life. The protagonist, Wilder, is a sympathetic character that I couldn’t help but like and care for. Lastly, the story was like a mental jigsaw puzzle. It was not an easy read at all. My mind was kept busy constructing and deconstructing what I thought was happening right up to the last chapter. All of these things are what I’ve come to expect from Catriona Ward.
This book wasn’t an easy read. I didn’t love the ending. I can’t say much but, for me, it was convoluted. It’s great that this was a multi-layered story but it could have been a bit neater. One of the things I like best about Ms. Ward is that her stories are layered but also tight. This story wasn’t as concise and packaged as usual. There were times that I felt that the book could have been shorter without hurting the plot.
All in all, I really enjoyed reading this. It’s not going to be my favorite of her books for sure, but I still highly recommend it.

This one is not easy to review, I was left confused through most of it, my brain was too mindf*cked. I didn't know what was real, fake, who was speaking, which book. I still stuck to it but…

I felt there was so much going on, and went from one place to the other where I never truly knew what was happening. I felt like the author tried to add too much to this book.

There were so many layers to this book. The characters were just meh for me, I didn't truly care for any of them. I couldn't relate to them.

There is practically no chapters in this book and that is an automatic turn off for me, some chapters were 50 minutes long.. I'm very conflicted about this book, the vibe and the creepiness was nice but the rest just didn't do it for me unfortunately.

I’m not sure how I feel about this book. I thought it was one thing going in and it turned out to be something else. I was bored for a good majority of the time. Overall I thought it was just ok.


Thank you netgalley and the publisher for this arc in exchange for my honest review

I never stopped being lost once I was about half way in. The writing is engaging, the descriptions are beautifully done & I think it achieved what it wanted to? But I couldn’t tell you for sure because I’m still not sure what happened in the last 40% & for once the fantasy elements didn’t work for me. I may try a reread in the future, to see if doing reading and audio simultaneously will help me work it out.

Thank you so much @netgalley @macmillan.audio & @tornightfire for the e & audio arcs!

Looking Glass Sound is a story about a young man named Wilder. The start of the book portrays a normal, not so happy family. Wilder doesn't fit in at school and his parents have a rocky relationship, The death of a relative leads to an opportunity for a summer long vacation.
Ward has an exquisite way of drawing me into a story and lulling me with the scenery and the normalcy of it all. The characters are believable, but the story has an uneasiness about it. Everything is not as it seems in Whistlers Bay or Wilder's life.

I don't want to recap more or give any spoilers. This one has friendship, love, tragedy, mystery, and betrayal. Pay attention, it's a wild ride.

Looking Glass Sound

In the summer of 1989, Wilder and his parents head to his Uncle Vernon’s house before they sell it after his death. The stones around Whistler Bay seem to whistle at night and we find out they hold even more secrets. Wilder is a shy kid and is bullied at school, but this summer he meets Nat and Harper. They quickly become inseparable and decide to go to a cave off the bay. When they get there they will find much more than they bargained for.

I don’t even know where to begin with this book. There are so many layers. You start with Wilder’s summer, follow him through college and then finally get to his adult life. However, the farther in you get, you realize you’re reading about a book in a book in another book? It was hard to keep what character actually did what and what was actually real. The only other book by Catriona Ward I’ve read has been The Last House on Needless Street and that was not my cup of tea. I liked this one a lot more. I did feel like there were stopping points in the book that could have been the ending and given more closure than the actual end of the book. The ending was very chaotic and somewhat confusing. But, all that being said I couldn’t put this one down. I binged it in two days. And while I was left feeling confused, I enjoyed it. The premise was super interesting and I liked the characters, even if they were a little out there. Overall, a quick horror read that has a lot more in it than meets the eye

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

A killer stalked a small New England town where Wilder Harlow started spending his summers with his parents. The body count that was found from over the decades, is a horror like none other. Wilder was encouraged by his one-time best friend, Sky, to write of his past to purge it from his body. As Wilder wrote his stories, Sky stole them to create his own best selling novel, Looking Glass Sound, which was Wilder’s unfinished memoir. Wilder determined to finish his own story is reciting his memories, but they are blurring between real and fiction. He fears he’s losing his grip on reality when he finds notes hidden around his family’s cottage in Sky’s signature green ink writing….

I have such a hard time describing how I feel after reading this. I thoroughly enjoyed it no doubt, but all of the central characters, while portrayed amazingly, were incredibly unreliable, which I think Catriona Ward writes incredibly well. At one point I described another one of her books as a ‘feverish riddle’ and this one absolutely lived up to that description as well. It was such a dark and magical coming to age story with horror, love, murder, and betrayal. This book was difficult to read after about 60%, but I love how her writing really get’s the cog’s turning in my brain. Thank you so much @TorNightfire for this copy! This was a 4/5 for me!

The writing was beautiful. I felt transported to every single setting of the book. The book gave me all the feels, sadness, uneasiness, creepiness, but also confusion. It was a lot for me. A book inside a book inside a book? This was not an easy read, as I was overwhelmed and I had no idea what I was reading. But maybe that was the point? If that’s the case then this book did exactly what it set out to do. If you’re a fan of Ward’s previous books, I would definitely give this a read. Looking Glass Sound will be published August 8th!

Thank you @netgalley, and @tornightfire for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review. #LookingGlassSound #NetGalley

Big thank you NetGalley and to the publisher for the chance to review this book pre-release. This was my first novel by Ms. Ward, and I really enjoyed the entire experience of it. It was a little bit of a slower pace, but I still didn't find myself losing interest, and enjoyed the creepy moments even more so because of the pacing. I will certainly be picking up more of her work, including Sundial, which I hear is a must-read in comparison. A more formal review will be available on my IG/TikTok and Goodreads.

Love them or hate them, Catriona Ward's books are garanteed to be something entirely unique! Like her previous books, I think Looking Glass Sound lived up to that expectation.

This had its creepy moments but it was so sloooowwww. I had zero cares for any of the characters and lost interest and DNFd at about 50% in. I loved Sundial so much and am waiting for Ward to hit me with a story like that again.

Seven With Secrets, Needing To Be Told

Catriona Ward is an exceptional author who never fails to draw me into her stories quickly and to make me care about (or despise) her vivid characters. Her presentation is full of an understated darkness that oozes menace despite blue, sunny skies. Her books horrify me in all the best ways, reminding me of much-loved classics by Daphne DuMaurier and Shirley Jackson.

From the first chapter, I felt uneasy about what was to come for Wilder. I could tell that things weren't what they seemed, but couldn't predict what would happen. It's a complex story, with changing timelines and glimpses of other perspectives that reveal the truth about the characters' roles in events. I enjoyed how the author kept me guessing.

Many thanks to the author, Tor Nightfire, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a free advance reader's copy of the book. I'm under no obligation to anyone to give a positive review, but I will anyway. Looking Glass Sound is another powerful, heartbreaking, illuminating read from the masterful writer, Catriona Ward.

Firstly, I'm a huge Catriona Ward fan. The Last House on Needless Street was my favorite book of 2021, and Sundial was in my top 10 in 2022.

At around the 60% mark, I was ready to 5-star this one, then it takes a strange turn that took me out of the story some. I was fully invested in each characters' relationships with each other, and then...the book gets more complex. There are some supernatural elements that were too jarring to the plot.

I received an audio ARC of this book and will be leaving my full review on that copy. Two chapters in, I am thoroughly invested. Ward has a unique voice that turns any story into a pageturner.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Catriona Ward stays true to character, with her absolutely out of this world story! It was very easy to get lost in the story, and to follow along. However, I found myself confused, too many times, to really enjoy the story. I think I will definitely give this book another shot, maybe in a buddy read.

Title: Looking Glass Sound

Summary:
In a cottage overlooking the windswept Maine coast, Wilder Harlow has begun the last book he will ever write.

It is the story about the sun-drenched summer days of his youth in Whistler Bay, and the blood-stained path of the killer that stalked his small vacation town. About the terrible secret he and his companions, Nat and Harper, discovered entombed in the coves off the bay. And how the pact they swore that day echoed down the decades, forever shaping their lives.

But the more Wilder writes, the less he trusts himself and his memory. He starts to see things that can’t be real – notes hidden in his cupboards, from an old friend now dead; a woman with dark hair drowning in the icy waters below, calling for help; entire chapters he doesn’t recall typing, appearing overnight. Who, or what, is haunting Wilder?

No longer able to trust his own eyes, Wilder begins to fear that this will not only be his last book, but the last thing he ever does.

My Thoughts:
A beautifully written horror novel that had so many unpredictable twists and turns, I couldn’t put it down.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing this ARC!

I picked up Catriona Ward's NEEDLESS STREET a year or two ago and had to shelve it because I had trouble getting into it--I chalked it up to it being a me issue and figured I'd revisit eventually. I still haven't revisited, but I did request this hoping it might help me springboard back into the other title.

I'm hoping it worked, because I got SO sucked into this and couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading it. This was such a surreal fever dream of a book and I'm STILL not totally sure what parts of it were real and what parts of it weren't.

I was so invested in the coming of age mystery in the first half, and then the second half turned into something so much twistier and I kept thinking "what else could POSSIBLY happen here?" and it was such an interesting ride.

Also, I have not been able to shake one specific part that was truly only mentioned in passing but it got under my skin SO much. I'm a little uneasy writing about it right now.

I really enjoyed this, and I have to go back and try NEEDLESS STREET again, now.