I had such a good time with this book! I was drawn into this book almost immediately. The more that I read the more hooked I was until I reached the point that putting this book down was no longer an option. There were some pretty big twists and a few of those twists left me questioning everything that I thought I knew. I just couldn’t wait to see how all the pieces fit together!

The story opens with a teenage Wilder heading to his late uncle’s cottage on the Maine coast with his parents. He soon meets Harper and Nate who become his summer companions in the same town where a serial killer known as The Dagger Man has been active for years. After the ordeal of that summer, Wilder goes to college where he meets Sky and they become close until Sky steals Wilder’s unpublished memoir. Just when I thought I know what was going on, things would shift and I found myself to figure out what might happen next.

I listened to the audiobook and thought that Christopher Ragland and Katherine Fenton did a wonderful job with the narration. I thought that their voices worked very well together in this audiobook. I thought both narrators had very pleasant voices and I had no problem listening for hours at a time. I felt like they were able to expertly bring these characters to life and I am certain that their narration added to my overall enjoyment of the story.

I would definitely recommend this book to others. I found this to be a wonderful thriller that kept me hooked until the very end. This is the fourth book written by Catriona Ward that I have had a chance to read and I have enjoyed each of them immensely. I cannot wait to read more of her work!

I received a digital review copy of this book from Macmillan Audio and Tor Nightfire.

Review
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward
Rating: 3.75/5 ⭐️

Looking Glass Sound is a mind-bending work of speculative fiction that left me feeling uneasy and confused. It is a huge story that includes murders, a love triangle, ghosts, witchcraft, campus vibes, coastal vibes, stolen identity, and fiction within fiction (within fiction). I’m still trying to work through it in my brain and I finished it weeks ago. I may not be the best candidate to review this story, but I was a huge fan of the author’s The Last House on Needless Street, so I requested and was granted an ARC of this audiobook on #netgalley.

Catriona Ward is maybe too smart for her own good and I’m in awe of how her brain even constructed the plot of this novel. The novel plays around with structure and I wonder if I’d have had an easier time understanding the metafiction aspect of it had I not listened to the audiobook — probably not.

On the other hand, I was really taken with the story of Wilder, Nat, and Harper and the STRONG sense of place Ward created with Whistler Bay. I enjoyed that part of the story so much — The Dagger Man, the Polaroids, the coastal Maine setting — it all felt like a warm hug from Stephen King. That being said, I was too confident. I thought I had it figured out by the 50% mark and boy, was I humbled.

The latter half of the book gives us lots of jumps in timeline and perspective, which largely contributes to all my head-scratching. The layers upon layers of plot were just too much for my brain. I think this may have been the wrong book at the wrong time for me… and in the wrong format.

Ward’s writing is impeccable. Her characters are complex and messy, romantic and tortured, and all the things that capture the human condition. Prose is effortless and easy to get completely lost in. My rating is a 3.75/5 ⭐️

For fans of:
*Meta fiction
*Stories sweeping decades
*Intricate plots
*Donna Tartt
*Stephen King

Many thanks to my friends at @tornightfire and @macmillan.audio for the #gifted copies of this book.

Complex. Weird. The perfect mix of confusion and satisfaction.

“It was me that was haunted, not the place.” -Ward in conversation at @politicsprose.

There’s a certain genius with which Ward writes horror. It’s never simplistic: mere violence and fear. Instead, it brims with a passionate intensity and steeps in perplexity, leaving the reader haunted by the writing itself.

And Ward’s newest may be her most haunting yet.

On the first summer holiday in the idyllic coastal town, Wilder is determined to find love. And he does. Those friendships of youth burgeon with a special intensity. But things change when the friends make a terrible discovery. And it will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

What opens as a coming-of-age tale swiftly shifts to a disturbing circular narrative. A story within a story within a story, blurring the lines between fact and fiction to create a horrifying sense of uncertainty.

This is a wildly ambitious plot, unpacking the traumatic effects of violence while pondering the authenticity of memory and storytelling. And on both accounts, Ward excelled.

While many felt the plot confusing and convoluted, that’s where I thought Ward’s narrative stood out. The meticulous layering (though necessarily befuddling at times) created an intimate and resounding portrait of trauma. It was a look within the mind of survivors, narrating the distortion and horror, unlike any I’ve read before.

The more I sit with this story, the more I appreciate it’s brilliance. I can’t wait to see what Ward does next!

🎧 You’re going to want a physical copy of this one, if for no other reason than to reread sections for clarity. But the audiobook is a great accompaniment. Full of emotion and nuance, I found myself lost in the voices created by narrators Christopher Ragland and Katherine Fenton.

I found this book engaging enough to finish and chock full of twists. However, the ending really left me unsatisfied and wanting more. This is the first I’ve read of this author and would certainly give another of her books a try but this one was just okay.

The audio narrator was fine no issues with them.

3 stars
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan audio for the audio ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and Macmillan Audio for giving me access to this audiobook!
I will start by saying that I very much enjoyed this as a reading experience and a story. There was some very thoroughly thought-out character development and plotting throughout, and it is clear to me that the author must have made a very insane-looking map of her plan before writing the story.
I can't give many plot details about how the story unfolds because a lot of what happens is part of how all the twists land in the last quarter of the book.
I thought that the way the story is layered was quite complex, and required several points during the audiobook where I had to stop and go "huh??" and then listen to something again, to be sure I was grasping the meaning. This actually is why I rated this a 4 star instead of a 5 because I think I would have been more deeply impacted by some of what the author was trying to accomplish if I had been able to see the story on the page, as opposed to hearing it without seeing it. But the narrators of this audiobook did an excellent job! Kudos to them for creating the atmosphere of the novel and keeping it alive throughout.
This was a really fun read, and I would recommend it to any thriller or horror readers because the twists were great and actually shocking at times!

Unfortunately this didn't land for me. It's my least favorite out of Catriona Ward's novels, maybe a 2.5. Too ambitious, drawn out, took itself a little too seriously. Parts of this had me wondering if it was trying to be over the top? I don’t think it was. I did have fun reading this book until the big twists started. I can take a few twists but the end was just full of them. I know that this is what happens in a catriona ward book, but it was just a lot for really no reason. The gender swap reveal was especially questionable. I didn't understand the reasoning behind that choice. I'll still be checking out Ward's future novels as I enjoyed her other books, this just really missed the mark for me. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Initially, I found myself captivated by Catriona Ward's LOOKING GLASS SOUND, but my interest waned quite swiftly. The book commences as a memoir written by our main character, Wilder, detailing his childhood on the Maine coast. During this time, he forms relationships with two other teenagers and undergoes a series of disturbing events. However, the narrative then deviates to his college years, where he encounters a new character, Sky, before shifting once more, leading to a sense of bewilderment. The storyline is intricate and full of unforeseen turns that kept me on edge, but I found it challenging to stay fully engaged. This book would lend itself better to the spooky Autumnal season, rather than the beach read that I tried to force it to be.

True rating: 2.5

Was not able to finish the audio due to it being archived, but thought it was good up to the point I was stopped at. Look forward to finishing it on print

To be honest, I’m not really sure what happened in this book! It felt like a fever dream. The story began as a coastal mystery with some sort serial killer on the loose. Then it turned into writer betrayal and discoveries of secrets. In the end, it switched to some off kilter magical death oath. Like I said, I’m not even sure what happened. This chaos works for this author most of the time. But I failed to even connect with the characters let alone the different timelines and POVs. I think it’ll be a future re-read for me to maybe figure out what is really going on.

Props to the narrators for encompassing so many different personalities. Thank you NetGalley, Macmillan Audio, and author Catriona Ward for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

3.5 stars

Thanks to MacMillan Audio and Net Galley for the advanced listener's copy.
Unfortunately, this didn't work too well for me. I was invested at the beginning when it was the trio of teenagers spending a summer at the beach. I was invested when it seemed like there was a serial killer or something terrible afoot. But, as the book went on, and it got more weird and more meta, I just lost interest and couldn't keep all the threads together to really stay invested in the characters or the strangeness going on around them. To me, it felt like it took too long to reveal the plot surprises and the voice was all over the place and I just couldn't get a good handle on who or what was important. And, I wasn't scared at any point which is what I was looking for in reading this. Although this one didn't quite work for me, I will continue to seek out Ward's books in the future.

LOOKING GLASS SOUND review

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

💀I read The Last House on Needless Street last fall and looooooved it. I was so excited to read the latest book by this author, but unfortunately I didn’t love this one quite as much.

💀Here’s a summary of the plot:👇
Wilder is spending the summer in a coastal town in Maine and starts writing a novel. The book details his summer and the killer who preyed upon their town.

💀As always, with Catriona Ward’s books it’s best to go into this one with limited info. The twists were so unexpected! Unfortunately, this one was pretty confusing and hard to follow imo. I like being kept on my toes but I had to Google an explanation for the ending just to understand what happened. 🫠 I still plan to read more books by this author but this one was a miss for me unfortunately.

Every time I pick up Catriona Ward novel, I’m reminded of being in a carnival funhouse. Nothing is what it appears to be, there will be twists and turns, and I will be thoroughly entertained. Looking Glass Sound is the latest in Catriona Ward's lineup of what's-going-on-here thrillers. For readers who need all the details to be laid out in a logical, step-wise format, Looking Glass Sound probably isn't for you, but, for those of us who love a little magic, a little fantasy, and are willing to hold on while the story is revealed, it's absolutely perfect.

Catriona Ward is an author I feel that is best enjoyed knowing as little as possible before reading. Looking Glass Sound was the second book I have read from this author and I look forward to experiencing more works in the future. Thank you to Netgalley and Tor for advanced copies of the physical and audiobook for review.

Ward’s writing is typically so beautifully complex but unfortuantrly, this one was maybe a little too intricate for my liking and I was ultimately just confused throughout the entire read.

I enjoy Ward’s truly diabolical stories and I’ve learned with her last work to stick it through as the payoffs are always exceptionally worth it but sadly this one was just not for me.

Please don’t let this deter you as it’s certainly unlike nothing you’ve ever read before and I’ve been seeing some say this is their favourite work of hers yet!

Thank you NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for an ARC of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Rating: 3.75
Format: Audiobook

Twice I have enjoyed the wild ride that is Catriona Ward's books. She does an excellent job of writing a book that is not exactly what it seems with foreshadowing and easter eggs hidden along the way that aren't exposed until the grand reveal towards the end of the book. I will say for this book specifically, I did not love it as much as "The Last House on Needless Street" but it still was an enjoyable story. The first quarter of this book was fascinating but rather slow. It took me a while to get into the book and I wasn't entirely connected to the characters. The ending was wild and rather confusing but in a good way. The audiobook narrator did an incredible job, but I think this is a book that needs to be read with a physical copy to really absorb all the overlapping timelines and POVs.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing an e-arc of this book!
This book was a thrill ride that its very confusing at the beginning but once it gets going its a rollercoaster of events after another.
It took me a while to get interested in this book. The beginning was slow and it felt like too much build up. I think the story gets better once you are past the 30% mark. After that I couldn't stop listening to it. It was very addictive and creepy. If you enjoyed The writing retreat, and other books like that one this book will be an definite good time.

There was so much about this book that I enjoyed, but by the last third, my brain felt overwhelmed with all of the additional layers of narrative and perspective. I understand what happened linearly, but I felt a bit unmoored nonetheless - and perhaps this was intentional. (The only layer I was partly expecting that did not actually happen was a reveal as Harper as author, strictly due to several British-isms that slipped into Wilder's memoir.) There is certainly a lot to reflect on. Who owns a story, who gets to tell a story, what is the legacy of the storyteller and their subjects, what and who gets remembered? In the end, I found this twisty and complex, rife with writerly coincidences (Of course fake future Wilder is paranoid he's a character in a book, and he didn't even know about his half-brother!), but with a structure that is a great achievement.

I loved this idea of this, but the execution became a bit jumbled for me. There were a few separate plot lines in the book that tried to come together but I felt nothing meshed very well, which is why I can't give it a high rating. I had a good time with this as a fast, casual listen, but writing the review a few weeks later there is nothing that really stands out to me or with stick with me over time.

Thanks to NetGalley for the Advanced Copy of the audiobook. 3/5 stars.

Looking Glass Sound commands your full attention. This intensely unsettling literary horror novel combines coming of age, serial killer, a little bit of witchcraft, and a lot of complex emotional trauma into the subgenres of both metaphysical and psychological horror. Ward will force you to question the reliability of every character, the blurred lines between truth and fiction, and whether or not memories are real or imagined.

I listened to the audiobook at different points in the book and enjoyed the narration by both narrators. However, the mind-bending complexity of this dark tale reads better in print. I often reread scenes or flags sections I *thought* would be essential to reread later in the story. I fully support the audiobook but caution that you should not leave your physical or electronic copy far behind for this clever tale.

This was disappointing. After enjoying her other book 'House on Needless Street' I was really looking forward to this one, but unfortunately it just missed the mark for me. I wasn't particularly invested in any of the characters and found them all to be one dimensional and clunky, they each irritated me for different reasons and I found the dialogue to be pretty bad. Their exchanges were all weird, I'm not sure who Catriona Ward thinks actually talks like them but it was too slow and disjointed. I'm bummed bc I very much wanted to like this one. 3 stars is being very generous.