5 stars! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This book was interesting, atmospheric, chilling and so beautiful. It is a gentle horror story but it’s also so much more than that, it’s a story about love and what it means to be running out of time.

What I loved in particular:
- the author took the idea of mirrors and masterfully dispersed them through the story. Lydia and her friends and preparing for the onset of the First World War and in 2035 the characters are preparing for an apocalyptic war. Cyrus’s life in 2035 is almost a mirror of his life in the 1980s, right down to his academic rivalries and love interest. By the end of the book I was trying to find plot reflections everywhere.
- the setting, I went to uni in Geneva and Catherine Fearns has perfectly captured the beauty and the appeal of the city and its surrounds.
- I liked the detailed scientific theories that were put forward by the characters to explain the supernatural. I also loved the use of Haydn’s essay to explain potential plot holes because I too was wondering why extensive correspondence with Carl Jung wouldn’t have been discovered before.
- the ending, I don’t include spoilers in my reviews so all I can say is that it was both chilling, sad and beautiful.

The Fault Mirror is one of those books that I will still be thinking about years after finishing.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Quill and Crow Publishing House for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I just finished this book and I am crying. That was such a beautiful love story. The way this story unfolds sucks you in and keeps you locked in from beginning to end. The whole concept is interesting and the way the imagery and sensory hits you is incredible. I truly imagined myself in Cyrus' shoes, and his increasing blindness. I almost wish it didn't end because I want more, but its truly perfect as it is.


In letters to her friend and doctor, Lydia details how she's fallen in love with Seraphine and becomes inspired to build a fairytale mansion on a mountain with another mountain that reflects like a mirror next to it. As they settle in and start hosting friends, strange things start happening and changing around them.

Cyrus is given these letters by a mysterious student and challenged to find out why Lydia seems to have been erased from history.


(I received this as a arc)

This is the story of a house seen by three perspectives.
Lydia Temple, an American heiress that builds a fairy tail castle for her lover Séraphine de Valleiry that she met in 1900 in Paris.
Daphne, a woman who in 1980 seeks the house.
Cyrus Field, a philosophy teacher that in 2035 has made the study of the despairing house his main point of study.
This is the story of a house… or is it?

“Perhaps man is destined never to be satisfied. There must always be a yearning for more, more.”

“The Fault Mirror” marries philosophy, science fiction and fantasy, creating a perfect blend of wonder, mystery and feeling.
You do not need to be an expert of thought problems and scientific theories to easily follow and get completely sucked in the story that Catherine Fearns masterfully woven with her beautiful prose. What starts reading like a love story soon turns into a mystery to be pondered on, turning back into a love story, then an exploration of ideas and all of it always with the shadow of disaster growing over it. Dread permeates the page and yet I dare you to stop reading.

This is a book that was clearly a product of our age, yet it reads like a piece of literature that could fittingly have been written by someone, somewhere else in time.
Would you dare to look for the house yourself?

I tried reading this but after I couldn’t get into this. The author did a good job of writing it but it just wasn't for me.