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)

🖤 ‘Nothing is possible without love… for love puts one in the mood to risk everything.’ 🖤

I would rate this book 4.5 ⭐️

This book had so much depth- it was both an emotional story but also incredibly interesting and philosophical. This is unlike any book I have read before and I would definitely recommend that people read it. Especially if you are someone that has questions about the world and the universe and the questions that we as people have not, and probably never will be able to answer. This is an incredibly well written book! ✨

🖤 ‘We are surrounded by space, time, and death for a reason- otherwise, we would not give our actions the same importance. It is the very limited nature of our life, the fleetingness, that makes it so precious. That’s why I try to seize moments- those moments would be meaningless if they were infinite.’ 🖤

In The Fault Mirror, we follow Professor Cyrus Field, an 80 year old philosophy professor at Oxford university. He has spent his life’s career dedicated to solving one problem, a study called The Disappearing House. He tells his students that this is based on theory, just a case study to explain philosophical concepts. But in reality, it is based on his own experience. On his honeymoon in Geneva, his wife Daphne lead him to a cliff face overlooking the ocean, claiming to see a beautiful, fairytale-esque home on the very edge, that she believes she has seen before. A house that he could not see.

On the trip, Daphne later returns alone to see this house, and never returns. Cyrus has spent his life trying to figure out the mystery of the Disappearing House, and his wife’s disappearance, to no avail. Until one day, a student called Haydn comes to him with a stack of old letters from 1900’s, where an American heiress Lydia Temple writes to a friend discussing that she has fallen in love with an ethereal aristocrat Séraphine de Valleir. She also talks about their whimsical castle they built in the Swiss Mountains, called The Chateau des Miroirs, which sounds awfully like the house that Cyrus’s wife saw that he believes never existed. Cyrus has to decide whether he wants to uncover the real truth about the house and his wife’s disappearance- with war closing in and his vision depleting, it really is now or never for him to get his answers. 🩶

🖤 ‘They didn’t invent the nuclear bomb to stop a war, to save the world from evil. A bomb to stop a war is a contradiction in terms. Men invented the bomb to see if they could. The vaulting ambition to know. They wanted to believe they could. So it’s all about what we are prepared to believe.’ 🖤

The characters in this book were very enjoyable to read about. I really enjoyed the switch between reading about Cyrus and his life in his present day, and reading the letters from Lydia about her and Séraphine, and piecing together how they link together. Love was described in a very beautiful way by Lydia in her letters- you feel you can really connect with and understand her and her feelings. You also get a picture into what it was like for a woman in the 1900’s and the hardships they would have experienced, especially with the relationship she had with Séraphine, who was also a woman. I also really liked the topics that Cyrus, Haydn and the other professors discuss- particularly about the mysteries of life and questions we cannot answer. I found all of the philosophical theories the author talks about and mentions very interesting. 🩶

I also found it very interesting what was said about the impending war, both in the letters in the 1900’s and by Cyrus in 2035. It feels a lot like the conversations that society has about war in our present day society. It also shows that things like that never really change even as time goes on- that war has seemed an unfortunate inevitability, possibly because of our nature as humans.

🖤 ‘Do you want to know something else funny? Here we are at the end of the world, and I have never been this happy.’ 🖤

The Fault Mirror was an incredibly interesting and unique book, full of emotions and philosophical questions- I highly recommend it! 🌙

Thank you to Netgalley and Quill and Crow for approving me for this ARC! I loved it 🩶🐦‍⬛

I finished reading The Fault Mirror a few days ago, but I still can't stop thinking about its characters and story. I loved the characters, all of them so beautifully written and multi-faceted. The writing is fluid, and the mystery surrounding the house pulls you in even more. It's all so beautiful and emotionally moving.