Looking Glass Sound
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $25.99
Publisher Description
“If you love the novels of Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, and Tana French, here’s your next obsession.” —Kelly Link, author of White Cat, Black Dog
From Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street, comes a masterful story about friendship and betrayal, dark obsessions, and the impossibility of escaping your own story.
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 the cabin, 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.
“An origami puzzle of a book, the mystery so beautifully crafted you don’t see the folds, with edges sharp as a paper cut.” —Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls
A Macmillan Audio production from Tor Nightfire.
Customer Reviews
Loved it until I didn't
So much to love about this book, especially the characters. Wilder and Harper and Nat are like living, breathing people. I adore the opening and the immediate way it cuts to the core of who Wilder is and makes us love him. Ward is a master of characterization, stakes, and emotional beats. It's casually queer in a manner that horror readers have craved for decades but that established authors have refused to give us.
Unfortunately, I thought the final act fell incredibly flat. I really, really, REALLY wanted to love it (in fact, I'd already started recommending the book to other people when I was about 3/4 through, I was *that* confident the book would land on its feet). But the twist yanks the selling points of the story — the characters we love, their relationships with each other, and the consequences of everyone's decisions — out from under us and replaces it with something less compelling, less emotionally rich, and ultimately far less satisfying. It's sad to think about how much potential was there that just kind of fizzled.
Negatives aside, if the author somehow sees this review, please know that I'd read a million stories about Wilder, Harper, and Nat. You should be teaching classes on your method of developing characters who are loveable, morally gray, and deeply effed up in the best way possible.