House of Glass
A Novel
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4.2 • 387 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Wow, I loved this one so much! I didn’t want it to be over because I was enjoying it so much, but I couldn’t stop turning pages! House of Glass is a gripping thriller that was packed with surprises and compelling characters.” -- Freida McFadden
The next thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen, House of Glass.
On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.
A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?
Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny - in the midst of her parent's bitter divorce - and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.
From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there's something eerie about the house itself: It's a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.
As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny's boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
A wealthy family’s disturbed child may be the key to a suspicious death in this engrossing psychological thriller. Nine-year-old Rose Barclay hasn’t spoken since she saw her nanny fall to her death in what may or may not have been an accident. But when passionate child-advocate attorney Stella Hudson is assigned to represent the little girl in a bitter custody case, she discovers that far more is amiss in the historic Barclay home than one traumatized child. As her intrepid protagonist Stella investigates, Sarah Pekkanen masterfully rolls out a multilayered thriller in which everyone could be a suspect. Detailing the sinister oddities of the superrich Barclays, Pekkanen draws us into the family’s dysfunctional dynamics, building up the tension as Stella’s own troubled past emerges to complicate the case. Even when this twisted thriller gives you literal chills, you won’t be able to put it down.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Pekkanen (Gone Tonight) delivers a tantalizing if somewhat uneven thriller featuring a young girl who stops speaking after witnessing her nanny's death. Washington, D.C., attorney Stella Hudson, who assesses the homes lives of children involved in custody battles, is assigned to nine-year-old Rose Barclay's case when the girl's wealthy parents file for divorce. Stella heads to the family's estate in Potomac, Md., to conduct the standard interviews, but soon after she arrives, she gets the nagging sense that everyone is hiding something. She finds it particularly disturbing that all of the home's glass objects have been removed or replaced with plastic replicas. When Stella's assignment broadens to include an investigation into the death of Rose's nanny—who fell from an attic window, either by accident or because she was pushed—memories of her own traumatic childhood surface. After a promising setup, Pekkanen takes her foot off the gas, abandoning the central mystery for too long in service of middling character development. Still, she conjures up a tense, quasi-gothic atmosphere, and Stella's sleuthing is often thrilling. This has its pleasures.
Customer Reviews
Love
Finished in 5 days and I’m not a big book reader. This novel is quite the page turner, keeping me up at night with just the right amount of wonder, putting myself in the shoes of the characters. I do feel some characters were a little underdeveloped, but it was quite a pleasant read!
Do not waste your time.
Junk food reading at best. The plot was obvious, trite and from a legal perspective totally unrealistic. Not even well written.
Absolute dreck
This is the worst book I’ve read in a LONG time. The story is preposterous, the writing more wooden than a dead tree (this book has multiple slam-dunk winners for the next “it was a dark and stormy night” bad writing contest), and the protagonist so annoying I almost rooted for HER to get thrown out a window.
Clearly Pekkanen needs Greer Hendricks’ help to produce a decent thriller.