Looking Glass Sound: from the bestselling and award winning author of The Last House on Needless Street

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I had planned to journal each day, here. But I don’t want to write down what happened this morning. I wash my face over and over again with cold water before breakfast, so Mom and Dad don’t see redness around my eyes or any other traces of tears. A frightening nesting doll of a novel about ghosts and monsters, trauma and loss, and the specific aching intensity of teenage friendships. Perhaps most of all, it's a book about stories--and their ability to save or destroy the teller. You'll stay up all night wandering the labyrinth Ward has deftly constructed." If there's one thing I've come to expect from Catriona Ward, it's this: expect the unexpected.. So often writers fall into the same tropes, the same literary TRAPS even, and it's a rarity to find a voice and a person brave enough to not only think outside the box, but to WRITE outside of it. Ward has been compared to Stephen King (and has received praise from him as well), and for good reason: her work is dazzling in its literary prowess, breathtaking in its descriptive and visceral prose, terrifying through its twisted protagonists and plots, and baffling in its intricacy. This twisted tale of ghosts and murderers, derailed lives and childhood traumas is a vertical labyrinth that will take you straight down into the heart of darkness. Enthralling and heartbreaking." - M R Carey

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward | Goodreads

Looking Glass Sound begins as a nostalgic coming-of-age tale about a trio of teenage misfits in Whistler Bay, Maine, a small coastal seaside town. You know you’ve read a Catriona Ward book when your first thought upon finishing it is “What the hell did I just read?” This is round three for me with her books after loving The Last House on Needless Street and Sundial which were both mind-bending 4-star reads for me. Once again, Ward puts her superpower for throwing the reader off balance to full effect, and that’s what I appreciate most about her writing: I never know what to expect! As if feeling my eyes on him, the man looks around, slowly surveying the street. When his eyes light on me he smiles, amused. ‘Hey,’ he says. ‘Who you hiding from?’ The author of The Last House on Needless Street, Catriona Ward, delivers a masterful story about friendship and betrayal, dark obsessions, and the impossibility of escaping your own story. “Here’s your next obsession.” (Kelly Link, author of Get In Trouble) As he heads off to college, Wilder finds he can only manage his anxiety over the trauma he experienced by obsessively writing about the Dagger Man and the events of those key summers, and he struggles to accurately convey the ways it has continues to impact him. Decades later, he decides to return to Whistler Bay to confront his many demons—-the college roommate who stole his notes and published his story as his own, the ghosts of his long-dead friendship with Harper and Nat, his parents’ broken marriage, the obsession with the Dagger Man that won’t let him rest—and finally write his own memoir about what really happened. But his story isn’t as straightforward as it seems.

Even as an adult, the still lurking pent-up frustrations of teenage angst make Wilder Harlow the most unreliable of narrators. His entire life has been shaped by the events during the summers of his youth, and his perspective is skewed at best. It would be easy to pity Wilder, but by turns, he is both the hero and then the villain of the piece. The same can also be said of his friends. Their various actions and reactions are a constant reminder that humans are far from perfect. We’re all capable of doing good, being the sort of people we aspire to be, but we’re also more than capable of being just as bad. It turns out the only thing that makes us different is that some people are better at hiding their flawed tendencies than others. The portrayal of the central characters is excellent, they become broken people and just like us as readers, are searching for truth and resolution. The storytelling is intricately woven around them and encompasses the whole gamut of human emotions from obsessive love to grief, of friendship and betrayal with a nightmarish horror vibe swirling around and heightening the complexity of the tale. These sections are outstanding, they’re so vivid that you feel as if you are there and as unmoored as Wilder.

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I loved the mystery element of the Dagger Man, and the horrifying events which unfolded when Wilder, Nat and Harper were teenagers. We have to list it right away,’ Dad says. ‘Sell while the summer’s still fine. I know that.’ We all know that. The envelopes with red on them come through the door all the time.Here are some of the themes explored, in case any are triggers for you: Identity, gender roles, alcoholism, pedophilia, homosexuality, suicide, witchcraft, and ghosts. It wasn’t my favorite of hers, but I’d still highly recommend it to those who love a book within a book story (with a twist!) and enjoy the mental challenge of a more complex plot. Catriona Ward’s unique blend of psychological horror, mystical elements and atmospheric writing are an appealing combination! Sub-Genre/Themes: Coming-of-age, friendships, coastal small towns, serial killers, college life, witchcraft, reads like a thriller, human monsters, mind-bender

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward | Goodreads Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward | Goodreads

I huddle, cold, in my towel. I’d thought there was something special about this place this morning but there isn’t. The world’s the same everywhere. It’s all like school. R.F. Kuang, Sue Lynn Tan, Rebecca Ross, Kate Heartfield, N.E. Davenport, Saara El-Arifi, Juno Dawson and Sunyi DeanWilder is ready to write his final book, and revisit the horror he experienced during his youth. While visiting a small town in New England one summer, he met two companions, Harper and Nat, and became part of a trio that spent countless hours together. Wilder was always a bit afraid of Harper and her experiments with witchcraft, but when the three friends discovered a body, everything began to change. With the identity of the Dagger Man remaining a mystery, and residents of the area living in fear, Wilder is both fascinated and frightened by the unknown and years later, can't seem to let the past go...