Looking Glass Sound

Closer to 4.5. It’s hard to not be tired of stories with this particular style (the book even comments on that near the end, because of course it does) but if you can accept it as fresh it is really well done. Constant discomfort punctured by sharp moments of horror, and an ending that unravels as horribly as you’d want.

The first time I took acid I stared into a campfire, surrounded by dark woods and promptly, but quietly, freaked out. I felt like I was watching a hundred lives grow and melt before my eyes and that I was experiencing those lives as well. That’s how reading Looking Glass Sound made me feel. Ward is a powerful writer. The imagery she conjures of deep water, true crime and the many lives of our characters is so visceral. I could not put it down. I was too completely engrossed in the siren song she crafted. So massively successful in its bizarre, meta story that it will unfortunately not appeal to everyone. But for the lucky few like myself, who are happy to take the journey, they will become obsessed.

I am realizing more and more that I am terrible at writing reviews for books I enjoyed. This had a surreal, gothic quality to it, but felt fresh because of the delivery of the storyline. Thank you to Tor & NetGalley for the ARC

Contains a competent, interesting story. It's a shame the book retells this story at least 3 times from 3 different perspectives without providing enough fresh perspective or reorientation. There are several books that do what this one tries to do much better imo: Trust Exercise and Trust by Hernan Diaz, to name two

Once again in love with Cat Ward! Flew through this book and had so much fun book clubbing it. Great to discuss along the way and at the end.

I received the audio for review from NetGalley and I’m glad I gave it a listen.

This novel started out as one of the more unique ones I’ve ever read, when at around 20-30% there is a HUGE reveal. The kind of reveal that tends to happen at the end of novels, not the first quarter. I was impressed, and definitely intrigued to continue, but it did make me nervous about where the book could to next.

For me, the next section worked really well, as the story becomes more about trauma from the reveal, and trying to learn general acceptance and continuing life as Wilder moves on to college. But as the story progressed to further sections, I felt as if the book became disjointed. Introducing more supernatural and strange things into what seemed more like just a murder mystery beforehand, it just kind of stopped working for me.

The ending itself has a lot going on, and I’ll be honest, it became confusing. Still though, I did enjoy it and it’s not overly long or displeasing. Personally a 3/5* for me.