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Looking Glass Sound

ebook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER

  • Best Book of 2023 (Vulture)
  • A Best Horror Book of All Time (Cosmopolitan)
  • A Best Horror Book of 2023 (Esquire)
  • A 2023 World Fantasy Award finalist
    Catriona Ward, author of The Last House on Needless Street, 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 The Book of Love)
    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.
    "Impossibly compelling, brilliantly plotted, and incredibly moving all at once."—Virginia Feito, author of Victorian Psycho
    At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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      • Library Journal

        March 1, 2023

        Holed up on the Maine coast, Wilder Harlow is seeking to complete a memoir about the killer who terrorized his childhood town, a memoir stolen in draft by former best buddy Skye and turned into a trashy novel titled Looking Glass Sound. Fact and fiction are starting to blur, and Wilder is finding notes from Skye around the cabin. The latest from horror hotshot Ward; with a 200,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

        Copyright 2023 Library Journal

        Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

      • Publisher's Weekly

        June 26, 2023
        Ward (The Last House on Needless Street) examines the blurred line between reality and fiction in her unsettling latest. The story opens in 1989: lonely teenager Wilder Harlow is summering with his parents on the coast of Maine, where he meets handsome local Nat Pelletier and wealthy British vacationer Harper. The three quickly bond over local legends of the Dagger Man, a killer who leaves behind Polaroids of his victims. One afternoon, the friends make a grisly discovery that tests their connection and gives Wilder a chronic case of anxiety, which he manages by obsessively writing about the Dagger Man. Decades later, after the friendship has dissolved, Wilder returns to Maine to write a memoir covering the events of that fateful summer. Once there, he’s dogged by hallucinations, an unreliable memory, and a sense that he’s caught himself in some sort of time loop when events from his book start manifesting in the present. Ward dazzles with her ability to deliver satisfying narrative surprises at nearly every turn, though the novel’s metafictional layers can become tedious. Still, patient readers will be rewarded by a worthwhile conclusion—and likely motivated to read it all a second time.

      • Booklist

        Starred review from July 1, 2023
        Ward's latest may be her scariest yet. It's 1989, and Wilder, an awkward boy, spends the summer in Maine at his late uncle's oceanside cabin, quickly befriending Harper and Nat, who teach him about island life and the lore of the Dagger Man, who takes Polaroids of sleeping children with knives to their throats. Returning the next summer, Wilder cannot wait to see his friends before heading to college, until their lives are up ended forever by their part in the discovery of the horrific truth behind the Dagger Man. However, these revelations are just the start, as various versions of what happened are presented, one after the other, each slightly different than the last. The result is a physically unsettling reading experience both because of the uncomfortable stylistic choices Ward makes and how the story itself cannot be trusted until the very last page. A tale dripping with existential dread, one that asks readers to contemplate how they tell their own stories. For fans of psychological horror that incorporates the act of storytelling in its terrifying narrative, such as The Remaking (2019), by Clay McLeod Chapman, The Pallbearers Club (2022), by Paul Tremblay, or Plain Bad Heroines (2020), by emily m. danforth. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: On the heels of the success of Little Eve (2022) (not to mention a large print run), expect patrons to turn to Ward for late-summer chills.

        COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

      • Library Journal

        Starred review from July 1, 2023

        Rich characterizations abound in Ward's newest (following Little Eve). It all starts in the summer of 1989, when Nat, Harper, and Wilder are teens visiting Whistler Bay, ME. They are the Three Musketeers: inseparable. Soon they find themselves in the middle of a murder investigation: the killer of the missing women is someone they know well. But is he the same person who's been taking Polaroid pictures of sleeping children with a knife held to their necks? Wilder jots down everything in his journal, planning to write a novel about the tragedies. Years later, the book is published, keeping the souls of people alive within their prison on the pages. But who wrote it? And where does fiction intersect with truth? As is Ward's style, the prose is lyrically metaphorical, taking readers into the story as if they're shadows of the characters. This is a book about a book, inside a book--an intricate plot with changing perspectives. Reading it is like walking through a maze of wrong turns and misdirection. VERDICT In this Rubik's Cube of a novel, unreliable narrators compel readers to determine what is fact, what is fiction, and who wrote the book that rules their lives.--Kirsche Romo

        Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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    • English

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