Looking Glass Sound - mind-breaking in the BEST way!
“I don’t think people should live by the ocean. It’s too big to understand.”
Looking Glass Sound follows Wilder, a young boy on summer vacation, when he meets his first real friends; Nat and Harper. They have a sunsoaked, adventurous summer together and promise to come back every year. But the next year, everything has changed, when they uncover a killer stalking this small coastal town. The effects of this trauma reverberate through all their lives. Wilder is writing a memoir of this time but the more he writes, the more memories he uncovers, and slowly he realises he may not be able to trust his own recollection or the ghosts that now haunt him.
“Beyond its warm circle the sea stretches out into the dark. I think about how big and old the world is compared to us. We’re just little fires burning in the night.”
Here’s what I loved:
This is like 5 stories in one in the most labyrinth type of storytelling imaginable. It’s absolutely outstanding. You feel yourself starting to slip into insanity a little bit as you take turn after turn only to find yourself back where you started. It’s so much fun to read and so damn clever, it’s like nothing I’ve read before.
I wasn’t expecting to get as emotional as I did reading this. The characters that Ward has created are so real that I became genuinely attached to them while reading, especially Wilder. And as the last few chapters played out, my heart was breaking at the reality these characters were facing. It’s so moving and yet so creepy at the same time.
There’s a lot of beautiful points that Ward is touching on here; mortality, friendship, family, but also the darkside of writing, the price of loyalty, and a take on true crime and the harmful effects of us devouring it as a society.
Now that I’ve finished it and understand all the incredibly clever twists and turns, I want to immediately re-read it to appreciate how complex this story really is. I think it would be like reading a completely different book. Get ready for so many moments of “NO WAY” and frantically paging back through the book’s pages, unable to trust your own recollection…….and the ghosts that now haunt you….
“I remember thinking, if it’s possible that life can be this guilty and hard and sad, then it must be possible for the opposite to exist. Possibility. Magic, I suppose.”
A massive thank you to Tor Nightfire for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I love you always Nightfire!
Please, please, PLEASE pick up a copy of this book when it hits shelves TOMORROW!