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applesodaperson 's review for:
Looking Glass Sound
by Catriona Ward
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I actually have beef with this book. This was genuinely up there as one of the worst books I have ever read. It started out fine, with a cool and coastal vibe and a twisted mystery and child friendships. And I do think I would have liked it if that was the whole thing. But then it switches to reveal that everything you just read was a book within a book. And I was initially annoyed, but also it was like fine whatever because it was still within the same timeline. Then we got a cool gay college romance and the main character tries to work through some trauma. And the book within a book thing was him writing about what happened to him to work through it. And then he gets betrayed by his friend/lover, which was fine. And a time skip happens and reveals that he went on to marry a woman and get divorced and then he reconnects with the college frenemy and they kind of reconcile because they need each other and because the main character is going blind . BUT THEN! It becomes ANOTHER layer of a book within a book! And the betrayer/lover character is revealed to actually be a woman who has been writing the book we have been reading the whole time. And the gender swap actually sucks because it practically erases any LGBTQ+ rep this book had. So now the book doesn't even have that going for it. Literally I still don't understand what the point of switching her gender was.
Another thing that I hated was that many times throughout the book, side characters attempt to do magic/rituals and it never works, nor does the book even try to imply that magic really exists in the reality of this book. But then at the very end, it gets revealed that Wilder, the main character, has actually been dead this whole time and died when he was young and Sky, the frenemy character, did actual real magic to trap his soul in the pages of the book you have been reading and Wilder's rhyme game that the reader has been seeing in between chapter has actually been Wilder's soul the entire time. Like what? Hopefully I am not the only one who is just stunned at how terrible that all is. Genuinely this was a bad read, with many many narrative and character flaws.
Listened to on Libby.
Another thing that I hated was that many times throughout the book, side characters attempt to do magic/rituals and it never works, nor does the book even try to imply that magic really exists in the reality of this book. But then at the very end, it gets revealed that Wilder, the main character, has actually been dead this whole time and died when he was young and Sky, the frenemy character, did actual real magic to trap his soul in the pages of the book you have been reading and Wilder's rhyme game that the reader has been seeing in between chapter has actually been Wilder's soul the entire time. Like what? Hopefully I am not the only one who is just stunned at how terrible that all is. Genuinely this was a bad read, with many many narrative and character flaws.
Listened to on Libby.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Self harm, Suicide, Murder