Mirrorland: the dark and twisty fiction debut from 2022's new voice in psychological suspense

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Although never gratuitous or overly graphic, the truth behind Mirrorland is very dark indeed and the novel is a testament to the power of the imagination and the many and varied ways that the body – and the mind – will try to protect itself from trauma. A man: jowly, mostly bald, solemn like the reporter, but with a glint in his eye like he's faking it, stares into the camera, arms folded. I was kind of flabbergasted that we got all of the wrap up in a monologue, as that feels like a big no no to me. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products.

A dark and twisty thriller told with thumping heart and extraordinary tenderness— Mirrorland is as much a celebration of imagination and its escapism as an examination of trauma and its echoes. Since then it’s become a hub of book recommendations, author interviews, and in 2024 I will be starting my own YA book club. These days, Cat rarely thinks about their childhood home, or the fact that El now lives there with her husband, Ross. I wasn't even on the wrought-iron balcony of my California condo, looking out at the Pacific and drinking zinfandel and pretending I was exactly where I've always wanted to be.And I’m ashamed to say that it was always his voice I heard first—familiar and forgotten, hardly changed at all—rather than his words. This ambitious blend of psychological suspense and horror casts a powerful light on the liberating power of imagination. A complex, twisted and creative story, Mirrorland is a brilliantly original dark thriller that will take you on an intriguing journey filled with horror, escapism, betrayal and sacrifice. However, as a debut novel, it promises good things to come from this author and it definitely worth reading. In the stern stood Annie, Mouse, Belle, and Old Joe Johnson, the barkeep of the Three-Fingered-Joe Saloon.

I never knew who to trust and the author plays brilliantly on the unreliable memories of childhood and the special bond between twins. It is a fantastical world which feels incredibly real and I could almost feel the ship listing in a storm and was there in the Clown Cafe with the twins. Sure, she struggles at times with panic attacks and memory loss, but I never stopped rooting for her. The characterisation in particular is excellent and my feelings towards Cat changed page by page which I loved, finding her a complex and three dimensional character.Along remote roads, rivers and railways, in cosmopolitan cities and indigenous villages of the northeast Asian frontiers, Pulford maps the strikingly similar ways in which these two vast empires have ruled their Eurasian domains, before, during and after socialism. How could I not have realized before that it's the same harbor'a place I haven't thought about in decades, and yet there it is, almost unchanged. Cat is convinced that El is not dead, because twins are psychic and she would have known, and the fact that postcards leading her on a treasure-hunt across their home and history seems to confirm that – dum dum dah! Paired with twists and turns I didn't see coming, readers will certainly be in for tons of surprises. Mirror twins" is how Cat describes her relationship with El, two sisters entangled in a childhood of trauma, fantasy, and dreams of pirates with adventures of escape and mystery.

Novelists like Emma Tennant and John Herdman were working that vein decades ago, and let’s not talk about Stevenson, Hogg and Scott. A thriller wrapped in a gothic fantasy, Mirrorland is such a fun read, despite some dark subject matter. El’s diary, which is part of the bread-crumb trail, is written in a rather gauche imitation of childhood, such as “Mum is always making us read or reading to us. Mirrorland was a taught, twisty thriller which kept me guessing and had more layers than appear on the surface. Though it is a psychological thriller at it’s heart there are elements of horror as well as magical realism all of which help bring El and Cat’s story to light.Front and center among those are the endless hours the pair spent with Ross and a host of imaginary friends in Mirrorland, their name for the secret covered alley next to the house that was the setting for their childhood adventures on the high seas, in the Wild West, and at the prison from The Shawshank Redemption. Registered office address: Unit 34 Vulcan House Business Centre, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EF. With Cat being such an unreliable narrator, the first part of the book reads as a kind of magical realism, were never quite sure what is real and what is fiction, but when the pieces start to come together, when Cat starts remembering the truth of their childhood, that’s when Johnstone’s foreshadowing comes into play, and boy is she amazing at it. Michaelides takes a literary turn in his latest novel, employing an unreliable narrator, the structure of classical drama, and a self-conscious eye to dismantling the locked-room mystery.