Mirrorland - Carole Johnstone

 

Mirrorland is a psychological suspense/thriller following Cat returning to her home after her twin sister, El, disappears while sailing.  El and her husband, Ross, have bought and now live in El and Cat's childhood home.  The home where El and Cat would spend hours playing in Mirrorland - an imaginary world shaped by the books their mother would read to them.  Not long after Cat's arrival, she starts receiving clues to a treasure hunt like the ones El would send her on while they were growing up.  There are clues tucked away in almost every room of the house and they lead back to the world under the stairs - Mirrorland - and unlock the truth that Cat had long forgotten.  TW/CW: child abuse, on page physical abuse, off page incest, suicide 

This story was absolutely fantastic.  It did take me a bit to get into it (which I'll expand upon later), but once I was in, I was in all the way.  My absolute favorite part was the pacing - it was immaculate.  It was the kind of book that, when I was done, I put it down and just thought back over the whole story and how everything came together at just the right pace for me to be 100% completely enthralled.  The thriller beats are timed out perfectly for my taste and the pacing worked with the information we learn from the book in order to expertly ramp up the tension.  This is Johnstone's debut novel and, to me, it reads like a seasoned thriller writer.  The book opens up with Cat on her way from LA to Scotland so we are right in the middle of the action.  There's no sitting around getting comfy with Cat before she finds out the news about her sister going missing - we're just thrust right into the story from the very beginning.  From a quick skim of other reviews, it seems like most people put down the book because they couldn't get past the beginning.  I had a bit of a rough time with the first 10-15% but once I got past that part, the book just flew by.  It has been a while since I've had a book where it felt like I couldn't turn the pages fast enough and this one hit that exact target for me.  I think the scavenger hunt Cat goes on gives a natural cadence to the story and really helps push along the narrative.  At the same time, once Cat finds each clue, she often has a moment of reflection where she remembers something about her childhood and these quiet moments are really powerful in the context of the larger investigation.

My issue with the beginning wasn't the pacing - it was the writing style.  This story has a very fantastical, some might say flowery, narrative style.  The style is consistent through the book, but I  found it the heaviest at the beginning and it leaned a bit too much toward the literary fiction side of prose for my personal liking.  Very detailed descriptions, long paragraphs detailing Cat's feelings and thoughts and her surroundings.  I know some readers will really enjoy this writing style, but it just isn't for me.  However, once we got past that first 15% or so, the mystery side of the plot really picks up and it feels like the narrative has more to focus on rather than just feelings and setting. Besides the literary fiction type style, Johnstone also had a really interesting way of blending past and present.  We get flashbacks of Cat and El as children growing up in this house and the games they'd play, but they aren't always formatted like normal flashbacks.  It really felt like we were in Cat's brain as she sort of gets lost in her memories and then comes back to the present day. So there aren't always scene breaks or a new chapter to delineate what timeline we're in.  I really enjoyed this narrative choice, but it won't work for all readers.  Also, in these flashbacks, it is very obvious that Cat's childhood imagination was very robust.  The descriptions of her surroundings and the activities her and El would do leaned quite heavily into a fantastical almost magical realism sort of realm.  I think this choice was excellent and really helped ground the reader in the same world that Cat grew up in and in the mindset that she has in childhood. I'd say the writing style takes some time to get used to and sink into, but I really think it is a fantastic choice overall for the story and 100% worth the effort it might take getting through the first little bit of the book.

I really enjoyed the characters in this story and the way we slowly peel back the layers of characterization.  Cat hasn't talked to her sister in 12 years so, in a way, we're discovering who El is right along side Cat as she tries to figure out what happened. Also, since this is the first time Cat has been back to Scotland in 12 years, she is sort of rediscovering parts of herself the longer she stays in town. I really liked how the scavenger hunt clues slowly revealed more and more information about their relationship and their upbringing in a very logical and methodical way.  There are times where Cat will remember events one way and then find out some information that re-frames or causes her to re-examine her memories and what she thought was true.  The clues to the hunt lead Cat to pages of El's diary that she kept while they were growing up so we slowly see how different the two sisters grow to be.  These diary entries I think worked very effectively as lenses into the past and gave the narrative a lot of jumping off points for more flashbacks into their childhood.  Cat and El knew Ross growing up as well so we also get views of him as a child and slowly find out the circumstances behind how he and El came to be married.  I did wish the other characters in the story were a little more fleshed out and a bit more integrated into Cat's investigation but that didn't bother me too much. 

Finally, let's talk about the ending in as general terms as possible.  The majority of this book is Cat following the clues in the scavenger hunt and working through her memories of the past along with reconnecting with Ross (who was her friend growing up as well). But once we get to the last third of the book, all the strings start to get pulled and it feels like the story starts to unravel in the best way possible.  Cat is finding gaps in her memories and the scavenger hunt is helping her fill them in which leads Cat to re-examine what she thought was true.  How childhood trauma affects memories is a big theme in the last third of the book and it was fascinating for the reader to also have to change what we thought was true based on the information Cat is finding.  It was heartbreaking to watch Cat grapple with finding out these hard truths and realize that her memories aren't whole but I thought it was well done and not over the top.  In the acknowledgements at the end of the book, Johnstone does note the doctor she spoke with who studies childhood trauma while conducting her research for this book.  And while I can't speak on the representation from a personal standpoint, to me as a reader it didn't come across as gimmicky or played up for drama, it felt realistic and a logical explanation given the events that happened.  I did appreciate how we get a lot of explanation and resolution after the final conflict so we can really see how Cat is doing after finding out all this information.  By the end, I did find myself slightly more interested in finding out the truth about what happened in their childhood more than what happened to El but the two plot threads are connected in the end so it was satisfying on both counts.  The one last twist was interesting but did feel a tad bit too convenient for my liking but I don't think it cheapened the overall narrative at all and I do think most readers will like it.  I found the ending 10% to mirror the beginning 10% in that we are back in Cat's head and while she is physically going a lot of places and doing a lot of things, we get more of that literary fiction type of description as she works through the last few activities of the book. It felt like a very much needed long cool down after a very high stakes and high emotion third act. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this story.  The narrative style was unique and really fit the overall plot and mood of the story, the characters were complex and evolved during the course of the book, and the ending was incredibly well paced and plotted.  I do think the narrative style can be hard to get into at first, but I think it is worth pushing through if possible to get to the body of the story because the payoff is 100% worth it.

Thanks to NetGalley and Scribner for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Publication date is April 20, 2021.