The Glass Forest
Fiction
Simon and Schuster
February 6, 2018
Hardcover
352
Free from publisher
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Bookseller comes a gripping literary suspense novel set in the 1960s about a deeply troubled family and three women who will reveal its dark truths. In the autumn of 1960, Angie Glass is living an idyllic life in her Wisconsin hometown. At twenty-one, she’s married to charming, handsome Paul, and has just given birth to a baby boy. But one phone call changes her life forever. When Paul’s niece, Ruby, reports that her father, Henry, has committed suicide, and that her mother, Silja, is missing, Angie and Paul drop everything and fly to the small upstate town of Stonekill, New York to be by Ruby’s side. Angie thinks they’re coming to the rescue of Paul’s grief-stricken young niece, but Ruby is a composed and enigmatic seventeen-year-old who resists Angie’s attempts to nurture her. As Angie learns more about the complicated Glass family, staying in Henry and Silja’s eerie and ultra-modern house on the edge of the woods, she begins to question the very fabric of her own marriage. Through Silja’s flashbacks, Angie’s discovery of astonishing truths, and Ruby’s strategic dissection of her parents’ state of affairs, a story of love, secrets, and ultimate betrayal is revealed.
My review:
This is my kind of suspense novel! The story is heavily focused on developing the characters, and the mystery (while ever present), is not the main focus. There are not any contrived hit you over the head twists, although make no mistake, there were a few times when I was fooled. From the beginning of the book we learn that a man is dead, his wife has gone missing, and a teenage daughter has been left behind. Enter the man's brother and wife, who are the only remaining family members to care for the daughter. I knew that things were not as they seem right from the start, but the author skillfully doles out just enough information at a time to keep the reader engrossed in what exactly happened within this family. There are three women who are the voices in alternating chapters. The teenage daughter Ruby, and the brother's wife Angie are in present timeline, while the mother Silja is a chronicle from when she meets her husband until her disappearance. I loved the triple person perspective, and was completely engrossed in this novel. This book is very different from Ms. Swanson's previous novel The Bookseller, but I really liked them both!
This is a great novel that will have you mesmerized by the characters, and embracing the unsettling feeling while reading. You will soon realize that you never know what is going on within a seemingly ordinary family!
I love this kind of mystery too. When the character development drives the plot, the story ends up being much more engrossing. I'll be looking for this one and her previous novel for my TBR!
Hope you enjoy it if you pick it up. Thanks for stopping by Ethan!