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

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MIRRORLAND, her debut novel, has sold in 13 territories, and has been optioned by Heyday TV and NBC Universal. It takes nearly two glasses of merlot in a darker, more subdued bar, well out of earshot of Shake Shack, before I’m able to play the first video. 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.

It almost feels like a giant puzzle, filled with clues and dispirit parts which only show the bigger picture once you stand back and it has made me want to re-read it as, although I did work out some of the ending, I want to see what clues I missed. As girls, they invented Mirrorland, a dark, imaginary place under the pantry stairs full of pirates, witches, and clowns.What Russia and China have in common goes much deeper than their status as authoritarian post-socialist states or perceived menaces to Western hegemony.

The house was brilliantly imagined and I loved the floor plans at the start of the book, which really helped to bring the eerie building to life for me. This densely written suspense takes longer to read that you might think because it takes time to process and untangle the web of conflicting facts and surprising revelations.And really, it’s so farfetched and unbelievable, and the story before it isn’t strong enough to make up for it (unlike “Psycho”).

Having already seen Mogsy’s review and noticed that both of you did not feel quite comfortable with the Mirrorland setting, I keep wondering how I might react to it, particularly because both your descriptions make me think a little about Seanan McGuire alternate worlds in her Wayward Children series… I guess I will have to see for myself! Carole Johnstone’s award-winning short fiction has been reprinted in many annual ‘Best of’ anthologies in the UK and US.

I then remembered that someone in our blog tour chat group mentioned that they wanted the book to end around 85% in and I think I agree. They had a whole cast of shipmates, brought straight from their imagination and they’d spend hours down there playing and inventing stories. A picture of El and Ross on holiday somewhere fills the screen'all tan and white teeth; his arm flung around her shoulders as she leans in, tips up her chin to laugh.

has left Cat clues: a treasure hunt that leads them back to Mirrorland, where the truth lies waiting. 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. There is a sense that the novel is reverse engineered for twists, and nothing is as tiresome as a predictable twist. The only fantasy here is a childhood fantasy, a magical world constructed by children to escape their every day life.Although El has left clues for Cat, the clues are mostly directed at the reader: if you reference Papillon and A Tale Of Two Cities and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, you have already set the parameters of the game.