Book Review: Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone @C_L_Johnstone @BoroughPress @RandomTTours @fictionpubteam #Mirrorland

Happy Sunday, I hope everyone’s having a good weekend. I’m sharing my review today for a fantastic book called Mirrorland by Carole Johnstone as part of the blog tour organised by Anne at Random Things Tours.

About the book

One twin ran. The other vanished. Neither escaped…
DON’T TRUST ANYONE
Cat’s twin sister El has disappeared. But there’s one thing Cat is sure of: her sister isn’t dead. She would have felt it. She would have known.
DON’T TRUST YOUR MEMORIES
To find her sister, Cat must return to their dark, crumbling childhood home and confront the horrors that wait there. Because it’s all coming back to Cat now: all the things she has buried, all the secrets she’s been running from.
DON’T TRUST THIS STORY…
The closer Cat comes to the truth, the closer to danger she is. Some things are better left in the past…

My thoughts

This book, wow. You know when you read the description of a book and you think you have an idea of what’s to come? Well I thought I had a fair idea with Mirrorland, boy was I wrong. This isn’t just a twisty thriller this book is so much more.

Cat and El are estranged twins and when El goes missing Cat returns to Scotland to her childhood home where El and her husband Ross now live. Cat is on edge, she doesn’t want to be there and everyone thinks her sister is dead but Cat knows she can’t be, she doesn’t feel it, she would know.

We don’t know why Cat and El don’t speak or why Cat moved thousands of miles away but it’s slowly revealed throughout the book. Set in present time we get flashbacks to their childhood and Mirrorland, I won’t say too much about it but this was the part that surprised me the most. Carole Johnstone has some imagination, I’ll admit it did take me by surprise but I loved it.

I loved the setting for the book and at the beginning we have a very handy map, a layout of the house that I found myself flipping back to now and again. The house itself felt like one of the characters and I could just imagine being there and it gave me shivers.

Cat our main protagonist isn’t the most reliable, I found myself wondering often if what I was reading was true but as the story unfolded it was like a jigsaw being put together. Some parts my heart broke for her and others I wanted to give a swift kick up the rear end but she had me invested, I wanted her to find out the truth.

It’s been about a week since I read this book and it really has left an imprint on me, I totally devoured it and was gutted when it ended. It’s one of those books that you just fall into, it swallows you up and then spits you out at the end feeling bereft.

This really is a fantastic twisty edge of your seat thriller about family, betrayal and revenge and it’s one I will definitely recommend.

I’d like to say a massive thanks to Borough Press and Anne at Random Things Tours for the book and the opportunity to be part of the blog tour.

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