**Many thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Sarah Pekkanen for an ARC of this book! Now available as of 8.6!**
"And I've got so little left to lose
That it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass..."-Walking on Broken Glass, Annie Lennox
Stella Hudson OFTEN feels this way...and never moreso than with her current case. As a best interest attorney, she always has to navigate the murky waters of right and wrong and the near-constant 'he said, she said' between parents while determining the best course of action in custody cases. It's a delicate dance, and one that takes ALL of Stella's strength...not to mention her dedication to keeping her own past trauma at bay. When she takes on the case of the Barclay family, however, there is an added layer of drama, death, and devastation: the family's nanny recently died after falling out of a window at the luxurious, historic Barclay home.
But was this an unfortunate accident...
or a carefully executed plot to get the nanny out of the way?
There are a plethora of suspects here, from both Barclay parents (including the father, who some suspect to have had an affair with said nanny), the grandmother, the nanny's former boyfriend...and most disturbingly, the Barclay's only child: nine year old Rose. Stella would love to get to the bottom of things by getting Rose to open up and talk with her, but there's a slight problem: Rose has developed traumatic mutism after the incident and won't say a word to anyone. What begins to disturb Stella even more, however, are some of the oddities to be found in the Barclay home...most notably, that every single pane or piece of glass in the house has been replaced with plastic.
When she finds a small stash of 'weapons' Rose has hidden in her room, Stella's fear heightens...not to mention the book about a serial killer she has nestled by her bedside table. Is such a young, seemingly innocent girl carrying a dark and deadly penchant and fascination with murder? Was she so desperate to remove the nanny from her home that she would resort to ANY means necessary to make her 'go away?' And if Stella's hunch is correct...could Rose's silent rage turn in her direction and take her OFF this particular case...
for good?
Sarah Pekkanen's latest solo effort (without her favorite writing buddy, Greer Hendricks) at first seemed somewhat reminiscent in terms of tone and theme to her last solo novel, Gone Tonight, which was a book I DEVOURED last year. Needless to say I was VERY eager to check out this one, and the idea of a house that had all of its glass removed was creepy, unique, and I'll be honest, sort of fascinating. I went in relatively blind, trying to maintain the aura of mystery and uncover the secrets of the Barclay family along with our narrator...and at first, for about the initial 40% or so, it wasn't too hard to do and I was pretty keyed in and intrigued to see where this would go.
But somewhere along the way, this House of Glass become more like a House of Cards...and let's just say one quick gust of boredom turned THAT into an impromptu game of 52 Card Pickup.
The first half of this book was somewhat straightforward, and in some ways, I was ENTIRELY okay with that. Rose is evil and your basic 'Damien from the Omen' vibes ensued. We got example after example of creepy instances, looks that felt off, strange happenings at home, anecdotal evidence of Rose's past problems at school, etc....ALL of which was certainly enough to ring the alarm bells for Stella. Again, not exactly new and exciting territory, but I didn't have too much trouble with buy-in. Stella moved about her days investigating, talking with the family members, still suspecting others (to an extent) and all of this SEEMED to be setting up a big final showdown between She Who Must Not Be Named and Stella. (And if this sounds a bit boring and repetitive, trust me, by about 50% it was ABSOLUTELY getting there.)
But of course...nothing in this book could be THAT simple....and the second half of this book is where it started to lose me entirely. We pivot sharply from the main mystery of the Barclay murder...and have to dive headfirst into STELLA'S past trauma. What was (potentially?) supposed to feel like a parallel felt more like heavy-handed storytelling, with LOTS of telling rather than showing, and all sorts of extraneous detail that felt out of place, to say the least. This second half of the book almost felt like a different book or even a different GENRE, and in this case, I just didn't gel with it whatsoever. Where Pekkanen made so many subtle, brilliant, emotional points in Gone Tonight about mothers and daughters...I didn't get ANY of that emotional gravitas here. This tonal shift just sort of snapped me out of the story to the point where I was begrudgingly flipping pages, waiting for it to end, rather than still feeling invested in who the murderer was or how they did it.
Honestly, it felt more like Stella needed to take a break from attorney life and just go to therapy for a while. For a minute I thought a horribly Hallmark-y ending was coming; thankfully, it did not, but the fact that the plot even SEEMED like it was going in that direction is a bit alarming. Stella also engages in some pretty, uh, unethical, behavior to say the least...so suspension of disbelief at her being able to get away with her actions is also required. There's also a random relationship (or the beginnings of one) thrown in toward the end of the book for no reason whatsoever (or none that I could glean). The very last chapter is also INCREDIBLY short and could have been left out entirely - not quite sure what that was about - and was just the eye-rolling icing on the cake. We also are given plenty of details that are unnecessary and unwanted towards the end. Where so many thrillers (or I guess, in this case, quasi-thrillers) leave the reader BRIMMING with unanswered questions, this one sort of spurted out a bunch of answers...when nobody had actually ASKED the questions.
But perhaps the biggest disappointment of all is that for a book that is ostensibly DRIVEN by being about a house with no glass in it...this winds up being nearly irrelevant to the plot. If THAT'S not a missed opportunity...I'm not sure what is.
...But then again, I guess 'House of Plastic' just didn't have that same ring to it.
😉
3 stars
Nominated for Best Mystery/Thriller in the Goodreads Choice Awards! Now in paperback!