House of Glass

• Author: Sarah Pekkanen
• Genre: Mystery/Thriller
• Publication Date: August 6, 2024
• Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for providing me with a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

CONTENT WARNING: murder, ableism, infidelity, addiction, death of a parent, trauma, grief 

On the outside they were the golden family with the perfect life. On the inside they built the perfect lie.

A young nanny who plunged to her death, or was she pushed? A nine-year-old girl who collects sharp objects and refuses to speak. A lawyer whose job it is to uncover who in the family is a victim and who is a murderer. But how can you find out the truth when everyone here is lying?

Rose Barclay is a nine-year-old girl who witnessed the possible murder of her nanny – in the midst of her parent’s bitter divorce – and immediately stopped speaking. Stella Hudson is a best interest attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella’s mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.

From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, historic DC home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far more troubled, than she feared. And there’s something eerie about the house itself: It’s a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.

As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays are desperate to hide, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present are set on a collision course in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny’s murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny’s boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella’s supposed to protect the one she may need protection from?

I’ve been a huge fan of the books Pekkanen co-wrote with Greer Hendricks, so I couldn’t wait to read this one. Unsurprisingly, I found it to be just as engrossing and enjoyable as the co-authored books. I was lucky enough to have gotten approved for both the ebook and audiobook versions, so I switched off between both versions to get a feel for both. The audiobook is narrated by Laura Benanti, and she was a great choice for this book—she perfectly captured Stella’s character and did a wonderful job with the story.

Have you ever read those posts that go around that compare statements made by children and serial killers, then ask you to guess whether the statement was made by a child or a serial killer? Well, I have, and trust me when I say that it’s shockingly difficult to tell the difference. Although not every book featuring a suspicious death that happens in the vicinity of a child reminds me of that post, this one certainly did.

Let me start with Rose, the young girl at the heart of this story. Following the traumatic death of her nanny, which she witnessed, on top of the ugly divorce that her parents are in the middle of, Rose has developed traumatic mutism. She’s nine years old, and a best interest attorney has been appointed on her behalf, to determine what actually happened and make a custody recommendation that will be most beneficial for Rose. 

Stella, the best interest attorney, has taken Rose on at the special request of her mentor, a judge who took Stella under his wing. She normally doesn’t take clients under the age of thirteen due to her own traumatic childhood and experience with traumatic mutism, but in this case she agreed to bend her self-imposed rule to work with Rose. This gave Stella a lot of insight into what Rose was experiencing and how to work with her most sensitively, but it also created a lot of interference from her own experiences that could create blind spots. We saw a lot of Stella’s backstory in flashbacks of her own experiences as some of them mirror Rose’s in certain ways. 

Pekkanen is a master at amping up the tension and the creeptastic factor of this story. Yeah, I don’t think creeptastic is a real word, but I just made it into one, because it’s the best one I can think of to explain this. One of the first things we learn about Rose is that she collects sharp objects, but Stella immediately notices that there is no glass to be found in the family home—not a window, a cup, a wineglass, a mirror, picture frames, nothing. The house, the tension between the members of the Barclay family (the parents, grandmother, and Rose), the nanny’s actions in the family home, and Stella’s own past and realizations about herself all work together so beautifully to slowly crank the tension up until I was flipping pages and couldn’t go to sleep until I finished reading and found out what actually happened.

I found myself wondering if it could be possible for a nine-year-old kid to be as manipulative as Rose, or if Pekkanen was just making it sound that way, and Rose’s words and behavior were just that of a strange and mildly creepy little girl under extreme amounts of stress and not getting enough socialization with other children her own age. 

There were a few suspects in the story, and it almost felt like the author was pushing one or two of them a bit too hard, which made me think it probably wasn’t them. I predicted the outcome of the book way earlier than the reveal, but I really liked how the author got us to the end of the story—the twists and the reveal were done beautifully, and the tension was the best part of the story. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, with the whole vibe keeping me on the edge of my seat from start to finish. Overall, I was impressed with this story, and am looking forward to checking out more of Pekkanen’s solo work. I recommend this one if you like mystery/thrillers that are tense, involve an investigator/attorney with personal history that reflects the case, and stories involving complex family dynamics.

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