Name: The Glittering World
ISBN: 9781476774527

Robert Levy

When a successful chef returns to the small Canadian town where he was born for a short getaway to reconnect with family and friends, he suddenly remembers being abducted as a youth by a strange race of beings in the woods.

The Glittering World

Janice Hopper

** spoiler alert **
           Warning: spoilerific info below.

This was an interesting book. It's basically a story about changelings. The Other Kind (this author's stand-in for the Fae/Sidhe/Elves/People Under the Hill aren't like our traditional depictions of elves. The one thing the Other Kind have in common with Elves is their ability to enchant humans and draw them away from our world, sometimes. The changelings that are left in the outside world (the ones that survive) have similar "enchanting" qualities.

The story happens when one of the changelings (Blue) returns to the place of his birth. He doesn't KNOW he's a changeling, though, until he gets home. The rest of the story is the fallout of what happens when he hears the old voices of home, realizes what he is, and disappears.

I was reminded a bit of Graham Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale. (TBH, SKoFT is a much more polished and interesting book, written by a very skilled author.) The first part of the book builds up a sense of dread and suspense. It's one of those books that I shouldn't have been reading as I was falling asleep! 

Then the ending. The ending was full of strangeness that didn't really work for me. Remember the ending of Stephen King's It? The ending of this book reminded me a little of that, crossed with Aliens, though without ALL the horror. Honestly, I kinda skimmed through the last section (Gabe's), finished, and thought "Well, huh. That was an ending." That's why it's 3 stars instead of 4 for me. I don't need to have everything wrapped up in a tidy package, but there was a certain amount of WTFery for me here.

But the novel was a worthy effort. I think this is the author's first novel. Good work for that.

shellybn

I was really expecting a more traditional horror story when I read this book.

Chantale

I just couldn't put this book down. If it weren't for the fact that we to shovel a bunch of times this past weekend I would have finished this book in one day.

It is very well written and really kept me reading and at the edge of my seat. I couldn't wait to see what will happen next in the book. 

Oh and I love the cover. 

If you love paranormal/fantasy with Mystery, I think you will absolutely love this book.

I give this 4 out of 5.

In the tradition of Neil Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane), Scott Smith (The Ruins), and Jason Mott (The Returned), award-winning playwright Robert Levy spins a dark tale of alienation and belonging, the familiar and the surreal, family secrets and the search for truth in his debut supernatural thriller. AS A BOY, HE VANISHED INTO THE WOODS. SOMETHING ELSE CAME BACK. When up-and-coming chef Michael “Blue” Whitley returns with three friends to the remote Canadian community of his birth, it appears to be the perfect getaway from New York. He soon discovers, however, that everything he thought he knew about himself is a carefully orchestrated lie. Though he had no recollection of the event, as a young boy, Blue and another child went missing for weeks in the idyllic, mysterious woods of Starling Cove. Soon thereafter, his mother suddenly fled with him to America, their homeland left behind. But then Blue begins to remember. And once the shocking truth starts bleeding back into his life, his closest friends—Elisa, his former partner in crime; her stalwart husband, Jason; and Gabe, Blue’s young and admiring coworker—must unravel the secrets of Starling Cove and the artists’ colony it once harbored. All four will face their troubled pasts, their most private demons, and a mysterious race of beings that inhabits the land, spoken of by the locals only as the Other Kind...