Ivonne Rovira's Reviews > The Sound of Glass

Two years after the death of her firefighter husband Cal, Merritt Heyward leaves her Maine home to take possession of a rambling old mansion left to her husband. Cal had steadfastly refused to talk about his origins, leaving his widow with no idea about Cal’s late parents, younger brother, or the reclusive grandmother, Edith Heyward, who left him the sprawling estate in the Carolina Lowlands. Likewise, Merritt had never confided in him how she’d broken off with her airline-pilot father when he’d married a seductive blonde, big-haired airline stewardess just five years her senior.

A Yankee through and through, Merritt is as self-contained as a maple tree — and as out of place in Beaufort, S.C., as such a tree would be amongst magnolia trees, honeysuckle, and saw grass. She bristles at the pushiness, loquaciousness, and flirtatiousness of her sexy step-mother Loralee Connors, now widowed, who simply shows up with her owlish 10-year-old son Owen in tow. Merritt and her brother-in-law, Dr. Gibbes Heyward, loathe one another at sight. (He’s the spitting image of Cal naturally, as this is chick-lit, after all.) And all of those constantly tinkling wind chimes made of sea glass strewn all around the house and grounds seem ready to make Merritt go mad!

Southern mansions and deep, dark secrets go together like pralines and cream, and The Sound of Glass proves no exception. The tale is told alternately by Merritt, Loralee, and Merritt’s beleaguered grandmother-in-law, Edith Heyward. Merritt discovers that her husband Cal wasn’t the only Heyward harboring dangerous secrets, and readers will have lots of fun guessing and discovering just what those were.

I’d read Karen White’s The House on Tradd Street, a so-so Southern Gothic tale of ghosts with unfinished business, but I enjoyed this one much, much more. Grief-struck Merritt Heyward struck me as a more well-rounded character than The House on Tradd Street’s Melanie Middleton; except for the eternally perky Loralee Connors, all of the characters in the book seemed believable. (Still, I think readers will, like me, develop a soft spot for Loralee despite her over-the-top persona.) I hope that White will spin us a sequel so that we can get to see more of Merritt Heyward and her family.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I received this ebook free from NetGalley and NAL in return for an honest review.