I didn't know what to make of this book at first. Initially I struggled with the flashbacks as they were quite confusing and it was hard to decipher which was imagination and which was reality.
I felt the book didn't flow in the beginning and at one point I even considered giving up but I continued and I'm glad I did as things became clearer as the book progressed and the story developed and pulled the reader in.
The author takes the reader on a journey sometimes looking back at the past and sometimes trying to deal with the present. There is mystery and suspicion, love and betrayal. Once it got going it was a good read.

A right hodge podge of plot, characters, settings, abuse, murder, sibling rivalry, drunk fantasy - reading it was exhausting work. It felt like one of those Covid dreams that people were having at the beginning of lockdown; everything that is niggling you thrown in with too may bottles of wine, night sweats and a chinese takeaway. Like a knotted ball of wool I wanted to unpick some of it, smooth it out and make one good jumper, then use the rest for something else - there was too much happening on each page. Also, a bit like Covid, it keeps going on and on - I was losing my grip on timescale, characters and plot and had to work to get to the end.

Batten down the hatches and be prepared for a stormy journey into an amazing world of imagination. Woven into this world you’ll encounter love, jealousy, hate and maybe even murder.
It was hard sometimes to establish where imagination ended and reality began but that only added to the intrigue.
The ending was superb and felt like a cliff hanger for something to follow. This book is excellent.

When Cat is called back from America because her twin sister El has gone missing she returns to many memories as when El got married her and her husband Ross bought the house the girls spent the first half of their life in. Then Cat and Ross are being interviewed by Police Scotland as they try and find out what has happened to El and relationships start to get complex until the cards and emails start arriving.
This is a rollercoaster of a book what a great read and you get almost to the last few pages before everything is explained. Loved it.

The world of Mirrorland is so comprehensively detailed that the reader can imagine themselves as the young twins, Cat (Catriona) and El (Ellice) in this fantastically crafted novel, hiding away from the fears of the adult/outside world. Both safely united in their imaginary world.
However, reality must intrude on their imaginary world and the story begins when the twins are found cold, scared and alone late at night at a Scottish harbour in Edinburgh. Repeating only their (first) names and that they are waiting for a pirate ship, there is much confusion about what has happened to Catriona and Ellice.
The story then jumps forward twenty years and Cat is returning to her old childhood home, long since purchased by El and her husband Ross. Unfortunately, her return is not for a pleasant but rather tragic reason – El has gone missing while out at sea on her boat and is now presumed death. Cat refuses to believe that this is the case. Although, not having spoken in over 10 years, Cat recalls how El supposedly attempted suicide previously in order to keep Cat and Ross apart and she refers to the dramatics preformed by El on a regular basics. From here on, we learn of Mirrorland – a magical world as invented by the children and inhabited by them on a daily basis. Along with Ross and several friends who may or may not also be invented. As the novel continues, Cat’s memories become increasingly twisted and tortured, leading the reader to wonder if these memories of the past can be trusted and now if she is actually imagining her encounters in the present day with the locals.
With Cat continuing to insist that El must be alive, there is someone determined to scare her away by sending numerous threatening notes, all while she is receiving messages that tell her El is alive. Could El be sending these or maybe Mouse? But surely Mouse was only a figment of her imagination? When Cat realises that her memories cannot be trusted, she starts to realise that she is in far more danger that she could ever have imagined and that Mirrorland is not the safe haven she thought.
When imagination, fantasy and deeply rooted fear combine, the world of Mirrorland is the result, a haven and hideaway. What a wonderful world has been created by Carole Johnstone is this novel. A novel that is part psychological thriller and part gothic novel, I kept turning and turning the pages – I just could not put it down!

Twin sisters Cat and El created a make believe place under the scary house they grew up in outside Edinburgh, Scotland.
Cat lives in L.A. and has moved on with her life until El disappears whilst out sailing. Cat has no choice but to return home to find out what had happened to El.
This book was not what I was expecting - being more From the fantasy, magic realism genre - still it is well written, fully of surprises and twists.
The mystery is based in their past with El leaving clues for her sister. Cat is convinced El is still alive and is determined to solve the mystery and find her sister.
Well worth a read for those, like myself, who don’t normally read this genre.

This is a good, multi faceted and intricate story, based on the lives of mirror twins Ellice and Catriona.
It was a revelation for me to hear about mirror twins and I found the foundation for the story fascinating.
It’s a good, unpredictable thriller which had me gripped from the first chapter.
A recommendation from me for sure.

Loved this book! What’s real and what’s myth/storytelling, that is the question. This genre isn’t something I usually go for, however I really enjoyed this book and it has made me seek out more mysterious, magical genres. I loved that it was set in Scotland, as I instantly felt I could relate with it not being an American based book. I found the story to be totally riveting and I just couldn’t read it quick enough to find out what the next twist would be.

Thank you netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this book. This is by far the best book I have ever read. It’s twists and turns where unreal. The storyline was a bit weird to be fair, so entertaining and sometimes dark. I found it a bit confusing at times only because it jumped from memories to reality with no in between. The ending was not as I expected but it was so much better. Very well written book great storyline and all characters where brilliant too. So worth 5stars and more. I look forward to reading more from the author in future.

I found the start of the book very confusing but it did get a little clearer and the twists at the end were exciting. Overall it was quite repetitive.

Mirrorland is a psychological thriller/mystery and it definitely had me confused at first. Even towards the end, I thought that oh it's finished now, but there was still more to surprise me.

Thank to NetGalley and Harper Collins for this advanced copy.

A creepy yet fascinating tale of twin sisters and the make-believe world they used to inhibit back in their less than idillic childhood is the opening shot of this story. The real trouble starts when one of the twins disappears and the other realizes she never really knew her sister... Highly recommended!

Catriona (Cat) had hoped never to see her childhood home ever again after she fled to America twelve years ago. Most of her memories of her time living behind the red door of number 36 Westeryk Road were of being terrified and living in fear. The only time that Cat and her identical twin sister Ellice (El) felt safe was when they escaped into Mirrorland, their imaginary world under the house where they would sail with pirates, have pow wows in the tee pee.A world of fun and imagination. A Place where they were safe from harm because Bluebeard and The Tooth Fairy didn't know about Mirrorland, it was their secret.

But now in her thirties Cat has been forced to return back to the flat stoned house that was situated on the outskirts of Edinburgh after she had received news that her sister had mysteriously disappeared. Everyone including the police and El's husband Ross believed that El were convinced that El was dead but Cat refuses to believe them. She finds herself irresistibly drawn back into Mirrorland where she discovers that El has left behind a treasure hunt. As she uncovers more clues she begins to uncover secrets that cast doubt on events both in the present day and the past.

The chapters of this mesmerising story flip back and forth between the present day and the past and are narrated entirely from Cat's perspective. She was a complex character who was also flawed which was understandable when you her early childhood into consideration. Her two go to modes as a adult seemed to be living in denial and running away instead of dealing with the situation. I had mixed feelings about her character but I also couldn't help admiring her determination to uncover the truth behind her sister's disappearance despite the rift that had developed between them in the past. I can't say that I liked the younger version of El very much at times especially after the younger version of Ross came into their lives but we all behave differently when we are younger and whilst reading her treasure hunt clues it did appear that she had matured during the intervening years. I loved the descriptions of the girl's adventures in Mirrorland, how they used their vivid imaginations to escape the atmosphere of terror and fear that they lived with on a daily basis. This is a story about how fallible our memories of people and events can be. How the version that we remember might not be what really happened at the time and how people's actions and behaviour can be misinterpreted and misunderstood. About how people can hide their true natures behind various masks and are not always who they appear to be.

This is a cleverly written, atmospheric, intricately plotted, outstanding debut thriller that had me glued to my kindle, totally captivated by this talented author's thrilling story. The characters were realistic and believable, the twists and turns of the plot kept me guessing and I experienced a wide range of emotions as the story unfolded. I couldn't put this book down once I started reading it and read it in two sittings. A absolutely brilliant book,worth far more than five stars and very very highly recommended.

Cat is returning to Edinburgh, to the childhood home she and her identical twin El escaped from one blood-soaked night as they fled from their terrifyingly claustrophobic life to safety. After several years in a children’s home where they refuse to reveal any of the details of their past they haven’t spoken since a serious fallout and sent Cat running to America while El married Ross and moved back into that same house where she bizarrely recreated Mirrorland, the fantasy world of their childhood complete with the Clown Cafe and the ship in the cellar where they roamed the high seas hiding from Blackbeard the pirate. When El disappears Cat returns to the house and as the police investigation runs out of steam she starts to remember more of that strange fantasy life and realise just how much danger she’s in.
Gripping novel, switches backwards and forwards in time and between fantasy and reality revealing more and more of the terrors of their childhood which Cat has buried so deep in her sub conscious she struggles to remember what actually happened. Lots of satisfying twists, none of which took me by surprise but they still led to a satisfying conclusion.

I am not a fan of the magical realism genre, which this novel seems to resemble, so I really struggled to engage with the storyline. However, the writing is excellently atmospheric, imbuing the novel with that pervasive sense of other-worldliness to be found in dreams - or is this a nightmare? Either way, it is a very intriguing first novel.

This as a story of identical twins and what happens when one of them goes missing - is she dead or alive? They seem to have lived in a fantasy world as children and strange things happened to them. Catriona returns from her life in America to support Ross, Eli's husband in trying to find her. There are a series of emails and strange clues which Catrionsa tries to decipher. She also drinks a lot and has only a hazy memory of what really happened when she was younger. I found this to be over-complicated and thought the character development was sacrificed to the plot. I really could not be bothered to engage in the intrigue. I skim-read to the end and did not really care what happened to the women.

This was a very artfully written mind-bending book. If you liked and understood the movie “inception” you will really enjoy this. It’s full of weird and wonderful concepts that make you think. It was absolutely ingenious!
I will definitely be recommending this in book club as it’ll be interesting to see how other people perceive it.

A very confusing and contrived story which never quite took hold. I was never sure who or what I was reading about, whether it was a story within a story or the past or the present! You know there will always be confusion when twins are involved and there was certainly plenty of that! Imagination ran riot to the point where it was difficult to tell truth from fiction within the fiction!

Every once in a while you know you have read something special, something original, something so overwhelmingly beautiful and sad that you feel like your heart is breaking. Mirrorland is that something. Dark and unsettling, the more you read, the more you cannot imagine what the next chapter holds. It’s like holding your breath underwater, afraid to surface, yet more afraid to remain.

I’m not going to say it’s for fans of… or for those who like…. because this book is like no other. It twists and surprises and then twists again, till you no longer know who is telling the truth or even who is who.

Catriona and Ellice lived out their childhood in a world of their own invention. A world called Mirrorland. Populated with pirates, clowns, adventurers, Belle, Mouse and The Witch, the only other child allowed into their world was Ross. That is, until the girls are found wandering, bloody and wretched at the dock, waiting for a pirate ship to take them away.

Many years later El has gone missing from her sailboat The Redemption and Cat still remembers nothing of that fateful night when they were both 12 years old. Having spent the rest of their childhood in care, El eventually marries Ross and Cat has gone to live in California. She hasn’t been home or spoken to El since the day she left. But now Cat is forced to come back. She is certain that El is still alive, because as mirror twins, she would know if El was dead. Except no-one believes her.

Once Cat is back in the old house where she and El lived with Mum and Grandpa (El and Ross bought it back), she is forced to face her worst fears and discover the truth. But is the truth really the truth and who is leaving cards on the doorstep and emailing her clues? Convinced it is El, Cat is drawn into a nightmare world where only returning to Mirrorland can save her.

To say this book is fantastic would not do it justice. It’s just brilliant and amazing and every other adjective I can think of.

Many thanks to #NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An absolutely mind blowing novel. Completely different to any I have read before. Telling the story of identical twins El and Cat and Ross the man they both love. As children they spent most of their time in a fantasy world called Mirrorland. I loved the way it is narrated and the depth of secrets which slowly emerge as the story unfolds. I didn't see the ending coming at all. Absolutely fantastic