Take "time" to read this one!

Specters in the Glass House by Jamie Jo Wright is one of the best books I’ve read this year. It’s a Gothic Romance with Christian influences in dual timeframes. The story first focuses on Marian Arnold in 1921. The brewing baron's heiress seeks solace in the glass butterfly house on her family's Wisconsin estate as Prohibition and the deaths of her parents cast a long shadow over her shrinking world. When Marian's sanctuary is invaded by nightmarish visions of murder, she struggles to distinguish the line between hallucinations of things to come and malevolent forces at play in the present. With dead butterflies as the killer's ominous signature, murders unfold at a steady pace. Marian, fearful she might be next, enlists the help of her childhood friend Felix, a war veteran with his own haunted past.

The other timeframe takes place in the present day at the same mysterious house. Researcher Remy Shaw becomes entangled with an elderly biographer's quest to uncover the truth behind Marian Arnold's mysterious life and the unsolved murders linked to an infamous serial killer. Joined by Marian's great-great-grandson, Remy seeks to expose the evil that lurks beneath broken butterfly wings; the same sign that appeared during the murders occurring a hundred years earlier.


This must have been a challenging book to write, with two protagonists living 100 years apart. Ms. Wright does an admirable job of integrating the two related stories. In the past I have been annoyed by authors who title each scene or chapter with the subject and the location. I’ve felt that authors should be able to alert the reader of the orientation in their writing. But Specters in the Glass House is an exception to my pet peeve. The story jumps between 1921 and the present many times while developing two protagonists. It was necessary for the author to alert the reader as to which protagonist was speaking. Without these titles, the reader could have easily gotten lost. Ms. Wright was able to pull this off without interrupting the book’s rhythm and flow.


Ms. Wright’s prose is excellent throughout the story. For example, “The motorcar rumbled and jolted across the country road with the tenacity of a horse that was almost dead but determined to make it one last time around the racetrack.” (I felt like that in one of my workouts.)

Ms. Wright also interjected the character’s internal battles when struggling to believe in a loving God. This scene is a good example: “Remy had clung to those promises as a child. As an adult, she didn’t want to be convinced they were merely a fairy tale. But sometimes it seemed that way. That God wasn’t protecting, and maybe He didn’t even exist. And yet, in spite of all the arguments for or against, Remy couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t shake Him. She knew in her soul God existed. It was just difficult to understand Him.”

I highly recommend this book to those who like a good story in the genres of romance, gothic, and mystery.

I received a review copy courtesy of Baker Publishing Group through Interviews & Reviews for an unbiased and objective review.