BOOK REVIEW | Looking Glass Friends by E.L. Neve

Looking Glass Friends by E.L. Neve follows the story of a man and a woman who married the wrong people. Neil feels stuck; he’s in a loveless marriage and is on the verge of ending his life when he is saved by a new pen pal, Ellie. Ellie finds herself in an equally loveless and unfulfilling marriage. Through their email correspondences, both Neil and Ellie find solace in each other’s intellect and wit, and soon find themselves falling in love.

There is a lot to like about this novel. For one, Neve knows how to construct a beautiful sentence. The novel is full of imagery, beautiful metaphors and figurative language. I often found myself marveling at how poetic it seemed. Her writing gives the book a dreamy feel, as if what you’re reading isn’t quite real, isn’t quite tangible. Instead, it’s floating among the clouds, which is exactly as it should be, for both Neil and Ellie are the kind of people who would live among the clouds.

That being said, the writing style is a double-edged sword. When it came to Neil and Ellie’s perspectives, it made perfect sense to keep the flowery, poetic style, but I was a bit confused as to why that style remained when the reader was given the point of view of Jake or Fay (Ellie and Neil’s respective spouses). Neither of those characters lent themselves to an imaginative or dreamy mindset and yet the writing didn’t change. I think this book would have been even more powerful if there was a clear cut style to each narrator.

Also, in terms of narrator, it was sometimes difficult to pin point which POV I was reading from. The book starts off as a third-person limited narration style, but then there were a few instances when the book suddenly became third-person omniscient. Why was I reading about Neil’s feelings in Ellie’s chapter? I’m not sure if this was simply a mistake or if the author wasn’t aware which narration style they wanted to go with.

There were a few grammatical errors, but nothing outstanding or jarring. For the most part, I noticed the author didn’t know when the place a period inside or outside of a parenthesis. For example, at 24% in the Kindle edition, we have this line: “(and would fire her, eventually, when the novelty wore off.)” This is written in the middle of a sentence so the period should actually come after the parenthesis. The only time a period goes inside the parenthesis is when the entire sentence is in it as well. There were also a few times the author forgot a comma or used a comma incorrectly inside of a parenthesis. Once again, these mistakes were very minor and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m an English teacher, I may not have even clocked them. None of them were dramatic enough to pull me out of the reading experience.

I believe it’s important to note for anyone interested in reading this novel that there are a few mentions of sex as well as a sex and almost-rape scene. I did not find any of it to be vulgar and it did not make me want to stop reading. There is nothing that is particularly explicit, but if you’re looking for a perfectly clean romance, this may not be for you. However, I would personally classify this as relatively clean.

I believe that hopeless romantics, people who love flowery and poetic writing and those who love literature – there were many references to great works of literature, particularly novels by Ayn Rand – will greatly enjoy reading this. However, those who have had marriages fall apart due to infidelity or who are greatly uncomfortable with the aspect of cheating, even emotional cheating, may want to steer clear.