Southern families and families with secrets.

After her husband died, Merritt le?ft their home in Maine and headed to South Carolina to Cal's grandmother's home? that she ?had inherited?. Little did ?Merritt know that ?her husband, Cal, never told anyone about her, and she didn't know anything about his family.

Grandmother Edith's home is a huge mansion where ??she ?kept secrets locked up inside herself and in the attic. The death of Edith's husband had an enormous impact on her life for more than one reason. After his death, Edith raised her only son C. J. alone, and he had a temper just like his father. C. J.'s son, Cal, married Merritt and took the temper with him to his marriage.

Merri?tt? is a bit unlikeable because she just couldn't relax and trust anyone, but who would after she knew no one even knew she existed. When her half brother?, Owen,? and ?her step-mother, Loralee, unexpectedly arrive at the house and plan on staying, secrets come out, and the story heats up with the secrets of the house and of the characters as they find clues about the house and each other's lives. Merritt became more likeable and caring as the book continued.

Loralee is a bit overbearing, but means well and is very loving. ?She definitely has a secret and a reason for moving in with Merritt. ?

Owen is precocious and a nerd, but very pleasant and sweet and tries to bring Merritt out of her shell.?

Gibbs, Cal's brother, was likable and helpful. He knew secrets about his brother and the house their grandmother lived in. The attic and its contents were the biggest secret his grandmother had and one that caused the most excitement and questions. Would Merritt find out what was meant by what was left in the attic and why Cal’s grandmother did what she did up there?

Did the house hold the family secrets, did the characters hold the family secrets, or did both the house and the characters hold the secrets that had been kept under wraps for years?? To me both the house and the characters were fragile just like Edith’s glass wind chimes.

THE SOUND OF GLASS is another remarkable, beautiful book by Karen White. Her descriptions of the characters, the scenes, and the emotions of the characters are very real. The book kept me wondering just what some of the female characters had to hide and why they were the way they were.

The characters will grow on you and grow on each other in a warm, inviting way. You will need some tissues as this wonderful story wraps up.

THE SOUND OF GLASS has suspense and mystery as well as addressing the issue of domestic violence.

I truly enjoyed THE SOUND OF GLASS, and if you have ever read one of Ms. White’s books, you know you will be in for a marvelous read. ?

I hope you get to read the book and enjoy it too.? It is oh so good. LOVED IT. 5/5

This book was given to me free of charge and without compensation by the publisher in return for an honest review.

Wow - that was an emotional roller coaster ride. The Sound of Glass is a story of courage, overcoming obstacles and adversities. It is a story of finding your way. It is a book FULL of words of wisdom. Some of my favorites:
Everybody carries their hurts in different ways, but everybody's got them. Everybody. Some people are just better at hiding them.
Turning the page is always better than rereading the same page over and over.
Everybody dies but not everybody lives.
The greatest moments in life are usually the smallest.
There are no shortcuts to anyplace worth going.
It is in the darkness we find light.

Merritt finds she has inherited a house in South Carolina that belonged to her husband's grandmother. Having lost her husband a couple of years earlier she picks up and moves to SC to begin a new life and hopefully to leave some scars behind. Soon after arriving she is confronted with her stepmother, Loralee,(close to her own age) and half-brother who is 10, who suddenly appear on her doorstep hoping to crash for a short time. Merritt had been estranged from her father (who has passed away) since he married Loralee and doesn't even know her half brother. Little do the two women know how much they need each other and how their lives are entwined, even if one tries to break the tie that binds. Both women must learn that sometimes to face the future, you must face your past.

Fire and references to fire run rampid through this story. Fires can be stopped in three ways -- exhausting the fuel source, taking away the source or starving the fire of oxygen. Fire is an event, not a thing. I loved how the fire theme fit so perfectly into the story. "Never let the fire get behind you."

Sometimes the scene behind closed doors is not what it appears. We all have our secrets -- and sometimes secrets kill. Sometimes they just need to be told, but at whose expense? Like all Karen White stories, this tale is full of secrets and some that have been waiting lifetimes to be heard. A moving story about the effects of abuse and the lives impacted by trying to hide the truth.

One of my favorite lines: "To survive out here as a plant you have to be tough. They've adapted to take all they need from nature while at the same time fighting it back. It's not easy to be covered with water for half the day and then baked in the broiling sun for the other half. They couldn't survive if they behaved like ordinary plants. Actually they really are just ordinary plants but have learned to survive unordinary events, which makes them like the strongest plants in the world."

I thought one of the best pieces of advice came in the wisdom of Loralee... She remembered her safety training as a flight attendant, how if they found themselves in water to roll on their backs and lead with their feet so they could see where they were going instead of where they'd been. She'd always thought that was a good way to approach life, too.

Very unconvincing. A Hallmark movie at best.

It has been two years since the death of Merritt Heyward’s husband, Cal, when she receives unexpected news—Cal’s family home in Beaufort, South Carolina, bequeathed by Cal’s reclusive grandmother, now belongs to Merritt.

Charting the course of an uncertain life—and feeling guilt from her husband’s tragic death—Merritt travels from her home in Maine to Beaufort, where the secrets of Cal’s unspoken-of past reside among the pluff mud and jasmine of the ancestral Heyward home on the Bluff. This unknown legacy, now Merritt’s, will change and define her as she navigates her new life—a new life complicated by the arrival of her too young stepmother and ten-year-old half-brother.

Soon, in this house of strangers, Merritt is forced into unraveling the Heyward family past as she faces her own fears and finds the healing she needs in the salt air of the Low Country.
good book Definitely a must read.

our book club had a fun discussion with this book. Lots of characters whose life intertwine across generations.