The second novel from Francesca Reece, a north Wales-born and London-based author who debuted in 2021 with the well-received Voyeur, Glass Houses is centred around two people, Gethin and Olwen. Gethin is a forester looking after a house in north Wales for its English owners; Olwen, Gethin’s first true love, lives in London with her husband, until one day he returns to Wales.

Glass Houses’ story is told across two timelines: it’s a novel of belonging, of figuring out what home means to us, of the unique pride that being of a certain place can bring to a person. Reece has penned this gripping page-turner with great sense of place and lots of tactile details and the entire novel is wonderfully cinematic. Furthermore, she captures modern Wales brilliantly, and it’s refreshing to read a literary novel which, though in English, makes good use of the Welsh language. 

Reece’s way with dialogue, too, is admirable, and if Gethin and Olwen themselves are at times hard to like, somehow this makes it easier for a reader to connect with them: they’re well drawn and multidimensional, their relationship as complex as life itself.