Heart of Glass

Jennifer Hillier’s psychological thriller Heart of Glass (2026) critiques the modern cultural obsession with tragedy as entertainment. The novel follows Barb Bonifacio, a journalist haunted by the murder of her childhood best friend Lorelei Glass 25 years earlier in their hometown of Seaside, Washington. When the convicted “Carnival Killer,” Samuel Figg, recants his confession for Lorelei’s murder in a new true-crime docuseries, Barb is forced to confront the secrets of her past while investigating a string of new disappearances targeting reality-TV stars. The narrative examines how individuals are shaped by their pasts, exploring themes such as The Cost of Unresolved Adolescent Trauma, The Pitfalls of Fame, and Power as a Shield for Abuse. Hillier uses the intertwined worlds of reality TV and true-crime media to explore how public consumption transforms personal trauma into a marketable commodity.

Hillier is an award-winning Filipino Canadian author of dark psychological thrillers, including Jar of Hearts (2017), which won the 2019 International Thriller Writers Thriller Award for Best Hardcover Novel, and Little Secrets (2020), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Heart of Glass is a standalone sequel to her 2015 novel Wonderland, returning to the fictional Pacific Northwest town of Seaside. Upon its release, the novel became a New York Times bestseller and was selected by the Book of the Month Club. 

This guide refers to the 2026 First Edition from Minotaur Books.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, child death, graphic violence, sexual violence, rape, child sexual abuse, child abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental illness, pregnancy loss, addiction, substance use, and cursing.

Plot Summary

Freelance journalist Barb Bonifacio lives in her small hometown of Seaside, Washington, haunted by the murder of her best friend Lorelei Glass 25 years earlier. Lorelei’s body was found after she hooked up with an older man at a drive-in that she attended with her friends Barb and Nicolette Montes. The older man turned out to be the serial killer Samuel Figg. Barb is lonely and unhappy and has failed to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming an author. She also resents her former childhood best friend Nicolette for abandoning her in Seaside after the murder. Nicolette reinvented herself and found fame as the reality star Cole Lennox on the show Trophy Wives. Barb vents her resentment toward Cole by writing vicious anonymous pieces about Trophy Wives on the gossip blog Reality Bitch.

Lorelei’s case re-enters the public consciousness when a new docuseries, Criminal Confessions, announces a season focused on Samuel Figg, the so-called “Carnival Killer” who confessed to Lorelei’s murder and four others. In a promotional trailer, Figg recants his confession for Lorelei’s death. He later reveals that Earl Schultz, the deputy chief of police, coerced him into the confession. Barb fears what the docuseries will reveal. 

As the town prepares for the grand reopening of its iconic Wonderland amusement park, Barb is sent to cover the discovery of a dismembered body at the private beach of Legacy Sands. Barb initially suspects that the victim might be Kylie Kahl, a reality-TV star who vanished near Seaside six years ago. However, her investigation is stonewalled by her ex-fling, Seaside Police Detective Cameron Wallace, who is under orders to suppress news that could harm the park’s reopening.

Through her confidential informant at the police department, an IT specialist named Alice Chu, Barb obtains autopsy photos. The victim isn’t Kylie but another former reality star named Ingrid Larsen. Crucially, Ingrid is wearing a distinctive peridot ring engraved with the initials “KK,” which Barb recognizes from watching Kylie’s reality show, Trophy Wives. This confirms a link between the two cases. The mystery deepens when a third reality star, Sydney Carlisle, goes missing on her way to Seaside. Her last known location is a rest stop, where she left a voicemail for a friend mentioning that a tall man with a Polaroid camera had just recognized her. 

Meanwhile, Cole, Kylie’s former castmate on Trophy Wives, is being hounded by Criminal Confessions producer Jana Jones to discuss the night when she and Barb met Samuel Figg. Cole’s own life is imploding; her husband, Jordan, is under investigation for embezzlement, and a video of her punching a teenage fan at a convention goes viral, threatening her career.

Cole returns to Seaside to avoid the media firestorm and reconnects with her estranged father, Richard Montes, who has been paroled from prison. Richard reveals that he was once cellmates with Figg. Figg told Richard that he didn’t kill Lorelei and theorized that the real killer might be Lorelei’s tall, Polaroid-obsessed stepbrother, Marty Kieswetter. Meanwhile, Barb’s investigation suggests that Marty was staying at a Seattle hotel near Kylie’s on the day she disappeared. He also fits the description of the man who found Ingrid’s dog on a hiking trail near her home. Barb and Cole, having tentatively reconciled, decide to find Marty, convinced that he holds the key to both the recent disappearances and what happened to Lorelei.

Barb, Cole, and Detective Cameron Wallace follow a lead to Marty’s last known address: a remote family cabin on Bear Lake Road. To their shock, they find Alice Chu at the cabin, claiming to be on a romantic getaway with her boyfriend, Owen Stark. When Owen arrives, he’s a tall man with a Polaroid camera around his neck, but he doesn’t resemble the red-haired Marty. When screams erupt from a second, smaller cabin on the property, Alice and Owen’s pleasant demeanors shatter. Alice strikes Cole from behind with an iron poker stick, knocking her unconscious. She then tells Owen that she wants to “keep” Cole with Kylie and Sydney in the other cabin. As Barb and Owen fight, Cole regains consciousness and hits Owen with the poker. Cameron enters the main cabin with his gun drawn, having found and freed Kylie and Sydney from the second cabin. The two rescued women enter, and Kylie, seeing her captor and rapist on the floor, takes the poker from Barb and beats him to death. Cameron and Barb agree to frame Kylie’s actions as self-defense.

In the aftermath, Alice is arrested, claiming that Owen was a manipulative killer who forced her to participate. However, her commanding behavior in the cabin and obsession with reality-TV stars suggests that she was the true mastermind. A shallow grave containing Marty’s remains is discovered nearby. Before being taken to the hospital, Kylie gives Barb and Cole one of Marty’s journals that she found during her six years of captivity. The journal’s final entries reveal the truth about the night of Lorelei’s death. She and her friends Barb and Nicolette had a fight in the Starlight drive-in bathroom after 15-year-old Nicolette revealed that she was pregnant by their English teacher, Daniel Hawksfield. When Barb and Nicolette shoved Lorelei, she fell and hit her head—an event witnessed by Marty, who was working at the Starlight. Hawksfield arrived on the scene and convinced Lorelei’s friends that she was dead. To avoid charges of statutory rape, he came up with a cover-up deal: that no one would reveal that Nicolette was pregnant by him, and he would dispose of Lorelei’s body. He later strangled her to death. Hawksfield then blackmailed Marty with incriminating photos into helping him move the body to the cranberry bog where it was later found. 

In the final resolution, Hawksfield is arrested for Lorelei’s murder. Freed from a lifetime of guilt, Barb completes her novel, resumes her relationship with Cameron, and adopts her retiring therapist’s cat. Cole files for divorce from Jordan, using secretly recorded video evidence of a staged affair with her friend Annika to trigger a $10 million infidelity clause in her prenup. Samuel Figg dies of cancer in prison, exonerated of the one murder he didn’t commit. Cole decides to leave reality TV and return to Seaside.