Tag: camilla sten

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Resting Place

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By Camilla Sten

The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face, even the faces of those closest to you.

When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.

Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house—a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years.

Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to bringing the truth to light, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there.

A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense. 

Note – Thanks to Netgalley and Minotaur Books for an eARC in exchange for an honest review. 

This is the second Camilla Sten book I’ve read. I read The Lost Village last month and it was a decent read. I wanted to give her another try. 

In truth – I didn’t love it. It started out all mysterious and eerie. The timelines flipped back and forth from the past to present and back again. In the beginning, it was hard to know who was who – I got a little lost in the introduction of the character Anushka. 

The spooky atmosphere starts to build immediately as Eleanor and her boyfriend, Sebastian, reach Solhoga, the abandoned family mansion in the woods. Floorboards creak, a dumb waiter has a mind of its own, shadows appear in the woods and doors open by themselves. The main character has prosopagnosia (face blindness) which adds to the intensity of the story. You can clearly see the two storylines racings heading towards an intersection. Clearly, the author wants us to think the house is haunted and tries to write it as a character on its own. 

Unfortunately, it fell a little flat to me. The storm that cuts Eleanor and her party off from all civilization seems a little contrived. The characters were uninteresting and over-dramatic. There were a few loose ends that left me with question – like Vivianne’s background. It’s hinted at but never really explained. The relationship between her and Anushka is weird and unexplainable. The family dynamic was really disjointed. Sebastian was condescending and commonplace. I didn’t buy that he cared even a little for Eleanor. 

The macabre ending was predictable and uninteresting.

I will say that Sten’s writing style, her use of vocabulary is stunning. She’s descriptive and fluid. She’s detailed without losing you in the detail and is adept at creating a tangible atmosphere.  

Overall, I wanted to love this but I didn’t. However, I’m still a fan of Camilla Sten and eagerly await what she’s got in store for us next.

My rating – :star: :star: :star:

Posted in Bookish and Bingeable

The Lost Village

Posted on by Vikki Lynn Sorensen

By Camilla Sten

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.

Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:

They are not alone.

I read this book in one day. The opening scene is extremely creepy and grabbed my attention. Immediately, I had to know what happened to this village! So the suspense aspect of this story was a huge hit for me. 

The setting – a Swedish mine village in the 1950’s – served as a great backdrop to this story. I mean, seriously now – an abandoned village in the middle of nowhere was very well-written and chilling indeed. I could feel the silence – even had to turn on some music as it got a little too quiet for me while reading it. The psychological aftertaste was a bit too intense for me, though, which surprised me since I love a good scare! I mean, I’ve read everything Wendy Webb has ever published and her books haunted me to my core! 

I was surprisingly shaken by my own reactions to the amount of human suffering in this story. Birgitta’s story alone was tragic and heartbreaking and how her story ended shook me up. The reality of what actually happened to the town so led astray by a psychotic fanatic, while predictable, is still a bit troubling. Combine that with the modern story of Alice and the losses she suffers while trying to get enough evidence just to get someone to fund further investigation into what really happened and you wind up with a cross between the Blair Witch Project and the Jonestown massacre. 

The characters were all well-written although I found myself forming more of an attachment to the characters from the past then the present. Alice really evoked no emotional response from me at all, despite her battles with mental health issues. Emma was a little cardboardy, Max and Robert were stiff. Only Tone was mildly intriguing and that was most likely due to her backstory. I really loved Elsa, however, and I felt for her as she watched her daughter being taken from her bit by bit. She broke my heart into a thousand pieces as did Birgitta. While I started out really liking Aine, unfortunately, I saw the writing on the wall with her as her relationship with Pastor Mattias became twisted and warped. Then, I only felt pity for how lost she was. 

All in all, this was a decent read and a super fast one. The story flips from the past to the present just enough so you’re able to easily follow the storyline. While the ending is predictable (in my opinion), the writer does give you just enough clues to keep you going back for “just one more chapter”. 

My rating – :star: :star: :star: :star: