Thank you to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book!
3.5 stars. All the elements of a really good story were there. Suspense, mystery, duel time lines, complex characters. It just didn’t all come together for me. I think the pacing was a bit slow.
I would definitely read from this author again!

The Lost Village is incredibly creepy and multifaceted, for anyone who is looking for a horror novel in the vein of The Blair Witch Project. Alice's narration takes us through the "lost village," where everyone living there mysteriously disappeared. Alice's grandmother had family there, parents and a younger sister, but she never found out what happened to them, so Alice has decided to make a documentary about the village and possibly find out what happened to the villagers. The entire book has an incredibly eerie tone; things are going missing, and Alice and her friends constantly feel unsettled.
I loved the ending of this book most of all: I wasn't expecting the twist at the end, but I was pleasantly surprised. I love creepy books, and The Lost Village is, in my opinion, one of the best. 4/5 stars

Billed as The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar, The Lost Village tells the story of our main character who is the descendant of a family member who moved away from a small mining village before the rest of the town mysteriously vanished without a trace. The only villagers discovered by the police 60 years ago were a murdered woman and a crying infant. Determined to uncover the secret of what happened 60 years ago, she brings a pre-filming crew to get some footage to hopefully kickstart some funding for a full documentary. Throughout the book we switch timelines from the past to present, slowly uncovering what really happened.

The book’s biggest strength by far was the atmosphere. It was spooky and intense without crossing over into actually scary, and the pacing maintained the eerie feeling. I read the book in one day, and definitely felt like I was in the woods/village with our characters.

Unfortunately, the twist and general plot just weren’t my favorite. There were a lot of unanswered questions and plot holes in the overall story, and the twist at the end seemed so far fetched and yet also easy to guess at the same time? The clues to what was really happening were applied liberally, so other than specific details it was pretty easy to figure out how it was going to end even though I’m not an avid mystery/thriller reader.

Overall it was an enjoyable read, but didn’t blow me out of the water. I ended up giving it three stars, and would recommend it to beginner thriller readers who are interested in possible cults or unknown disappearances.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I watch a lot of documentary/lost footage-style horror movies. Some are great, some are ridiculous, some are just really poorly done. The Lost Village is a book I'd LOVE to see turned into a movie, because it was deliciously creepy.

In 1959, police arrive to the remote Swedish mining village of Silvertjärn to horrific scene. A single rotting body in the square, an abandoned newborn in the nurse's office of the school, and not a single remaining soul to be found. 900 people, disappeared without a trace. Sixty years later, Alice, granddaughter of one of the last people to legitimately leave Silvertjärn, returns with a small film crew. Her mission, after researching her grandmother's lifetime of notes and stories, is to shoot compelling enough footage to get a Kickstarter going for a full fledged documentary on the mysterious disappearance of the villagers. But there's something disconcerting about the abandoned rotting homes and silent streets, and Alice's plans are upended when the party becomes more and more convinced they aren't alone.

The story flashes between Alice and her crew in the "Now" chapters, and the events leading up to the disappearance in August 1959 in the "Then" chapters. Camilla Sten weaves the two timelines together in parallel for the reader, and deftly hits the climactic timing for both storylines. Sten explores multiple levels of Nordic atmospheric horror and leaves the reader unsure if there's something supernatural or earthly going on, but in either case it has terrible consequences for the "Now" and "Then" characters. The true terror comes from her detailed exploration of the progression of a cult mentality, which left me lying awake more than one night the the last week.

Sten's writing style is fast paced, poetically beautiful, and occasionally brutal. She has a gift for just the right amount of detail without being overly-flowery and never getting bogged down. I was somewhat jarred by one of the subplots, which seemed unnecessary since the relationships between Alice and her crew/friends was already fraught with tension due to past conflicts. The "Now" chapters are told from Alice's limited point of view, and she is presented as being rather driven and empathetic to her friend Tone's past, so a subplot in which she's caught completely off guard by blatant interest pulled me out of the story a little. I will admit to being tired of the "friendzone" trope, so it's possible I'm a little biased here. It doesn't stop me from recommending the book.

The Lost Village is a fast and suspenseful read, perfect for summer escapism. If I had a star system I'd give it a solid 4 out of 5, and recommend it to anyone who loves lost-footage mysteries or Nordic murder tales.

Very spooky and atmospheric. The pacing was perfect and cinematic. A disappeared village, a 20-something and her crew going to explore and search, the familial ties to the village. What could go wrong?

I received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley for an honest review.

SO CREEPY in such a good way and very enjoyable! If you like horror novels and movies, READ THIS IMMEDIATELY!

This novel was creepy as all hell and intense and just splendid! I love how this story slowly unfolds and gives us the Now and Then points of view.

A group of friends decide that they want to embark on a career changing documentary movie about a town that was abandoned out of nowhere some 50 odd years ago. The thing is, some involved in the film have closer ties than they are willing to admit. As they are investigating the area strange things keep happening that cannot be explained, noises and singing are being heard and things and people start getting damaged. Is there spirits lurking about? Or something darker?

At the same time in the Then, the story unfolds as this small remote mining village begins having issues and the town in dying. The a new sauve preacher comes into town and people think he is there to be the savior of them all...but is he really?

Way enjoyable and I am REALLY starting to look more at some of the overseas writers for some of these intense horror novels like this and Hex. Worth it! I will definitely be looking for this author's books in the future.

This book had so many elements I love in a dark/horror book - an abandoned location, in the deep dark woods, a troubled character or two that has an iffy history, a cult (!) and of course paranormal elements.

It really did have those The Blair Witch Project feels right in the beginning with this being a movie production, in a creepy location. Oh and the whole stoned to death girl history (not a spoiler, it's the first pages) - witchy elements.

I liked being kept on my toes with this modern day ghost story - you're not sure where the author will take it. Is it really paranormal, are we going to keep this real? What is the reality here? But then it gets dark real quick, and even though I had an inkling it was going where it did (no spoilers), it was still surprising and fun to watch unfold on pages.

The overall book was good. It started out slow, but I liked the creepiness, and the couple of moments that made my skin crawl is going to keep me interested in this author for future reads.

The setup of this one had me right from the start. It was creepy and so so good! I enjoy books that can make me feel uneasy and on edge when reading them and this one did just that. The ending was surprising to me too.

The premise of the story is well thought out but I didn’t find this very spooky or scary. I did like the ‘then and now’ as it explained a lot of what was happening in the village. The ending wrapped up what happened very well but I didn’t find the characters that interesting.

The reading of The Lost Village is as haunting and frightening a story as any M. Night Shyamalan movie I have ever seen!

Alice Lindstedt is attempting to film a documentary about a “lost village” where it seems overnight all of its residence just disappeared. Years later, still no one can figure out what occurred in this small sleepy village. But the mystery is quite personal to Alice. Her grandmother was from there. She had married and left just before the mass exodus. She too had no idea what happened to her family who stayed behind. Although she told Alice tales about the people and her relatives, she needed to find out more.

When Alice and her small crew arrive, it seems as if time had just stood still those many years ago; dishes in sinks, a coffee cup and plate on a table, laundry half folded. They seem to be witnessing the eerie remnants of a lost community. What could have happened to all those people? Although they are excited to wander the empty village in hopes of clues, there is also an unnatural feeling attached to many of the structures perhaps as if the village is watching them.

And when they do begin to investigate those feelings begin to become reality. Episodes of not feeling alone, of being watched and shadow figures all start to rattle the well-being of the team. Are they real or just in their imaginations. Then this uncomfortableness turns into reality as there is an explosion and they are now trapped in the village.

It is then they realize they really may not be alone, that someone or something wants to do them serious harm, perhaps kill them. But who? Is it one of them? They find refuge in the church where they begin to learn more about the villagers and especially the very animated and hypnotic pastor whom most seemed to love. They learn of a young woman’s mysterious pregnancy whose child’s birth becomes just another puzzle to the team.

They begin to become paranoid, not being able to trust each other only to finally come to an incredible realization. With that understanding comes the explosive, intense and shocking ending you could not see coming. The Lost Village is a terrific suspenseful horror story with a build-up of palpable anxiety which ends with an astonishing finish. This story should only be read with the lights on…trust me!

Thank you #NetGalley #MinotaurBooks #TheLostVillge #CamillaSten for the advanced copy.

Rating: 5/5
Pros: I loved everything about this book. The thriller aspect kept me on my toes until the very end. The writing was beautiful from the start. I can't get over the ending and how fun of a read it was. I don't want to say too much because it would give everything away.

Cons: At times, there was a disconnect between meanings of words, but I do believe it was more so a cultural thing.

What an unsettling book to read....it was wonderful! It was most definitely keep any reader engaged and will anticipate every page turned. Highly recommended to my circle of readers.

Exciting cult thriller! Gave me all the creepy feels & was glad I was reading it during the daytime. I thoroughly enjoyed the dual timelines.

🔍The Lost Village by Camilla Sten🔍

In 1959, an entire old mining town vanished leaving only two people behind: a woman stoned to death in the center of town and an abandoned newborn. Decades later, the granddaughter of one of the residents, Alice Lindstedt (who is also a documentary filmmaker) sets out with a film crew to uncover the secrets and true history of what happened.

After they set up, mysterious things start happening: equipment is destroyed, sounds are heard, people are going missing. Long story story: they are most certainly not alone.

This book was almost as delicious as that sangria!! I am slowly getting immersed into more Nordic noir novels (I can tell this genre is going to be a new found love of mine) and the lost village is just that. Filled with intense, gory, dark, Scandinavian horror elements, and major religious cult vibes in a bleak mining town, I LOVED THIS ONE. Super creepy though (and fast paced) so brace yourself!

The Lost Village was published March 23rd and I am still trying to get caught up with all my backlogged ARC’s (thanks to @read.between.the.spines for getting us all together for an April arcathon)! Thank you to @netgalley for an advanced copy of this book!

Something was very wrong in the Lost Village, which is immediately apparent to Albin and Gustaf, two policemen who were sent there in August 1959. Silvertjärn (tjärn being Swedish for lake) is a remote backwater, a “pleasant, unassuming place,” However, as Gustaf and his partner arrive on a beautiful afternoon, the community is completely silent. All they find is a dead woman, tied to a pole. She’s been stoned to death and flies are feasting on her swollen corpse.

“What in God’s name has happened here?” Gustaf asked, his tone of voice betrayed a hint of what could only be described as wonder.



Albin had no words. He let the silence of the empty village take over.



But then something cut through that silence—faint, distant, yet unmistakable. Albin had four younger siblings, and he had shared a room with all of them. It was a sound he would have recognized anywhere.



“What the . . .” Gustaf muttered, turning to look at the school on the opposite side of the square. A window was open on the second floor.



“I think it’s a child,” said Albin. “A baby.”



Then the stench swam back over him, and he vomited again.

Decades later, Alice Lindstedt, who grew up hearing stories of Silvertjärn from her grandmother Margareta, decides to produce a docuseries on Sweden’s sole ghost town.

I can hear my grandmother’s voice, like an echo in my ears. “The last time I saw my sister, Aina, she was only seventeen.”

Margareta had left the village before the calamity, but her sister and parents were lost, along with nine hundred other residents. Nothing about the story makes sense to Lindstedt—how could a community just fall off the face of the earth?

Lindstedt’s approach to financing the documentary is modern and inviting. Early donors get special access to the production as it unfolds: their reward is behind-the-scenes access. The closer the crew gets to the ruined town, the more uncomfortable they feel. It’s not even on GPS—in pre-production, they rely on government maps from the 1940s to pinpoint their destination. Readers may find it hard to visualize a decayed village and imagine how it might have disintegrated over time. Check out the Abandoned America website, in particular the photo essays on abandoned churches, to conjure up a sense of what the crew beheld. Alice and her crew are completely cut off from civilization, which adds to the sense of isolation.

The silence hangs compact. Not even radio signals make it out of here. They say it has something to do with the iron ore in the bedrock—some sort of magnetic field that jams the signals—but no one seems to know for sure. It doesn’t exactly run the mystique.

Abruptly, the narrative switches to a time when the village was thriving. The scene comes alive through fulsome, endearing letters from Aina to her older sister. There’s a new pastor in town, a replacement for hard-drinking Pastor Einar. Pastor Mattias is young, articulate, and attractive. The letters are woven into the narrative. There are vignettes from Alice’s great-grandmother, Elsa, a brave, warm-hearted woman, who has made it her mission in life to look out for her fellow villagers. In particular, she looks after the village outcast, Birgitta, a mentally-troubled woman.

Someone else on the crew, not just Alice, has a link to the town. Tone is the grand-daughter of the Silvertjärn baby. All told, Alice has a team of two other women and two men, all under thirty. Alice, for all her strength and planning abilities, has had a troubled young womanhood. She was hit by depression so hard in her early twenties that Emmy, her closest friend, turned away from her, perplexed and upset at her inability to help Alice. Why then would Alice invite Emmy to join her select documentary team?

Things do not go smoothly in Silvertjärn. There are inexplicable sounds, creepy shadows, and all-too-frequent intimations that they are not alone. When Emmy confides in Alice, Alice ventures that Emmy suffers from sleep paralysis, but then she sees for herself.

There, on the other side of the square. By the corner of the school. There’s someone standing there.



A slim, dark figure. Unmistakably human.



I try to say something—anything—frenetically tell myself: There’s no one here. There’s no one here. There’s no one here.



But the figure doesn’t disappear when I blink.

Things do not improve: Tone is injured climbing rickety stairs in one of the abandoned houses. There’s an explosion, a death, and ultimately, a confrontation. It’s so frightening. Readers will inexorably link The Lost Village to the horrors of Jonestown another mass-murderous gathering that will live in infamy. Welcome to the world of Swedish author Camilla Sten who has written a stark tale that is impossible to forget.

I’ve always had a special place in my heart for translated works, especially when they’re Scandinavian — and especially when they’re full of suspense and dark themes. Camilla Sten’s The Lost Village is no exception to this. Like a lot of readers newer fans to Nordic writing, I first dove into Scandinavia with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. In the last year or so, I’ve gone deeper into the darker titles this part of the world has to offer, like Alex North’s books The Whisper Man and In the Shadows. What Sten creates in The Lost Village is slow-burning but suspense-filled page-turner that is fueled by our worst enemy: our own minds.

In 1959, the Swedish mining village of Silvertjärn went from brimming with life to empty as if everyone suddenly vanished. Everyone except for a dead woman left in the town center and an abandoned newborn. Alice Lindstedt is a documentary filmmaker working on piecing together what happened that day. Her own family — her grandmother’s parents, sister — disappeared with the rest of the village and no one has ever been able to answer the mystery of what happened. Returning to the empty village with a skeleton-sized crew, Alice is hoping to do two things: get enough good footage to help get her film funded and solve the mystery of the disappearance. What begins as a hook she thinks she wants just to get buzz generated about her film unfolds into a personal mission, fulled by obsession. Nothing is going to stop Alice — not even when some of the crew start going missing.

Fear is a thick fog that creeps into the village and wraps itself around each of the characters, pulling at the threads of each of their psyches. Alice and her crew already had been showing cracks on arrival but the longer they stay in the seemingly empty village, the more their own insecurities take hold of them. Unraveling is imminent but constructed in such a way that creates a perfect blend of increasing tension and intensity. And part of what helps build this fear is the use of dual timelines in the past and present, giving the reader a clearer picture of what actually happened to the villagers. Or does it? After all, it’s not just the ghosts of the village that Alice and her crew have to worry about. This is actually what I really loved about The Lost Village. It’s not just a story with supernatural horror elements, but asks the reader to consider what ghosts actually are and if we aren’t the ones who are actually haunting spaces. Alice must grapple not just with the truth of her own family history coming to light, but truths about herself, like how far she is willing to go, how much she’s willing to pay to get what she came for. Truths that can haunt her. Truths that can cost her everything — including her life.

Camilla Sten weaves a great story of psychological suspense in The Lost Village that shouldn’t be missed.

This is the first book to draw me in, since forever. The storyline moved quickly and was quite interesting. I didn't even mind the jumps between past and present. I am not normally a fan of time jumps, but it was done very well in this story.
My main problem with the book was the ending. Things slowed down a lot, and the end wasn't worthy of the story. I do think with a little tweaking this would make a great movie, and be a five star read.

The only way I can think to explain The Lost Village is to say it was utterly creepy. I refused to read it before bed because it gave me nightmares. It reminded me of The Blair Witch Project and I believe fans of that movie will find they love The Lost Village. 

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for a copy of this book.

After a village was left abandoned in the 1950’s, with two people left for others to find, Alice decides to work on a documentary about what could have happened to the residents. Her grandmother’s entire family disappeared when the village was abandoned, and she’s been interested every since in trying to solve the mystery of what happened. Yet, when her and her team arrive to start production, things start going wrong. Equipment is destroyed, people go missing, they start seeing people where there should be none. The crew doesn’t seem be alone.

The Lost Village was exactly what I wanted from a Swedish thriller. Nordic Noir and Scandi Crime are some of my favourite stories to read, so I went in excited for this. It managed to check all the boxes I wanted from a thriller - mysterious disappearances, mysterious people, past and present storyline, hints of paranormal, cults, and more!

While I don’t totally agree with the comparison to The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar, I see why the comparison was made, and if it gets a few more people interested, I support it. Just be warned that this isn’t set up like a documentary, instead it’s an exploratory start for the crew to decide how and what they will be filming at a later date.

I did find the timeline from the past a bit more fascinating than the present timeline with Alice, I still very much enjoyed both aspects. The present timeline is a bit more tense as things start falling apart for the crew, but the background that builds in the past storyline was just so perfect as you see the connections to Alice and what is happening.

The ending twist was quite surprising, which is saying a lot for me, as I usually find thrillers to get somewhat predictable and I can usually guess the ending. I think that’s what made me appreciate The Lost Village even more, as it does feel surprising and unique.

If you’re a fan of thrillers, cults, or paranormal, this is one that I’d strongly recommend. There is a lot going on in it that I think a lot of readers will enjoy, and it is a fast paced, fun read. Definitely worth settling in for a weekend with and flying through it.

I almost didn't finish this book and I'm sad to say that I regret pushing on with it. It really seemed like one I would love and rave about it but I found it just so boring.