Alice has been obsessed with a small abandoned Swedish mining town her whole life, “The Lost Village.” One day in 1959, all the inhabitants disappeared except her grandmother who was out-of-town and a small, abandoned baby. Despite multiple investigations over the year, no one has determined where the residents went and why. Alice is leading her crew to film a documentary, get initial shots and marketing materials for their documentary, and solve the mystery. It becomes quickly apparent that they are not the only ones in this village.

Three words to describe this book: Gothic. Atmospheric. Creepy.

Cover: Super creepy. The cover matched the vibe of the book.

Character Development: Alice is a developed character, and the story provides background around her mental health and how that has impacted her past friendships and relationships. I did feel like the context of the relationships of her crew members are missing. I wanted more on why these folks agreed to go to an abandoned village, on a shoestring budget to help their friend Alice.

World-Building: Fantastic. I love creepy, spooky, terrifying books and this book gave me goosebumps. The author does an excellent job describing the town and I felt like I could see this world. If you like gothic vibes, you will like this book.

Plot & Pacing: This book is billed as a cross between Blair Witch and Midsomer. I would say that the book does not live up to this comparison. I found the plot and the explanation for the disappearances to be a bit too simplistic and I wanted more complexity. I wanted the plot to match the atmosphere of the world. The pacing was uneven throughout the book, especially in the first half. The second half clips along at a steady pace.

Verdict: I loved the creepy vibe of this book, but I was a bit disappointed by the plot and lack of character development. I would recommend this book if you are new or want to sample a gothic mystery/horror genre. This book is also great for folks who want something creepy without tons of gore.

ARC was provided to me by St. Martin’s Press, in exchange for an honest review.

#NetGalley #TheLostVillageBook

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten was just wow! I found this to be an interesting story with enough unexpected twists to keep my interest. The setting of this story is creepy and will definitely have the reader immersed in the story. I recommend to anyone who enjoys a good creepy thriller.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately, I could not really get invested in this book. I had a hard time believing that Alice would be filming and choose the crew she did, I didn't care for the characters, and just couldn't get myself involved in the creepy factor. Thank you for the opportunity to read this book.

Camilla Sten has a deft hand when it comes to writing: I think she does a great job of evoking an atmosphere and showing just how spooky things are without letting it eat away at the pacing of the book. There are several instances where our cast is just sitting and waiting, but the tension is still taut and suspenseful. Even the quietest moments feel haunted, as though someone is watching...

The only thing I struggled with in this particular novel is the ending. I won't spoil anything for you, particularly because I don't think the ending is unearned, but it came to a point where it could take its penultimate twist in one of two directions, and I was really really hoping for the other direction. I think it would have made the book, for me as a reader, more satisfying.

Even though this one wasn't my favourite, I'm excited to pick up Sten's work in the future.

In 1959, the entire population of a small, remote village in Sweden vanished without a trace. The disappearance of nearly 900 people caught worldwide attention, and though there were many theories, no one discovered the truth behind the phenomenon. Unfinished coffee still sat on the kitchen counter. Clothes still hung to dry on lines. And the bloody, mutilated corpse of Birgitta was still tied to a pole in the town square...

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing since childhood. Though she didn't reside there at the time, her grandmother was born and raised in Silvertjärn, and on that fateful day, she lost everything. Her mother, father, sister, and friends were simply...gone. After her grandma's sudden death, Alice, with the help of a few friends, travels to the lost village, determined more than ever the uncover the horrifying truth of what happened nearly sixty years ago.

Told in dual timelines, The Lost Village offers both a glimpse at life in the late 50s and the present day research into what caused the disappearance. From the first page, the reader is greeted with an ominous, eerie setting. The abandoned, remote village, surrounded only by forest and river, is downright creepy, with decrepit buildings that look like time capsules. It is clear that the townspeople did not simply move away, because everything was left behind. They seemed to just...vanish. The desire to know why made the story utterly compelling.

I am fascinated by the human condition and representing that thematically is one of Sten's writing strengths. In The Lost Village, she tackles mental health, developmental disorders, mass hysteria, and sexual assault. (T.W.: The latter is not explicitly described. The actual act occurs off the page.) Sten also writes about human mentality, and our perverse, almost innate, desire to blindly follow spiritual leaders. In this aspect, the book truly shines.

While I was able to predict the twists and reason behind the disappearance, I still rate this book as an unputdownable read, because the story itself is quite powerful. This book isn't about the thrill; it isn't about making sure there are enough red herrings to surprise the reader. What makes it a powerful read is what happened to the people of Silvertjärn and HOW it happened to them.

The Lost Village is an excellent starting novel for those interested in Scandinavian crime fiction. It is also a good read for anyone interested in suspense or light horror. Fans of fictionalized documentary series, similar to The Blair Witch Project, or true crime will likely enjoy this one. But keep in mind, although its themes are very much based on real world happenings, The Lost Village is not technically true crime.

"The Lost Village" is a thriller written by Camilla Sten. The main protagonist, Alice Lindstedt, is a filmmaker who is creating a documentary about a "lost village" whose occupants keep vanishing. Having heard about it her whole life, Alice now wants to get to the bottom of what is happening to these people. Along the way, strange things begin to happen to her and her team.

I didn't really enjoy this book, as I felt it was unnecessarily gory and grotesque. However, I am thankful to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

Alice Lindstendt returns to the small village where her grandmother was born to film a documentary about how, in 1959, the entire village disappeared without a trace. Shortly after her and a small crew get to the remote location, strange things start happening. It appears that someone or something doesn’t want them to find the answers they seek. This book had exactly the spooky atmosphere that I was looking for at the time. I enjoyed the writing and felt that the plot was perfectly paced. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to Minotaur and NetGalley for my early copy of The Lost Village.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lots on intriguing aspects to this book but none of them fully realized. I enjoyed the Blair Witch but this was nothing like that. I suspected that this was going to be a great fast read but it was hard to get through.

After hearing that "The Lost Village" was the love child of "The Blair Witch Project" and "Midsommar", I instantly was in the mood for some spookiness and couldn't wait to dive into this new to me author novel.

Did it live up to my expectations? No. A lot of things can go wrong with a novel such as the beginning of the story—if it’s too slow and a whole lot of nothing is happening (which was the case here), I will zone out and find myself browsing for another book to cure my boredom. The second—the characters. Those two can make or break a novel for me, especially if it’s a thriller or mystery series. The characters weren’t anything to rave about. The petty bickering and the relationships between the characters were confusing and all in all, didn’t make sense. Overall, “The Lost Village” reminded me of a B-rated horror flick that no one wants to see (or read in this case).

Full review to come on Instagram and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy.

I enjoyed this book, the plot was suspenseful but I felt like not much happened in the first half of the book. At times it was a bit predictable. The ending was good and answered a lot of the questions I had about what had happened. I disliked Alice, the protagonist, because it felt as though she had caused a lot of the troubles for the group. Overall it was a decent read.

I have tried to go back and read this book three times now, long after it’s release but I decided to stop altogether unfortunately.
I can’t really say what made me do that and I’m rarely dnf books but I just couldn’t get into this story at all.
Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy

THE LOST VILLAGE is a horror and thriller fan's dream! Having documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt investigate the disappearance of an entire village sets the stage for something wicked to enter into the story. Sten brilliantly ups the scare factor while still developing a solid plot through her fabulously tense and addictive writing style. This book is sooooo good. I cannot wait for more from the author.

This book interested me for its Blair Witch Project meets the lost colony of Roanoke premise. While it does deliver some atmospheric, creepy moments, overall The Lost Village fell a little short for me. Firstly, Sten relies heavily on telling vs. showing to develop characters and plot. Secondly, the "Then" portions are written in a really heavy-handed way without leaving much for the reader to intuit or weaving much of a mystery. Thirdly, the dialogue is lackluster and the sentence structure itself is very stunted. The whole book has a stilted, disjointed feel. I recognize that some of this could be attributed to translation, but character development is very thin, and the 'Now" narrator, Alice - despite all her internal musing - comes across as shallow and uninspired. That she's attempting to make a film isn't believable. I typically enjoy books with shifting timelines and varying points of view, but the 'Now' and 'Then' chapter headers themselves were even nondescript yet somehow distracting in their generic-ness, adding to the abrupt transitions and feeling throughout that something was just missing here - and it wasn't just the village inhabitants.

So this was a SUPER fun read. I loved the creepy atmosphere and the question aid who or what was creeping around. This was absolutely a great creepy thriller!

This was an amazing horror and paranormal story, so much suspense and a lot of good details that makes the book more interesting. Overall was a good story, but to me something was missing I don’t know what but it didn’t fulfill all my expectations.

A documentary film crew goes to investigate a tiny mining village that has been abandoned for sixty years. Why was the village abandoned? No one knows. One day over nine hundred residents simply disappeared, leaving behind houses full of furniture, clothing, and food. The streets stood empty save for the broken body of a woman tied to a wooden post, stoned to death. Only one living soul remained in the village - a days old baby found crying in the nurse's office of the school.

Hoping to find answers, Alice and her crew drive out to the town - miles away from any other sign of civilization, and begin to make their way through the ghostly buildings. But something - or someone - else seems to be there with them, and quickly all order turns to chaos as the five crew members face the evil within and without.

This book is a slow but steady tale of quiet horror, with crumbling buildings, disembodied footsteps, the tension of old wounds between the characters, silhouettes in the rain, giggles and moaning songs echoing through the emptiness. The tension and fear builds up like a humming in the ears as you read, as the strange occurrences of the present day warp and merge with the even stranger mystery of what happened to all those people sixty years ago. A closed down mine, a town full of desperate people, a handsome preacher come to save them all, a mentally challenged woman abused and murdered in the name of cleansing the town of evil.... what exactly happened then, and why is it affecting the filmmakers today?

I loved this book. Isolation and fear, grief and doubt weep off the pages. The story will leave you with discomfort in your gut and ice water in your veins.

I received this as an ARC from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

There are many books that I do not really like, and most of the time when I do not like a book, I usually just say it did not work for me and keep moving. There are so many great books out there that need reviewing that I don’t waste much time reviewing books I do not enjoy. Having said that, there is something about The Lost Village that really makes me angry enough to vocalize my frustrations. I will be spoiling some of this book, which is also something I never do, but I will be putting a warning before this section.

I usually find the good in everything I read. In The Lost Village, I really was attracted to the story. Five people are going to a mining village where everyone disappeared sixty years earlier. The mystery of that set up with the horrors that are likely to come to the five new visitors is very appealing. I was very excited to read this. When I got into the story, the writing was clunky but okay. I do not know if it was the authors or the translator who made some of the prose kind of stiff and boring, but it was definitely noticeable that this is a translated work. I was not terribly disappointed in most of the story, but there are elements of it that I have very strong feelings about. It is upsetting that this novel turned out the way it ends. I am one to suspend belief sometimes to make a plot work, but the turns that The Lost Village make are not things that I can overlook.

*Spoilers below*

There are some really dumb things that happen, like the main villian in the end is someone who has been living in the village since it has been empty. For sixty years. The village had lost its mining jobs long before everyone disappeared, so the likelihood that anyone found enough food in that time to sustain herself seems a little far fetched.

It is also far-fetched that the five people who are supposed to be there to film a documentary does not film anything. They take pictures with cameras, not video recorders, that are rented for a short period of time. I do not know how cheap it is to rent equipment, but I do now it would probably be just as expensive to buy a few GoPro cameras and use their smartphones to record video footage. All of their phones end up with dead batteries, but I would think that if the entire project relied on electricity to film, there would be a small generator or something they could bring to charge up their phones.

But these are not my biggest complaints. My biggest complaint is the treatment of Tone, one of the characters who sprains her ankle badly enough to need to take pain killers. To do this, she does not take her antipsychotic meds for a few days. So of course when she wanders off and bad stuff happens to the rest of the group, she is instantly demonized for being the mentally unstable woman off her medication. Not only is this a dangerous stereotype for people who have mental health issues, it is just plain untrue. Tone’s mental health is not so bad that she is going to turn into a raging killer after missing her pills for two days. I don’t think any psychiatric medicine is out of your system that quickly. What we have is characters who perpetuate stereotypes more than awareness, and for this alone The Lost Village is a damaging book.

When a small film crew come to "The Lost Village" a deserted mining town where everyone went missing in 1959. All that was left in the town was a woman stoned to death tied to a pole and a crying newborn in the nurses office at the school. The crew have come for answers in hopes to film their own documentary, shortly after setting up camp though things start happening. People go missing, equipment gets destroyed. It soon becomes clear that perhaps they were never as alone as they once thought.

The spooky vibes in this book were so strong and great! With a small cast of characters you get to know each and everyone of them quickly and the dynamics between them. Of course you do get to know some of the characters better than others as the story is told from Alice's point of view. I also enjoyed the dual time line, so not only are you hearing from the current documentary crew, but also from one of the villagers who lived in the town in the days that led up to everyone disappearing. I think it was the 'then' time line I enjoyed the most.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a spooky vibe book. For those who enjoy a secluded setting, and small cast. It is a great read for the autumn months when things are getting colder and spooky season is all around us. Anyone who likes horror or thrillers (without a lot of revels or twists).

I found this to be an enjoyable read, keeping me on my toes throughout. The storyline was written well and flowed seamlessly. I look forward to reading more by this author!