Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC to review!
Rating (on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being excellent)
Quality of writing: 3
Pace: 3
Plot development: 4
Characters: 3
Enjoyability: 3
Ease of Reading: 4

Overall rating: 3 out of 5

Deliciously creepy Scandinavian horror which freaked the heck out of me. I need more like a hungry vampire.

I remember reaching for this book just because the description gave me the vibes of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which I was religiously devoted to. I loved it just as much. Need I say more? End of review.

Alright, I'll say more. So it is of course a different story, with The Lost Village being packed with horror elements. It tells the story of a documentary maker Alice Lindstedt who wants to make a film on The Lost Village, an old mining town which witnessed an abnormal number of disappearing residents. Nothing is right about this god forsaken place! It screams DO NOT ENTER! But Alice will do it anyway.

I was completely swept into this horror story and couldn't put it down. It's clear to me why I'm giving it 5 stars - solid characters, slow-burn paranormal story bursting with nuance, excellent writing and even better scene making.

*Thank you to the Publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This book brings back a the ghost story feels. It's not my typical read but I enjoyed reading it and slowly putting all the pieces together.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for a copy to honestly review.

Hugely Atmospheric, Thoroughly Disturbing.....
A dark and chilling suspense, hugely atmospheric and thoroughly disturbing. A film maker, a small crew, a remote village, a search for the truth - what can go wrong? The premise is engaging, the reality more so as the reader becomes drawn in from the first page and stays until the last. Compelling reading.

My eyes are bloodshot from staying up until three am with this tale. From page one, the author created an atmosphere of eerie mystery that grew more ominous with each chapter. I was unable to put this book down until I had reached the stunning conclusion. What a triumph for the author!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for access to this arc!

I enjoyed this book but sadly not as much as I had hoped. I have started enjoying haunted/horror books since the Summer and was excited to get this ARC.

The beginning didn't make a lot of sense when I started it so I put it down and came back to it but I felt confused throughout the entire book and I didn't have a connection with any character.

I did enjoy the premise of the book and I think a lot of people will enjoy it but it wasn't for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for my advanced ebook copy.

Every generation grows up with ancestral tales of years long past. These tales draw us in like a force of gravity and allow us the opportunity to relate to our own histories. I grew up listening to my grandmother spinning yarns about being a young girl in the 1920s in a tiny village on the Ohio River. Years later, when my brother and I went in search of our storied past, we were thrilled to walk among the remnants of long-forgotten structures swallowed by time and nature. Author Camilla Sten brilliantly taps into this universal longing to reconnect with our pasts in the thriller, “The Lost Village.”

For Alice Lindstedt’s entire life, her grandmother regaled her with tales of her childhood home of Silvertjarn, an isolated mining town in the wilds of Sweden. Sixty years earlier, in 1959, the entire population of the town, over 900 people, inexplicably vanished without a trace. With her film crew assembled, Alice sets out to film a documentary about the mystery of Silvertjarn and uncover the truth about the lost village. When one tragedy after another claims the lives of her crew, Alice discovers the deadly truth about the evil that once grew within the village, and she pays the steepest price to learn that some evil never truly dies.

Author Camilla Sten does a wonderful job of constructing a thriller that unfolds along two distinct timelines; Alice’s struggle to endure four days within the decrepit remains of the mysterious village, and her great-grandmother, Elsa’s, year-long account of her home town’s slow descent into madness. Both Alice and Elsa serve as the 1st person point-of-view narrator of their respective timelines. The choice of 1st person POV, provides an intimate glimpse into the desires, motivations, and abject terror of both women. Furthermore, crisp and natural-sounding dialogue adds a pivotal sense of realism and depth to the interactions among the different characters.

Unfortunately, I found the characterization of the protagonists and supporting cast to be the weakest element of the story. While brilliant glimpses into the depths of both protagonists are hinted at, well-textured, multi-dimensional characters are never fully fleshed out. Despite the use of the 1st person POV to provide intimacy with the characters, there is a noticeable lacking of the introspection needed to provide the deep dive necessary to emotionally invest in each character. Passing mentions of a failed suicide attempt provide the perfect setup for the needed introspection, however the emotional payoff is never delivered. In the end, we’re left with the frameworks for amazingly dynamic characters that never reach their full potential.

While the translation from Swedish into English often results in stilted prose, a riveting plot and truly unnerving descriptions more than make up for any troublesome language barriers. Eerie and dreadfully atmospheric descriptions of the remains of the village provide a barrage of evocative imagery. The long-neglected school, church and homes of the 1950s characters set the scenes perfectly with terrific depth and visceral imagery. An inescapable sense of dread permeates every location in a way that sinks into the readers bones and keeps them firmly on edge. Coupled with the perfectly crafted descriptions, a thematic repetition of darkness and isolation taps into universal fears that illicit powerful emotional responses from the reader.

While the atmospheric tones work brilliantly on an intellectual level, I feel there was a missed opportunity to focus more on the “gut-level horror” aspects of the story. “…There was someone standing in front of the van, looking at me.“ There is a creepiness to the setup that heavily suggests the eventual arrival of an otherworldly threat that could have persistently chipped away at the psychological well-being of the characters, and by extension the readers. While there are hints of this otherworldly threat, they are often rejected outright as caused by a missing team member, and the full weight of their ethereal or supernatural potential is never fully explored or utilized in a psychologically impactful manner. The early-on suggestions of such a menace are left largely unrealized.

“The Lost Village” is a modern-day quest for clarity set against a 1950’s de-evolution of humanity. The two timelines merge in a climax that is unexpected yet inevitable, and perfectly caps a cautionary tale of recklessly delving too deeply into the unknown. While I would have liked to see more finely honed characterization, the premise is remarkable, and the plot is unique and wonderfully crafted. “The Lost Village” is a successful and haunting exploration into the sinister potential within all of us, and one that will stay with you long after it’s finished.

This was a good book, it touched a bit on horror theme, but in the end it was a satisfying mystery. Alice is an amateur documentary film maker, though she has never actually made one. She has become obsessed with a village her grandmother lived in in the late 50’s. The village, Silvertjarn, had been the subject of an earlier investigation, searchers found the body of a woman tied to a lamppost, badly decayed and the village was empty of any villagers. Alice wants to make the documentary to hopefully find out what happened to make the villagers abandon the village and why the body of the woman was tied to the lamppost. Told largely in a Now and Then style, most of the beginning of the story covers Alice and her crew getting to the village and setting up a camp to explore. The sections that cover ‘Then’ focus on the grandmother to Alice as she relates events that happened that caused the villagers to leave and why. The reasons why are disturbing and are worth the read alone. I would recommend this book. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Who's already missing Halloween? Don't worry you guys, The Lost Village satisfied my occasional and blaring urge to read ANYTHING horror, and I was definitely not disappointed.

The Lost Village is an atmospheric story with a switching timeline, which of course, we slowly come to learn the two are very much connected. I usually don't enjoy the flipping of perspectives while reading, but this one didn't bother me too much. The THEN plot really did have a big impact to the story, but of course, I still found the NOW plot a lot more intriguing.

If I were to compare this book to any movie it would definitely be The Blair Witch Project, a group of friends lost in the woods who are exploring a new area with an ancient past. Slowly we become more aware of some *supernatural* occurrences and before you know it, we're diving headfirst into an action-packed and intense climax. I was generally very satisfied where The Lost Village took us throughout the novel, and I think all of its potential elements were used to its best abilities.

While it lost me a little bit throughout the middle when our characters are reading old letters, I was thoroughly thrilled and spooked by The Lost Village. I definitely recommend this book to readers who enjoyed You Are Invited by Sarah Denzil.

Alice Lindstedt, a documentary filmmaker has been obsessed with the missing/vanished residents of the town dubbed "The Lost Village" since childhood. Her grandmother's entire family disappeared and what remained was a dead woman tied to a tree and an infant found crying in a building.

With curiosity on hand, Alice has gather a team to help her go and film a documentary about "the lost village" and to perhaps uncover what made a whole town disappear and leave behind a dead woman and a newborn.

What they find is abandoned homes, and that tingling feeling that something was not quite right. A sense that they were being watched. That they were not alone. Was someone watching them? Was the abandoned town getting to them? Was the unease they were feeling real or imagined?

This had so much potential for me. The synopsis piqued my curiosity. This book sounded like it would be right up my alley. I love a good creepy, tension filled, tale. For the most part, this feel flat for me. The entire book I felt as if something was missing, but what? Things did pick up towards the end. There was more action and an underlying feeling of dread and the anticipation of a big reveal. When the ending did come, I had some answers but was left wishing this book had been scarier,

Overall, good not great for me. Others are enjoying this more than I did so give their reviews a read.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press - Minotaur Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.

Amateur filmmaker, Alice Lindstedt, has her dreams set on making the next big documentary centered around the old mining town of Silvertjarn, also known as The Lost Village. The entire town disappeared without a trace back in 1959, except for a woman stoned to death in the town square and an abandoned new born found in the school. Alice only has old letters from her grandmother’s younger sister to help her solve the mystery.

Alice and four of her friends set out to Silvertjarn to find out to what happened to the small town but when things start to go missing, along with one of her friends, they realize they’re not alone. Told between present day and the days leading up to the mysterious disappearance of the town back in 1959, we find out what really happened and who’s after Alice and her friends.

I haven’t read a horror book in quite some time so I was excited to read this. The story get’s right into it as Alice and her crew arrive to Silvertjarn to start filming. You quickly realize the different dynamics Alice has with everyone else that ads an extra layer to the story. During the first day of exploring the village, one of them gets hurt which starts a snowball effect of things just getting progressively worse for the group. After that event, it’s hard to stop reading because you just need to know what happens next.

Even though I would never venture to an old abandoned town to spend the week there in a tent, I didn’t find the story to be particularly scary. Definitely a little creepy and eerie at times, It felt more like a mystery to me than anything else.

The author did do a really good job of setting the scene and making it really easy to imagine yourself there with the characters, whether it was back in 1959 when the Swedish town was bustling or the present day emptiness of the decaying buildings. I loved that about her writing style.

I enjoyed this story and it was a nice re-introduction to the horror genre. I give this book a 3/5.

*Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

As an urban explorer and lover of abandoned buildings, this book hooked me with the synopsis alone. I've always dreamed of finding something as pristine and haunting as an abandoned village with a mysterious past.

Alice Lindstedt, whose grandmother grew up in the Swedish mining village of Silvertjarn, has assembled a team to travel to the village where she plans to film a documentary and possibly solve the mystery of the missing residents who disappeared in 1959. Her grandmother, who moved away to Stockholm with her husband, is one of the few survivors from Silvertjarn but all Alice has left of her now is a collection of letters from her great aunt Aina, written to Alice's grandmother Margareta but none of the letters shed any light on the disappearance.

The crew arrives in Silvertjarn to find that they may not be alone-- footsteps in the schoolhouse, strange noises coming across their walkies. What's more, Alice isn't the only one in her group with ties to Silvertjarn and she begins to wonder if perhaps their presence there has triggered something in the village, something that's following the team as they investigate the long-abandoned houses, school, and church. As the strangeness of their experience mounts, the group begins to fall apart and it becomes clear that they need get out of Silvertjarn before they're counted among the missing.

I read this book in two days flat, I couldn't put it down. The backstory of the town was well constructed and it connected seamlessly to Alice's project. Presented as a Kickstarter project, it's easy to forget that Silvertjarn isn't real. The descriptions of the town and its previous inhabitants are beautiful and almost lyrical. The multiple plot layers are clean and easy to follow, the flashbacks adding a great deal of substance to the story when they could just have easily been fluff pieces that didn't necessarily connect the two time periods. Overall this was a fantastic book with great atmosphere and an unexpected ending that left me wishing there was a sequel already.

4 stars! I enjoyed reading this one. I really liked how the story was told; piecing it together from THEN and NOW and how it unfolded to then collide with each other. I was pretty shocked by some things that happened, I wasn't expecting it and it felt a little forced at times.

The ending wasn't what I expected at all. I didn't feel the normal closure I do with books, a little open ended as far as some of our characters go. I typically like to see them through the trouble and come out the other end.

I would definitely recommend to a friend.

Wow! My blood was pumping throughout this entire book and although I didn’t read it in one sitting, as soon as I picked up from a short hiatus, I was quickly drawn back in.

If you liked Midsommer or Hereditary, this one might be perfect for you.

I struggled a bit with the ending as I was hoping for something a little…different but overall I thought it was a spine-tingling mystery with a family connection!

This was a fun horror mystery which felt like a very similar experience to watching a traditional horror film, but with an additional element of mystery. An enjoyable read, a fascinating premise and a great mystery!

Great integration of the story elements! Some of the elements were fairly predictable but it was a great story to get lost in for an evening. I finished it in one sitting!

I feel I need to preface this review with this is not a bad book, there are a lot of things about it that could make it the right read for many people. It just wasn’t the book for me.

We have Alice narrating the story in present day working on creating a documentary of the village of Silvertjärn (where her Grandma Margareta grew up) & Elsa (Alice’s great Grandma) narrating the happenings of Silvertjärn in the 1950’s and the disappearance of almost 1000 people.

The story starts out in the past (1959) with Gustaf & Albin heading to the village. That’s one of the things that I didn’t love is that they only are in the first chapter & we don’t hear from these two men again. It isn’t necessary to the book but I think revisiting that chapter of them later on (after we find out more of what went on in the village) would have been a nice addition to the story.

The description of the village was probably my favorite thing about the book, I know it made me want to go there myself or see pictures but the author did a great job of describing it & giving a visual of what they were seeing actually being in the village.

I think where this book just didn’t do it for me was the characters in general. Present tense characters Alice is a know-it-all, Emmy was bossy, Tone’s character (how do you pronounce her name anyway?!? Tone, Tony?) had potential & the guys of the story weren’t included in the right ways to be important (to me as characters), I think in the end I liked Robert best which is silly since he was one of the least important. Past tense characters I did really like Elsa’s character, but Aina & the rest of the villagers lacked any substance.

I struggled with the authors writing style of the book (it’s just not for me), and the reasonings behind ‘what happened’ aren’t my kind of storyline. Also all of the uncommon names in the book at first made it hard for me to remember who was who & hard to follow what was going on, which is also ‘my’ problem not the books.

I think the author did a good job with the ending & wrapping things up but I think there could have been a lot more to the ending with some of the characters & the story itself.

The story is very religion based so that’s partially why I didn’t find myself getting as absorbed into the book as I would a really great book, that along with the way it was written. I found myself re-reading many parts, which that could absolutely be ‘me’ and not the book. As I initially mentioned though this really isn’t a bad book at all & I think many people will really enjoy this story & the village of Silvertjärn☺️

Thank you so much to NetGalley & St. Martins Press for the opportunity to read this, as always very grateful!!

In the Scandinavian north a mining village’s inhabitants disappeared without warning. The mine has closed and villagers are helpless and unable to find work. A charismatic preacher arrives promising salvation. A filmmaker whose grandmother disappeared goes back to the village with a group of friends to chronicle the disappearance. The village seems uninhabited but her friends start dying. Interesting premise and ending.

Alice's lifelong dream has been to make a documentary about Silvertjarn, the small mining village her grandmother left behind not long before police found the remains of a woman stoned to death in the village square and an eerie silence. Where had all the village residents gone? Why had the young woman been stoned to death? And perhaps most puzzling of all, why can they hear the cries of a newborn baby coming from somewhere nearby? Alice wants to answer all of those questions, and it looks like her dream might finally be coming true, but Silvertjarn is holding more secrets than she prepared for...

From the very first pages of this book, I was HOOKED. Excuse me, but how could you not be? It literally starts out with police officers coming to the village only for it to be vacant except for one screaming newborn baby and one dead woman in the square. Camilla Sten sets up the story in a way that just instills that desperate and unstoppable need to know.

The descriptions of this book are definitely spot on. It is very much so The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar. Is something supernatural at play? Is it a Jim Jones-style massacre, and if so, WHERE ARE THE BODIES??? What happened in that village sixty years ago is at the core of the story, and the need to know kept me turning the page even when I was dead tired. Alice's story of working to get the documentary made is told alongside her great-grandmother's story of watching Silvertjarn fall apart, and they're interwoven so well. I really liked Elsa, Alice's great-grandmother, and while I didn't LOVE love Alice, her part of the story is filled with real and validating conversations about and representations of mental health struggles that made me feel seen. (Also, I feel like there was a SERIOUS missed opportunity for some LGBTQ+ representation, which bummed me out but also kept me intrigued throughout the story.)

Overall, this Nordic Noir suspense was a really enjoyable read. I loved the setting, the mystery, the spook factor, and most of the characters. The ending did leave me with one rather mystifying question mark, but it definitely didn't ruin the enjoyability of the book for me. Would definitely recommend when it comes out in 2021!

A book about a small remote mining village set in the Scandinavian woods where all 900 of the villagers disappear into thin air. In 1959, Alice's 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 found stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. Alice gathers a small crew of friends to go to the remote village and make a documentary type film about The Lost Village and what really happened there. After they arrive, strange things begin happening and it's a race to get out of there alive. The Lost Village kept me intrigued and was a real page turner.

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read the ARC in exchange for my honest review. This is a good one!