My thoughts

Would I recommend it ? Yes

Would I read anything else by this author? Yes

Rating:5

Genre:Horror fiction

Pub Date:March 23rd 2021

Publisher:Minotaur Books

First off I want to thank the publisher Minotaur Books-St. Martin's Press for letting me read it as well as review and a big thanks to NetGalley as well. What can I say it was the perfect read for October 1,2020,started reading it as 12 am and didn't get to bed until almost 4 am, because I just could stop reading it or put it down, with each turn of the page something strange or creepy was happening. Right from the start I loved the atmosphere, the characters ( the characters not so much) and the edge of your seat feeling you get when you know something is coming but you don't know what it is , I loved how it was told in the past and present and that you got to see the characters come to life, and there was times I was screaming at the characters not do that . Plus another thing I loved was how creepy enough it was to have me looking over my shoulder at every little noise.It was everything I was hoping it would be, creepy, dark, a bit twisted , a secret , a murder and a mystery of how an a hole group of people could just disappear off the face of the earth .

I started spooky season early with this book from NetGalley (thanks, NetGalley), which will be released in March 2021. It's set in a creepy abandoned village. A young woman with a family connection to the village leads a small team of documentarians into the village, hoping to discover the reason why everyone living there deserted it sixty years before. Naturally, it's off the beaten path and there's no cell phone reception. It had a twist that really surprised me; I couldn't put it down.

Spooky and intense; elements of a faux documentary set in an abandoned village. Themes related to rape, mental illness, and murder make for an intense read. Lovers of cult tropes and suspense will enjoy this novel. Told in altering points of view the story is paced well and keeps the reader engaged and entertained. I recommend this one for fans of the genre. Thank you NetGalley for allowing me to review this ARC.

This book warrants a 5 out of 5 star rating from me. If you’re familiar with the works of Simone St. James, then you’re absolutely going to love The Lost Village. It was everything a creepy thriller should be. Mysterious, creepy, and had you guessing until the end. Highly recommended, in fact I’m a little on awe of how much I really did enjoy this book. I’m a bit sad I’m done reading it to be completely honest.

A film crew’s attempt to make a documentary about the missing populace of a strange town with a dark history is the subject of Camilla Sten’s “The Lost Village”, the latest in an long line of titles to name drop The Blair Witch Project in its marketing but fall far short of that title’s enigmatic horror. While it doesn’t hit the lofty target it aims for, Sten’s narrative is sufficiently entertaining to see through to the end; a timely (if underdeveloped and riddled with horror tropes) story-within-a-story is told using interchanging flashback/present day chapters and there are some moments of suspense sprinkled throughout. The main complaints I had were the underutilized characters and the guessable plot line that diminished the suspense factor as the book went on. Still, it’s a quick read so it’s one to give a shot to if you’ve got an open reading slot.

**Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC for an honest review**

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the digital galley of this one.

Since her grandmother’s stories of her childhood, Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the old mining town dubbed “The Lost Village.” Everyone in the town, save a baby found, vanished. Alice’s grandmother was already living in Stockholm, but the fate of her sister, mother and father remains a mystery. When Alice finally gets the funding, she and her crew head out on a five-day trip to explore the village, but they soon realize they aren’t alone.

This book will stay with me for quite some time. I picked it up to get in the spooky season mood. I love a good horror story. Add some film elements, and people who just vanished, and you’ve got me! I do recommend it; however, if this year has got your depression moved in and comfy, I would hold off. Luckily, it’s not coming out in the US until March, so hopefully things will have evened out enough by then to really enjoy this intricate story.

There are elements of post-modern horror, which is not my favorite, and there were plenty of elements I didn’t like about this, but I think they were important to the story, and there is an excellent blend of possible paranormal elements and good old human depravity. It’s creepy and tragic and heart wrenching, so buckle up. It’s not a trashy, fun horror book, and it nearly left me in tears.

Billed as Blair Witch meets Midsommar, the latter almost turned me off. I enjoyed it WAY more than Midsommar (I seriously read the beer menu for a good 20 minutes about 2 hours and twenty minutes in, but that’s a whole ‘nother review.

Give the world some time to be a little less soul crushing, and then give this one a go. It’s really quite good.

Alice has heard stories about the small mining town of Silvertjärn, Sweden her whole life from her grandmother. One day, every villager in town disappeared without a trace except for a murdered woman and an abandoned newborn baby. Among the missing were her grandmother's entire family. Now, she is determined to make her dreams of a documentary on the town come alive. Along with a small film crew, she travels to the isolated village. They investigate the buildings that have been abandoned for over 60 years, but strange things begin happening and they realize that they might not be alone in the town.
Told in dual timelines of the 1950s before the disappearance and the present time film crew, the story flows along quickly becoming more creepy as it goes. I couldn't put it down!
I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The views and opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Thank you to Minotaur books for yhe free arc.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ for The Lost Village!

A spine-chilling, atmospheric suspense. The Lost Village claimed similarities to both Midsommar and The Blair Witch Project and that was definitely the vibe delivered.

First thing is, this is a horror/suspense. So please see the tw for: Murder, mentions of rape, gore, stalking, cult activities, religious extremism, mental health deterioration, mentions of suicide attempt

Told from two POVs forward and back through time; we learn of Elsa, a woman born and raised in the small Swedish town of Silvertjärn who bears witness to the monstrous events leading up to the disappearance of the entire village, and her great grand-daughter Alice who has always been fascinated with the story of her ancestors.

Alice's dream is to get funding for a documentary featuring the abandoned village and, maybe, find the missing pieces herself that will blow the case wide open. Joined by a woman named Tone, who has her own connection to Silvertjärn, her ex-best friend Emmy and her boyfriend Robert, and finally Max, Alice's friend and their initial funding for the project. Tensions are already high between the group: Alice suffers from anxiety and depression, which drew both her mental health and her friendship with Emmy to the brink years ago.

Distracted, anxious, and determined to do whatever it takes to bring Silvertjärn to the light, Alice pushes back at the notion that anything could be wrong. Even when people start to see things, and terrifying voices come across on their walkies—None of them know what's going to happen until it's far, far too late.

I"m a sucker for this exact set up. A creepy, abandoned town, an ambiguous mystery, a group of people trying to discover the truth only to find out the truth is not quite dead. The possibilities of ghosts or monsters or worse. This was right up my alley and I devoured it like I would any similar movie/novel. It's got all the right set up and a mystery that will keep you turning pages well into the night. (though you might start becoming very aware of every sound outside as you do.)

The point is, any horror fan, or even cult movie fan, is going to see where this is going a mile away. Whether that predictability is something you enjoy or something you dislike will be completely up to you. I was thoroughly entertained by this, even though I guessed a lot of the twists, I was still anxious to see the wrap up. And the third act certainly did it's job of tying up loose ends while leaving just the tiniest threads, the small, terrifying questions in the back of your mind that just couldn't completely be explained. The ones that leave you thinking well after the story is done. That, to me, is a success in this genre.

I do have issues with portraying people with mental illnesses as the villains. (this is not so much a spoiler as a fact of where the narrative leaned in and out of). That they are unstable, insane, prone to violence. It was telling where some of the characters held their bias. Our main character, Alice, suffers from her own mental troubles, and while her empathy is refreshing, it still sat wrong. I'd like to not see so much reliance on this trope in this type of media.

The end was predictable for me, but the last chapter still left me sufficiently creeped out and really, that's what I was here for. Midsommer and The Blair Witch project are great comps for this book. You can tell where the elements of both came in without being too heavy handed and this came out as a very satisfying read. So if you're into major creep factors, isolation, and juicy, layered mysteries — The Lost Village will hit the shelves 23 March 2020!

*My thanks, as always, to Netgalley and the publisher for gifting me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.*

This book reminds me of an old mining town here in Colorado, where folks were coming up missing or dead. There was a book like this already, and it was just another repeat for me. I knew what was coming before it came. This is my honest opinion and thanks for the reading.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC for honest review.

The Lost Village is a familiar concept in many ways. A mixed group of intrepid young filmmakers set out to create their masterpiece in a location known for it's mysterious mass disappearance. Insert mayhem and violence here and you've got a trope ala Blair Witch Project, The Ritual or the disappearance of the original English settlers in America and the one word "Croatoan" left behind.

The Lost Village takes place in the Swedish wilderness in a mysteriously abandoned mining town, Silvertjarn, where all the residents disappeared 60 years ago, seemly overnight with no trace, except for a newborn baby crying in the nurses office of the village school and the corpse of the local village madwoman tied to a post and stoned to death in the main square.

The main protagonist, Alice, a budding filmmaker, is the child of a former denizen of the village who had moved away prior to the disappearance and has been fed stories and remembrances from her grandmother about the village and her family all her life. Alice has FINALLY achieved her dream of going back to Silvertjarn and attempting to find out what actually happened there.

The action bounces back and forth in time between the present day crew Alice has assembled, Alice's memories from her troubled school years and the viewpoint of her Great-grandmother and the actions taking place in the village prior to the disappearance.

Like Wallendar and the Ritual, the Lost Village does an excellent job of conveying the beauty, grandeur and melancholy of the Swedish landscape. The group Alice has brought together is individual and well portrayed each with his/her own agenda's and demons. The story draws you in and the dread slowly mounts as with all good slow build horror novels. There is no overt gore or bloodshed, just slow building unease and menace.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It had enough asides, hooks, plots and insights into the mental processes/conditions of all the protagonists to keep the suspense building and the interest piqued in both storylines.

I would highly recommend this to anyone who likes the non-gory, suspenseful horror novel.

The Lost Village, originally published in Swedish as Staden in 2019, has a rather striking premise: in the 1950s, all 900 inhabitants of a remote Swedish town vanished without a trace. There were only two people left behind - a newborn baby and a woman stoned to death in the town square. In the present-day, documentary filmmaker Alice has been obsessed with this town since she was a child, as her grandmother's entire family disappeared in the incident (her grandmother had moved away and was living in Stockholm at the time), and Alice decides to make an excursion to the town with a small filmmaking crew to uncover the truth about what happened.

And the premise is indeed the strongest thing about it - it kept me turning pages simply because the central mystery was so bizarre and fascinating. There are dual timelines, past and present, with the present-day getting more of a focus, and I thought this balance was done well. The tone was also fantastic - I wouldn't necessarily describe this book as creepy or gothic in atmosphere, but there was this sort of gently thrumming sense of terror throughout the whole thing (not dissimilar from Midsommar which this is probably going to be compared to quite a bit).

That said, my first issue with this book cropped up within the first few pages, which is simply that the writing is quite amateurish. I'm not sure whether the clunkiness can be ascribed to the original prose or to the translation (I'm inclined to think the former - my issues weren't typically with word choice as much as poorly written exposition), but either way, it took some getting used to.

I also found the treatment of mental health to be rather cringe-inducing. Mild spoilers: It's pretty obvious one character's possible 'psychosis' is set up to be a red herring in a rather half-baked attempt to provide a meta commentary about the stigmatization of mental illness, which... isn't half as progressive as thriller writers seem to think it is. For one thing, try to read this exchange without rolling your eyes into the back of your head:

"I saw them in your tent," he goes on. "In the toiletry bag, when I was borrowing your toothpaste. Abilify." He pauses. When he goes on, his voice is heavy.

"Abilify is an antipsychotic. Right? That's what it said on the packaging."

And for another thing... why? We know mental illness is stigmatized. We know. This is not a particularly clever or incisive or subversive commentary on that fact. Maybe as a writer you could try to come up with a more creative way to sow seeds of doubt into a group of friends than the dramatic reveal of - gasp - Abilify...

Anyway, it's hard to comment on the resolution without giving anything away, so I'll stay vague. I found some parts satisfying, some annoyingly convenient, and some just raised the question how did the initial investigation overlook this?

So on the whole, I just found this frustratingly uneven in execution. I certainly did enjoy reading this more often than not, I'd just encourage you to lower your standards if it piques your interest.

Thank you to Netgalley and Minotaur Books for the advanced copy provided in exchange for an honest review.

I was really looking forward to this book especially with it having a Blair witch style podcast video crew vibe. It was pretty creepy in some parts and then just took a really weird turn and lost me. The past and present were just really confusing me honestly and I couldn’t keep up to what was happening. Just seemed the story was way too convoluted than it needed to be. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Creepy in all the best ways! I wasn't sure how this story was going to unfold but it did not disappoint. Abandoned town, missing townsfolk, weird religious fanaticism, and a team of researchers all made this novel a worthwhile read. It's difficult to write a review without giving the surprises away, but just know that you're in for a treat!

The synopsis drew me in. The words hooked me. As the story played out, I became more and more invested in the characters and their ultimate fate.
Camilla Sten left me gasping for breath, devouring pages quickly, wanting more. The Lost Village is the perfect story to keep you company on cold nights!

This is a very economical, engaging, and fast read for fans of folk horror and found-footage movies. The parts of the book that uncover the history of the village were absolutely my favorite. I would have enjoyed a lot more exposition and background on the village's history, but I understand where that would have the potential to tank the incredibly quick pacing.

**I received this advanced reader's copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review**

Alice Lindstedt's dream is to become a well known filmmaker and her fist film is a passion project she's long wanted to produce: The story of Silvertjarn and the disappearance of all of its residents, including Alice's grandmother's family.

No one knows what happened in Silvertjarn. Everyone seems to have vanished without a trace overnight. Everyone except a newborn baby. And she's not all the villagers' left behind either. This story has followed Alice's family for three generations and now she wants to be the one to solve the mystery.

Alice has enough funding in place for an exploratory visit, the goal of which is to map out the film's script while also filming enough B-roll to put together a crowd funding campaign. But almost as soon as she and her crew arrive, things start to turn sour. And it soon becomes clear that they're not alone in the abandoned town. Someone is watching them. Someone is playing with them. And that someone seems intent on not letting them leave!

Camilla Sten's US debut is so much fun! Billed as The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar, it's a perfectly creepy blend of horror and thriller elements to appeal to readers of both genres!

Alice doesn't keep secret the fact that she has a personal connection to Silvertjarn. But she is keeping a secret or two from her crew. And it's those secrets that are the beginning of the problems for her.

Well, those and her history with an old classmate and fellow crew member.

They begin with five: Alice and her friend Tone; Max an old classmate and her first backer; Emmy, a talented filmmaker who has a history with Alice; and Robert, Emmy's boyfriend and second cameraman.

The story alternates between present day and 1959 leading up to the town's disappearance. And while Sten does a great job of building suspense and tension from the start, things really get moving when it's revealed exactly what searchers discovered in Silvertjarn after everyone vanished.

This book just oozes atmosphere! I loved everything about it and absolutely cannot wait to see what's we're in for from Sten next! And I sincerely hope this means we'll be seeing her backlist in translation here. Sten is the author of, best I can tell, five books to date including one coauthored with her mother, Viveca Sten. The Lost Village is the first title available here in the States and I'm dying for more!

In 1959 an entire town vanished, the only people left were a dead body and a newborn baby. Filmmaker Alice Lindstedt's dream is to make a documentary about the town and perhaps unearth answers to what happened to its citizens. Leveraging relationships and money to spend five nights on a scouting trip to the town, Alice and the team find more than they were expecting.

This book is a fast read with the right amount of creep. The story alternates between the past and the present, balancing both well as the mystery unravels. Alice's character develops well throughout. I was surprised and satisfied by a few parts. It's a great read.

Content warning: depression, some graphic violence

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin's Press for the gifted copy.

Thanks to NetGalley for an advance eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Impossible to put down, but there were many times when I really wish I could have. If you're reading this book at night, do yourself a favor, and leave a light on.

Four young filmmakers travel to a deserted Scandinavian village to make a documentary about what occurred years before to cause all habitants to flee without a trace. Among the missing is protagonist Alice's family. The only one who survives is her grandmother. Almost immediately, things go eerily wrong for the small crew. This novel expertly combines a psychological thriller with a supernatural setting. It's better to go into this book knowing only the bare bones of what it's about. New information is constantly being disseminated, and adds to the overall unsettling feeling.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for my copy of The Lost Village by Camilla Sten.

This book was creep-tastic! If I didn't need to sleep and eat I would have read this in one sitting. The atmosphere, complex characters, and well written haunting scenes made this a great overall read.

I would have loved a little bit more explanation in understanding Mattias's sinister nature/motives and his ability to have control over so many people so quickly (with zero of his followers questioning him? These are working class people whom most attended church in the village and presumably have a basic understanding of the bible, how could NO ONE except for Elsa & Dagny see how evil he was? I found this a bit far fetched. And yes, I understand how cults and cult leaders work...)

Despite all that, I loved this book!

Fast paced horror story that I couldn't put down!

The Lost Village follows Alice and her team as they visit an abandoned village where all the townspeople disappeared except for one baby, and the body of a woman tied to a stake. Alice is the daughter of a woman who grew up in the village, but was away when the events occurred, and she returns to see if she can find the truth of what happened to her mother's family.

The story sucked me in from the first page, and kept me guessing throughout. I loved the paranormal aspects, and the creepy setting. Who doesn't love a haunted village with a scary past?