A real page turner with some very interesting characters. The end however was rushed and unsatisfying.

So. Damn. Good.
Alice, a documentary filmmaker, arrives at Silvertjarn, a Swedish town known for the mysterious disappearance of everyone who lived there, sixty years ago. Alice has begged, borrowed, and scraped together enough funds for a team to visit Silvertjarn for six days. Barely enough time to get some initial footage for what she hopes will be enough to find backers for her project. Alice knows quite a bit about this town since her grandmother grew up here, and never got over losing her mother, father, and younger sister when everyone vanished.
Told from two perspectives, 'Then' by her great grandmother Elsa, and 'Now' by Alice. I am not sure which timeline was more mesmerizing. Finding out what happened to the people, or the strange things that happen to Alice and her team in this abandoned and remote place. In the 'Then', a new and rather odd pastor arrives in Silvertjarn, and the town will never be the same. In the 'Now', is someone watching every move the team makes, or is one of them not who he/she appears to be?
I loved how this was so personal to Alice. Her grandmother didn't have any answers, but she certainly provided Alice with background information and a lot of questions. What could have happened to all the inhabitants except for one infant who was left behind?
As compelling as this mystery is, what is happening to Alice and her team was also creepy enough to have me looking over my shoulder at every little noise. I never had a moment when another shock or revelation wasn't delivered. Secrets, lies, and a madman all have been in Silvertjarn but is the greatest threat found in the 'Then', or in the 'Now'. A page-turner, and when everything was revealed, I was glad to close the book on Silvertjarn for a little while, until it crept back into my thoughts and dreams.

his book was scary AF. Do not read this alone at night. Imagine the Blair Witch Project meets The Children of the Corn and they had a baby. That baby would be this book. I couldn’t stop reading it despite it giving me anxiety and making me think I heard something downstairs.
The story is about some college kids going into the woods to film a low budget documentary on a village where all the inhabitants mysteriously vanished in 1959, with the exception of a live, crying baby left in the school house and a dead woman tied to a pole in the town center. From day 1 you know these college kids are done for but you can’t stop reading because you need to know what happened to these people and what is still haunting this place. This story stays with you even after you close the book and it reads like a movie...you feel and hear everything the main characters do as they are living this nightmare they get caught up in.
Seriously, don’t read this before bed. You’ve been warned!

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

Publish date is in 3/21. If you like seriously creepy/spooky books put this one on your list!

The Lost Village is a book I both did and didn't like. It would probably make a good movie as there were plenty of jump scares--strange figures seen in the night, strange sounds, people falling through floors. Isolated place with no phone signal. The final, virginal girl, or in this case, two.

Nine hundred people in an old mining village go missing. The great-granddaughter of one of the missing enlists a former friend who is a film-maker, the money man who is financing the expedition, the film-maker's boyfriend, and another relative of a survivor into coming with her to scout out the abandoned village for a documentary. The protagonist suffers from depression, was never successful like the other film school graduates, and thinks this documentary will be the key to her success.

All right so far. But, Alice, the protagonist, doesn't seem to know a lot for being a film school graduate.. Her goals for the five days were rather slipshod and she didn't know her rented camera took videos in addition to still photos. I began to realize why she was the least successful student in her film classes. I'm not a film student and I can tell if a camera takes videos or not. Alice mostly accidently discovers stuff instead of having a plan.

Of the five people in the group, two are on medication for mental problems and they both happen to be women. Why, in the books I read, is it always the women who are suffering? The two men seem happy as clams, although I don't know how happy clams really are.

So, the protagonist spent a bundle on rented vehicles and camera equipment but doesn't seem particularly prepared. Her former friend takes over and we're supposed to resent this as does Alice. But, geez, Alice didn't get her act together before the trip.

I like strong women in my books and Alice wasn't it. There were other strong women, especially Elsa who is in the background story, but the protagonist just let things happen to her. I also figured out who the culprit was and where the villagers disappeared to long before the characters did.

There were characters who I felt sorry for like Brigritta who had autism, characters to dislike like the over-the-top minister, but, except for Elsa in the backstory, the characters were mainly blah.

It would still make a good movie because people fall through floors on a regular basis. But, in a movie the rusty fire escape will have to break and somebody will have to swing on it, hanging on for dear life. I wonder if they need a script writer? I'm on a roll here.

Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin's for the digital advance reader copy.

She wants to make a documentary on the story of a lost village. All of the children, men and women had simply disappeared. Homes were left with dinners on the tables. Set up as if waiting for the owners to walk in any second. She knew it was an extremely tight budget and they didn't have a lot of time. It was possible if all went according to plan. They just had to get their, set up, keep to the schedule. It would work out. Until...it didn't!
Exciting, titillating, terrifying. A great story!!!

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. As soon as I saw the cover, and read the premise, I knew I would want to read this, but unfortunately it didn't work out the way I thought it would. I usually love slow burning books that are intense and keep you guessing, but this one didn't work for me sadly.

I really enjoyed this thriller! We begin with the mysterious disappearance of villagers in a mining community. Years go by and a crew of filmmakers go to the village to make a documentary. Of course, weird things begin to occur. Can the crew find out what happened to the missing residents? Spooky and Gothic in feeling, this is such a satisfying read.

I would like to thank Camilla Sten, St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC. I really wanted to love this book especially with it being compared to Midsommar but unfortunately I am a part of the minority. This book was a DNF for me. I normally love slow burn, atmospheric novels, but there was just something lacking for me. This may be a perfect read for others, but it just wasn’t for me

I received in advance for you just copy in exchange for an honest review.

Wow – this book was a bit of a slow burn but the drama heats up and that last half is a crazy crash until it finally goes off the rails. These people are scary, and not in the horror movie sense of the word. This will definitely have you sleeping with one eye open.

Thank you NetGalley for the free ARC.

Mysteriously the inhabitants in a Mining Village disappear. Years later a crew of film makers goes to the village to make a documentary and weird things start to happen. Can the crew find out what happened to the inhabitants? Good mystery!.

The atmosphere in this novel was amazing. Spooky, sinister, and foreboding. Likening this novel to the movie Midsommar is perfect in regards to atmosphere and the building of dread. My only complaint is I would have liked to see more character building to really connect the reader and the main characters in the novel.

This thrilling novel follows the adventure of hopeful documentary producer, Alice, and her team on their way to uncover information about the mysterious and abrupt disappearance of an entire Swedish town in 1959. Alice’s grandmother, Margareta, has told her countless tales over the years about this town and the sudden vanishing of its inhabitants, including Margareta’s beloved mother, father, and sister. Alice is determined to find the truth behind this tale, at any cost necessary.

The Lost Village was a page turner for me. It drew me in with lovable yet flawed characters, an amazing adventure, and a scary mystery. Throughout the book, I had so many questions longing to be answered. It really could go so many different ways, and I felt just as “in-the-dark” as the characters were!

This book is written in a Then and Now format, although most of it takes place in the Now. I felt the Then was included to answer all my burning questions throughout the book that even some of the characters were unaware of!!

I love a novel that stirs my emotions and this one did just that. I was scared, enthralled, eager, sad, shocked, and upset throughout this read. As a whole, I loved this book. Highly recommend if you enjoy thrillers and mysteries.

It would be pretty much impossible to talk about this book without mentioning the following…Midsommar, Blair Witch Project and the story of Roanoke. The first two seem to be getting more play due to sheer popularity, but here’s the thing…both of those movies were kind of crappy, pretty sh*t, in fact. Blair Witch singlehandedly introduced the found footage genre, ushering into the world both a very low budget option to scare the audience and the tedious shaking camera technique to nauseate them. It isn’t by any means a good or an especially scary movie, but it is an original. And, for the purposes of this comparison, it features a group of individuals lost in the creepy woods with a witchy presence around. Midsommar is a different beast altogether, it’s a highbrow genre movie that takes on all the worst attributes of an arthouse flick until the entire thing become an exercise in patience and fortitude. It’s intolerably long, slow and overdone. Its main appeal being the inherent creepiness of a religious cult in an isolated Scandinavian location and, more so, the inherent creepiness of stumbling into a thing like that and not being able to leave. Which works for the present comparison. The Roanoke thing…well, that’s obvious. Title obvious. The lost village, the mysterious disappearance of an entire population. That’s precisely how this story goes…in 1959 an entire population of a remote Swedish village, nearly 900 souls, had mysteriously vanished off the face of the earth. All the left behind was a brutally murdered local woman and a newborn baby crying in a schoolhouse. No clues, no answers. Until now, nearly 60 years later, when an ambitious documentary maker with familial ties to the village comes there with four friends and colleagues for an exploratory initial shoot. The goal is to investigate, poke around, get enough footage to secure funding for the complete project, it’s only meant to be five days. It’ll be five days they will never forget. (That’s tagline right there). Right off the bet, things start going sideways, but then again most of it can be easily explained away by their extremely creepy surroundings, a village that from certain angles looks merely quiet and sleepy, but up close long abandoned and dangerously decrepit. Things escalate proportionally and, while still plausibly explicable, soon the rationale begins to take a step back and the very nature of the place starts oozing its darkness around them. It’s essentially a sort of thing that works both supernaturally and naturally, it’s profoundly darkly atmospheric and oh so spooky in the best possible way. A claustrophobic nightmare of the highest caliber. Definitively more effective than Blair Witch, infinitely more dynamic than Midsommar (although, technically that’s most things) and just as conceptually terrifying as Roanoke a.k.a. the sheer concept of a place erased from time, this books works on every level and so well too. The writing draws you in completely. Even the bright blue skies outside do nothing to lessen the inherent creepiness of the narrative, though this is definitely a book best read under the cover of night. The narrative splits the timeline between 1959 and present day, unevenly so and favoring the Now, but it is the Then chapters that are most harrowing in a way, a life closing in on the people, after the main source of income for the village gets shut down and a charismatic new pastor arrives. It’s the same old premise, the tragic neverchanging story of the great evil arising out of restlessness and economic strife. People at their most frustrated, their most tired and financially beaten down will turn to find hope, reason and meaning in the darkest places. Reductively, but efficiently It explains most of the horrifying political ascents of dictatorships, etc. This small village can serve as a microcosm for the darkest aspects of social psychology. Or it can just scare the socks off of you. Either way, it’s such a great read. Terrifying, immersive, exciting. A genuinely trilling thriller. A genuinely scary frightfest. Well written, vividly conceptualized, with complex characters and perfectly sustained suspense. Plus the sheer pleasure of Scandinavian noir writing at its finest. Literary, economic, potent. Really excellent all around, Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.

This was dark and atmospheric. I liked how it went back and forth in time and that the mystery of what happened gets solved at the end. However, some of it was fairly predictable.

Kindly received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Oh this was a dark and cold and awful book that I very much enjoyed reading. I tend to be a touch leery of tag lines like "a mix of Midsommar and Blair Witch" but I can't think of a more apt description myself.

In the wilds of the Swedish wilderness, a lonely, emotionally fragile film maker takes a rag tag crew to scout a mysteriously abandoned village as a location for a chilling documentary. Almost immediately they learn that the village is not exactly abandoned after all.

The very talented Camilla Sten weaves the story of her intrepid and, lets face it, doomed film crew with a tragic and haunting tale of how the lost village became lost and then pulls all the string together in a thrilling and terrible climax.

This was excellent and well worth a read for any fan of slow burn, smart supernatural mysteries with a cast of characters you desperately root for even when you know there's no hope at all. Truly chilling and surprisingly moving, I simply couldn't put it down.

A whole village of people vanishes without a trace, in 1959. There is only a severely tortured, and rotting body of a woman tied to a pole, and a wailing new born baby left behind.

Filmmaker Alice has been fascinated by the vanishing residents of this village, called Silvertjarn, and wants to make a documentary out of it. Her grandmother’s younger sister, father and mother were among those unfortunate ones that disappeared in the village.

Along with a small crew, she goes to the abandoned village to try and make a documentary about what actually happened on that fateful day and what caused the mysterious disappearance of so many people.

Soon, strange and eerie things start to happen. They see and hear someone other than themselves. A crew member goes missing and their equipment is blown up. It seems that they’re not alone in that ghost town.

The story unfolds through two different timelines, one in the past, in 1959, narrated by Alice’s great grandmother and another in the present, which is from Alice’s point of view.
This makes the story more engaging as we can see the events which led up to the incident, in the past and the discovery of the truth in the present.

The characters are well thought out with a lot of depth.

The story starts off a little slow but gets more interesting as it progresses and one wants to get to the bottom of the mystery.

It’s certainly a great addition to the thriller and mystery genres, and I would recommend this book for people who love reading books with some page turning thrills and a central mystery.

Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader’s copy for an honest review.

I'm not going to leave negative feedback for this one, because it might end up being a really good book people will like. But for me, personally, it was a DNF because I think the translation just didn't work for me as well as it might for others. I just couldn't get into this one. But I'd order it for the store...I never turn down horror titles!

What an unexpectedly good story. Without giving too much away, we see a group of young men and women going into an abandoned village to film footage for a potential documentary. Are they alone in the village? The people of the village disappeared without a trace years ago. Except for one infant. We are given glimpses of life in the village thru letters and flashbacks, and finally find out what happened to them. Very disturbing, and well written.

I didn't know what kind of story that Camilla Sten would have, but I knew that if Viveca Sten worked with her it couldn't be bad. I was amazed that it was so realistic that Alice and Tone came out of it with little to no hard breaks at all. This story Is about Alice's grandmother's story of Silvertjärn where all the people, some 1000, were lost to the world and Alice's attempt to make a documentary film about it. We have Alice and Tone plus Emmy, Alice's first friend, Max and Robert who were there for support of Alice and Emmy. What first starts off the mystery, is after Tone falls through the stairs in the school. Emmy drives for miles until she gets her mother on the phone to resolve what to do with Tone and her foot. But when she gets back and they hunt for Tone they hear a bomb go off and find their trucks and cars are destroyed with all their equipment. I won't go into detail about the rest of the story but you won't believe me with what happens. Two of the people are killed. But that's the question who did it? Tone who's missing? Read the story and find out for yourself. I gave it 4 stars out of five.

A young independent documentary film maker achieves a lifelong dream of visiting what is known as the ghost village of Silvertjarn to carry out some initial filming in preparation for a much bigger project. Alice's family lived in the village and her Grandmother has told her the story of the mass disappearance of the villagers 60 years previously, and the grisly discovery made when the outside world became aware that something had happened to the people of Silvertjarn. Am not going to say anymore about the plot as you need to read and enjoy it.

The story is told through a dual narrative then and now and the tension builds as Alice and her crew of 4 begin to feel unsettled by the atmosphere in the village. The format works well as the tension builds both in the then and now at the same time, leaving you the reader feeling unnerved, especially if you are reading it late at night. This would live happily amongst horror or mystery genres and is most definitely worth reading. I look forward to Camilla Sten's next offering.