I actually forgot I had a NetGalley copy of this and spent my own money on the hardcover after seeing an ad on Facebook - the description was that compelling to me.

I would give this 3.5 stars if that was an option. I did overall enjoy it but it lost some steam at some point so it never got to that ‘unputdownable’ stage that other thriller and horror type novels get to. I was fairly pleased with the ending though and while I did figure it out, it was pretty late in the book.

This may sound strange but, this story has a Blair Witch meets Friday the 13th feel to it.

In a long dead town, things get weird when people there to do a documentary start dying.
Why are these people dying? How are these people dying?

Told from two different times - then and now, we learn the history of the town and discover some of the buried secrets.

This story kept me up past my bedtime and well into the wee hours as I wanted to finish and didn’t want to put it down.

Part horror and psychological thriller, The Lost Village was a RIDE. I love ghost hunting shows where they go to abandoned places and try to find the truth of what happened there, and I think that interest played into my enjoyment of The Lost Village. Alice and her crew travel to an abandoned village whose inhabitants mysteriously disappeared a half-century ago, and what they get is a lot more than they bargained for. I loved the spooky and atmospheric air this story has, and its setting in Sweden really lends itself to creating that atmosphere. I thought each of the female characters were incredibly compelling and the conflict between them and within themselves really kept me enraptured with their stories. I thought that Sten did an excellent job capturing the complex spectrum of mental illness, mainly depression, and the impact it can have on a person, their relationships and their communities, and how issues with acceptance from their loved ones and their community, as well as equitable access to resources, can really impact a person's mental health. Sten's writing style got my heart really thumping at times and I honestly felt freaked out by this book, which is a compliment as that is hard to get me to do. A story about how society views women who struggle with mental illness, The Lost Village is a fast-paced thriller that will keep you turning pages until the very end, and I really enjoyed this more than I thought I would.

Great story! Goosebumps the last few chapters! Really enjoyed it! Highly recommend and enjoyed. This was my first time reading this author and plan to read more!

The Lost Village tells the story of Alice, Tone, Emmy, Max, and Robert as they travel to a remote village to film a documentary about how the entire village just disappeared. 900 people. Without a trace. Can they learn what happened to them?

YALL!!! This book had me on the edge of my seat the whole time. I was so into the story and could not wait to figure it out. I couldn't figure it out!! The clues were perfectly placed and it was so intriguing to me. I loved the letter format that the author used. My only thing was that I wish there was one last chapter to explain a few more questions that I had but, overall, this was an amazing story that I could not stop reading!! SO GOOD!!!

The first two parts got me really intrigued.
I liked the two timelines.
We read this one with our bookclub.
The ending was not what we expected

This book was super weird, yet awesome. Nothing is what it seems, which is what I loved the most about it. I definitely recommend that you read this one in the daytime because it is just that spooky. Overall, a wonderful read that left me with goosebumps.

THE LOST VILLAGE
By: Camilla Sten
Available where books are sold!

Ever wish you could escape the heat of the summer? Next time try it with a book. One summer day in 2018, I had an out-of-this-world experience reading THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY by Ruth Ware all on one gloomy afternoon. I would say one sitting, but the magic that day was that it took all day. And all day, as the California sky loomed on, I explored the dark corners of gothic fiction. I will never forget that experience.

I picked up THE LOST VILLAGE in curiosity as I had certain feelings about it when I read a sampler back in October 2020. I thought the storyline was fascinating but felt the Blair Witch vibes it was trying to elicit were not very “spooky,” Gothic yes, mysterious, yes. Scary, chilly air when it's warm outside, fingerprints in the fogged-up mirror, Midsommar, lost-in-the-forest-vibes, that’s a big NO!

So, how does the entire book compare to the sample, or shall I say the first 20 pages?

About the same….

I think it’s about a 3.5 rounded down to 3 Stars. It was fair and “moody.” Which may have been my biggest problem with it. At times I felt it lost focus, and any vibe it had going on snapped. Like someone letting the cool air in the room. It feels good but totally kills the vibe.

It is hard to keep that tenuous feeling of atmosphere. Too many descriptions can slow the plot to a crawl. Too many characters and red herrings, pov’s, and multiple storylines can send energy askew. You, as the reader, are focused on one character, wrapped up in their story, and immediately you’re with someone else, possibly somewhere else, some other time, some other story, and at times the plots are not interceding. If you make me wait too long for that intersection to happen ill lose interest. Which is what I think happened here for me. The mood must stay the same.

3 stars

Thanks to @netgalley and Minotaur Books for this gifted copy, many months ago!

I tried to finish this but it was just not my thing. The beginning didn't catch my interest which is a deal breaker. So sorry

In 1959, the people of the mining village Silvertjärn in Sweden disappeared without a trace. Alice is a documentary filmmaker and set on finding out the truth about what happened to her grandmother´s family. Together with her team, she will spend five days in Silvertjärn. Shortly after their arrival, strange things starts to happen. And soon they are stuck, and people starts dying …

Swedish Camilla Sten have written a thriller slash horror that gets really intense. The plot is strong and the mystery intriguing. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and she has created a creepy vibe that pervades the story. Readers who love Yrsa Sigurdardôttir may put this one on their radar. The beginning is a bit slow, though, but when I came to the last part of the book I raced through it. If you love horror movies like «The Blair Witch Project», this might be something for you. The story is told in a double timeline, gradually we get to know the people who used to live in Silvertjärn, whilst the documentary team are getting to know the village themselves.

Speaking of horror: one of the drawbacks of this genre can be the lack of depth and development of the characters. Alice felt anonymous to me, and I also had a hard time getting a grip on the other characters. Elsa in the past was the character that felt most alive.

The main theme is how we fight our inner and outer demons. The book is also about finding the courage to stand up for oneself and others, and serves as a warning for what may happen if we fail to think independently and just go with the flow. The ending was satisfactory, but I did not find everything believable. Even though I have some small reservations towards this book, I will definitely pick up the author´s next novel.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this arc.

I was excited to be approved for this book. I’ve heard so many things about it, and it was something I was really looking forward to reading. However, even at 10% in the book, I was already confused, and a little bored. The writer does try to put you right in the middle of Silvertjarn, a village in Sweden, but it’s so descriptive that it started getting confusing and just overwhelming. I did not relate to any of the characters. In fact, they annoyed me. This book was something that I did not enjoy, I’m sad to say.

Very Blair Witch vibes and I’m here for it! I loved every single second of this ghost story. I can’t wait to read more from this author as I devoured this masterpiece.

I was immediately intrigued by this book given the summary and the cover. I love the idea of a relatively amateur documentary film maker setting off to create her dream film, and I enjoyed seeing her passion for the project. The book was incredibly atmospheric, and the lead up - while a slow burn - kept me interested to see how the project panned out. While the story took a few turns that I enjoyed in part, and found a bit beyond belief, I appreciated the way the pieces were revealed - almost as if I were watching a film, catching brief glimpses that can only be appreciated collectively over the course of the story. I loved the dual narratives - seeing the past revealed slowly through letters - and the family connection between the past and present. While the ending was a little unexpected to me, and the characters are not ones I felt too invested in, this was an enjoyable read for sure.

A mix of horror and thriller, a creepy atmosphere and a gripping plot.
This is an interesting debut and a very good book.
It somehow reminded me of Blair Witch Project and I liked the dual timeline.
The storytelling is good and the characters are fleshed out.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This was a different kind of story for me! You have the past,you have the future. Camilla Sten did a great job in doing this with the story she tells,I was able to follow and not get confused on the year of the characters that are in this story.. It has a little bit of everything and anything that you would want in any kind of story.. I just wanted to know more about The past and had to stop and figure out some things that tied to the now but I did!! You will enjoy this book just as much as I did,it's a different kind of story I'm used to reading but I'm glad I stepped out of my safe zone for this one !! Received from Net Gallery!

I’m grumpy because one of my most anticipated reads this year fell way short.

The Lost Village is told in two timelines: 1959 and now. We remain mostly in the present timeline, with occasional flashbacks to the past that lead us to the moment when the entire town disappeared.

I wish the book had been solely about the group of people in 1959. Their story fascinated me. The present timeline, not so much.

From the beginning, we have a vague ominous undercurrent. We know something isn’t right. Something bad is going to happen. Yet, nothing happens, bad or otherwise, for the longest time. All we have are a group of people who dislike each other and behave like they’re in a bad B-rated horror movie.

The pace picks up around the halfway point, and the final third of the book is where everything happens. Unfortunately, the things that happen are… Well, no spoilers here, so I’ll just say I couldn’t roll with it.

The conclusion—when we find out what happened to the people who lived in the town and who’s responsible for the current chaos—made me roll my eyes so hard they hurt.

And can I just mention the excessive nodding in this book? Everyone nods, at everything, all the time. 94 times! (Yes, I counted.) Drove me crazy. I hope some of the Bobblehead movements were edited out of the final copy.

Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. Now a budding documentary filmmaker, she has gathered a small crew of friends to make a film about what really happened. But after they set up camp, things start disappearing and Alice realizes that they are not alone.

I am a very big fan of books within the mystery/thriller genre, but this book was on a new level of creepy -- and I loved it! It certainly had some Blair Witch vibes, and I could not put it down! A fantastic read for 2021.

It was soo good UNTIL the supernatural stuff was happening. So freaking good and twisty and dark and fun until the supernatural explanations were coming in.

The last half of the book was such a disappointment and I really wanted it to be good.

Alice Lindstedt is a filmmaker who has decided to do a documentary on the residents of an old mining town known as “The Lost Village” who all vanished. In 1959, her grandmother’s family all disappeared there in a mysterious tragedy. The only people left were a woman stoned to death and an abandoned newborn baby. Alice gathers a small crew to make a film of what really happened.

Once they arrive at camp, mysterious things start to happen such as walkie-talkies malfunctioning, destroyed equipment, and people going missing. Alice really wants to get to the truth of what happened in the village back in 1959, but she begins to fear they are not alone. Something sinister is lurking around the lost village and seems to be looking for them.

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten is told from dual timelines. “Now” is from Alice’s point of view, and “then” is from her great-grandmother Elsa’s perspective. I found the “now” perspective to be a bit creepier, but preferred the storyline of “then”. I felt it brought more to the story giving us the background of what happened to the people of the village.

This book had all the makings for a great horror story. It has been compared to The Blair Witch Project, which I can see because it does have similarly eerie vibes; however, the story did fall short for me. I feel like there was not enough character development, which would have helped the story a lot. There were times the author would bring something up that would have benefited the book, but then it was never mentioned again. I’m not going to give examples to avoid spoilers. I also think the author would have benefited to include more about the creepiness of the village itself. It would have set the mood better. Overall, this book had a good premise that fell a little short.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

According to the introductory material in The Lost Village, framed as a proposal for a documentary, Silvertjärn is “Sweden’s one and only ghost town,” deserted since 1959, when all 900 of its residents, with the exception of a newborn baby and a woman who had been the victim of a grisly “execution.” Alice Lindstedt, the producer, whose grandmother was from the town, heads into Silvertjärn with four colleagues for a six-day exploratory visit, during which she hopes to get enough footage to intrigue investors and raise funds for the project. Things very quickly begin going wrong, however, and the novel alternates between “Then,” showing what happened in the village before its desertion, as it slowly falls under the sway of a charismatic preacher, and “Now,” relating events in the present.

I found the first half of the book to be a very slow burn, but the suspense picked up after that as the tiny group is fragmented and increasingly isolated from one another, with tragic results. Has Alice’s companion Tone, who has her own connection to Silvertjärn, suffered a psychotic break, or are they being stalked by a mysterious “other,” and if the latter, who is this person? All, or nearly all, is revealed at the end, which for me was for the most part satisfying, although I wish that there had been more character development, particularly of the men in the group. 3.5 stars.

I received a copy of The Lost Village for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.