This was deliciously atmospheric! Unsettling to the point of making me uncomfortable while I read it and long after!

The In Ice is a heart stopping, can't put it down, highly atmospheric thriller from cover to cover. Everything about this story reeks of danger - the killer setting, the complex plot line, the unreliable characters, the dark ill-boding tone. The only thing clear is that one or more people will die before the story ends.

Val Chesterfield gets a call from Wyatt, a friend of her deceased twin brother Andy, begging her to come to a remote island off Greenland to help him determine what language a young girl discovered frozen in ice is speaking. Wyatt, a climate scientist, claims the girl thawed out alive. Val, a linguist excelling in dead Nordic languages, is curious yet hesitant to travel to the locale of her brother's suicide. She has her doubts as to what happened to her brother and ultimately, the need to know is what drives her out of her comfort zone to Greenland. What she finds upon arrival is a bitterly cold, harsh landscape where death comes quickly to those who dare venture outside without adequate protection. And yet she's supposed to believe that her scientist brother walked outside in only boxers, laid down and froze to death. Val is determined to learn the truth of her brother's death, the young girl's heritage and what's really going on with Wyatt and his assistant in this God forsaken frozen world.

To say Girl In Ice is highly atmospheric is an understatement. The climate and landscape controls the story, dictating much of what happens while driving the maddening pace forward. I imagine it's much like speeding downhill in a bobsled or on skis at breakneck speeds as it's hard to catch a breath reading this story. I frantically turned pages looking for answers - afraid to stop, afraid to read on. I don't recall the last time I read a book and felt so utterly immersed in a story that I had literally had chills and a growing sense of dread. The sinister tone is ever increasing and the sense of danger is almost overwhelming. Ferencik does a brilliant job of drawing readers into the story and holding them hostage along with the characters who are cut off from the rest of the world by the life threatening weather. The story unfolds through Val's point of view as she struggles to survive one blow and one crisis after another. Her work with the young mysterious girl is heart touching and yet even there, there's a sense of the clock ticking toward some disastrous event. I'm not saying more about the plot line because readers need to travel this treacherous journey without prior knowledge other than what's known in the blurb to fully experience it.

Girl In Ice is an intensely explosive, raw, gut-wrenching thriller that had me on the edge of my seat until I read the final page. It's a story I won't forget anytime soon. The escalating danger from surrounding sources, the unknown of what's really happening and the knowledge that there's no escape for these characters drives a fervent pace through unforeseen twists and turns to the epic ending. I challenge any fan of suspense thrillers to put this one down before finishing once they get into it. Girl In Ice left my heart a little raw with my emotions all over the place. It's definitely a favorite of 2022 for me. What a movie this one would make! Highly recommended to fans of mysteries, suspense, and highly atmospheric thrillers.

I enjoyed this book. It was definitely a page turner and different than anything else I’ve ever read. I would have like the ending to answer a few more questions for me to feel like the book is more complete. I really liked the bond that Val and Sigrid shared.

I have always loved books or movies with the snow or ice background. This book didn't disappoint but it was different and interesting. Parts are a little hard to believe but that's why it is a story. Recommend and hopefully this author will write another book soon. Thanks!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for gifting me a copy of the latest atmospheric thriller by Erica Ferencik - 4.5 stars!

Val struggles through her days, with the help of anxiety meds and alcohol, as a university professor in linguistics, studying ancient languages. But her fears keep her from traveling or from much of any type of life, especially since her twin brother, Andy, died by suicide while studying climate issues in Greenland. Then Andy's mentor, Wyatt, contacts her from their remote Greenland lab, asking her to travel there to help him. Wyatt and his team recently found a young girl encased in deep ice; they were able to thaw her out and she's alive. But they have no way to communicate with her and need Val's help. Val has to get up her courage to travel there and to use the time to also investigate her brother's death.

Erica Ferencik is the queen of atmospheric thrillers - you'll need to cuddle up with a few more blankets when you read this book! It's an intense thriller, made more so by the brutal environment of the Arctic. I loved the relationship between Val and the young girl as they struggled to communicate. There's something so frightening about these remote science labs with small teams that have you questioning everyone. Plenty to think about in terms of climate change as well - I'm now terrified of ice winds!

Thank you to NetGalley, Gallery/Scout Press, and Ms. Ferencik for the opportunity to read an ARC of the title. An honest review was requested but not required.

This is my first book by Ms. Ferencik but I don’t think it will be my last. I saw another reviewer comment that the author’s general practice, as stated in an interview is (I’m paraphrasing here) to really evoke an inhospitable setting. I think she succeeded and then some, with Girl in Ice. I can’t think of a setting that’s much less hospitable than the arctic, unless it’s perhaps the ANTarctic. Cold is so much more difficult for me than hot. But more than just “cold”, you can truly envision all the various blues and whites of the ice, the bitter cold of the wind, the isolation, the cabin fever of being locked up with very few faces most of the time.

Val, the main character, is an interesting woman. I couldn’t tell if she had suspicious about her brother’s death or was just devastated by it. I was surprised by the quickness and relative ease that she was able to overcome her fears (agoraphobia?) and get on the plane and go to somewhere so foreign in every way. Perhaps the isolation of the setting and the closed nature of the interactions and social life helped her adjust? At any rate, Val tries her best to relate to the mysterious young girl found in the ice but is hampered by more than just language. The mystery of where the girl came from and how she survived the ice were interesting but pretty much took a backseat to the strange, unsettling, tense atmosphere in the Dome and the oddness of the other inhabitants’ actions. I was actually really interested in the science behind Sigrid’s survival, but I can understand that that took a back seat to the psychological issues and the suspense.

My only real quibbles were (a) I thought Val got over Andy’s death a little too easily. And b) I was really interested in how Sigrid continued to survive up there in the Inuit village. Did she continue to do the injections? Did everyone else start to do them? What were the scientific and climactic impacts of the discovery? I WANT TO KNOW! Lol.

Overall I really enjoyed the book and would be very interested to read more from this author.

Thank you to Gallery Books for providing an ARC of this unique thriller!

Pub date: 3/1/22 - today!
Genre: thriller/suspense with sci-fi elements
In one sentence: After her twin brother, an Arctic researcher, commits suicide, linguist Val is called to his lab station in the Arctic Circle to try to communicate with a girl who was thawed from the ice.

That one sentence description doesn't do the book justice - there's so much going on here! I loved the linguistic element - I'm a bit of a language geek, so it was cool seeing Val work to communicate with the mysterious girl in ice. The sci-fi/magical realism vibes were strong here, adding something extra to the "girl investigating the death of a family member" trope. I was drawn into this world from the first page, and I think readers who enjoy wilderness/adventure thrillers will love this one. There are plenty of twists, large and small, that come to a satisfying conclusion.

If you want a thriller that's unlike others out there, definitely pick this one up! It's a good one to read this winter while you stay cozy on the couch!

Posted to Goodreads and Instagram 3/1/22.

When Val, a linguistic, is asked to go to an outpost in Greenland, she does the unthinkable and goes. After all, Val doesn’t go anywhere and if she does she relies on pills and alcohol to get her there. Her twin has died on the outpost and his late partner has found a young girl that does not speak a recognizable language. He needs Val to further his experiments. Feeling uneasy about Wyatt and his experiments, even questioning her brothers death, Val starts to hold information back from Wyatt. As the young girls’ (Sigrid) health starts to deteriorate, Val must determine what is causing her illness and will stop at nothing to save her, even if it’s completely out of her comfort zone. Once again Ferencik takes us on an incredible journey, this time in the Arctic with danger around every curve and a mystery at its core. While implausible, it was still a compelling read.

Atmospheric setting brings the Artic chill as this story unfolds.

A linguist noted for her study of dead Nordic languages, Val Chesterfield, is invited to a remote island off the coast of Greenland to see if she can find a way to communicate with a young girl who apparently has been thawed after found frozen in ice. She decides to go, though she has severe fear anxiety, because her twin died there a year ago and Val wants to talk about him with his mentor and project leader, Wyatt Speeks. The weirdness begins as soon as she gets off the plane in this barren, unforgiving landscape.

What I liked most about this book: the details and descriptions of the Arctic outpost and the way the author used it to set the tone and mood. The reader can almost actually feel the extreme cold and the minimalist conditions under which the team is meant to live. The close proximity of the characters to one another in the crowded spaces with nothing but endless snow and wind as the light diminishes each day. I also was very interested in the language aspect and the translation of the words as Val struggles to communicate with Sigrid. And, I was eager to discover the truth about the girl who had come to life after being frozen -- the how, especially. The writing style of the author was engaging and absorbing.

What I didn't like -- the actual unfolding of the story was a disappointment especially the last third of the book when all falls apart and becomes predictable as far as outcome. The characters were such stereotypes and the plot basically seemed to turn into Helen Keller on ice. I found it difficult to relate to any of them, Val included, and some of what happened created difficulty for me to sustain my ability to buy into all that transpired.

The underlying theme is focused on climate change and all that entails -- very scary to be sure. I found myself fascinated by the ice wind phenomenon described. I even googled it to see if it was a real thing (not as far as I could tell). Also, quite enthralled with the topic of thawing a frozen person or other living thing to bring them back to life and wish there had been more focus on that in the novel. In all, however, the book left me with more questions than answers because I do like science fiction when it can be made plausible with explanation.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for this e-book ARC to read and review. I will be thinking about this one for awhile.

Loved this book by Erica Ferencik. It was a mystery and a global warning all in one. It was very realistic, and
the detailed setting had the reader looking for another blanket as the ice closed in. Would be a great book group discussion book. It contained elements of human greed, sacrifice, and motivations. Excellent read, highly recommended.

Thank you for the print copy Netgalley. I hope you continue to have print materials available to readers.

One of my favorite characters in any book is nature and Girl In Ice has the brutal nature of the Arctic on full display. Val, an expert linguist, is called to Greenland to the research station where her twin brother died only a year prior. His mentor, Wyatt, discovered a girl frozen in the ice and claims he was able to bring her back to life. This young girl, however, doesn’t speak any language he knows and needs Val’s expertise to learn her language and share her secrets of being able to survive in this uninhabitable land. The first problem that must be overcome, however, is that Val is a messy ball of anxiety and fears who does not travel, let alone on an adventure such as this. She eventually agrees: drawn to the place where her brother died under unusual circumstances and she’s unable to get the girl's voice out of her head after listening to a brief recording Wyatt sent. Once in Greenland things just keep getting weirder.

I loved this book! It’s about a place and a culture I know nothing about so it allowed me to truly get lost in its story. Reading this book during a week of sub-freezing temperatures here at home just added to the chill. Val, and all her flaws, is not the type of character I generally enjoy - but she has an inner strength that made me root for her. The girl is fascinating! Wyatt is the kind of character you love to hate and there are 3 other members at the research station as well, 2 of whom I absolutely loved and one I did not. The pacing was fast as there is a deadline that must be met, mysteries to be solved, days are getting shorter making it soon impossible for Val to leave until winter is over, and, set a bit into the future, climate change is getting worse over the globe and answers must be found.

I want to thank #NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing me an advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Val is a complicated character. She not only is an expert on dead languages, but she relies on drugs and alcohol to remain on an even keel. She only feels comfortable in her apartment and most places on the campus where she teaches. She's always felt like two cents waiting on change due to her father's overweening preference for her climate scientist brother Andy. Yes indeed, this woman has issues with a capital I. But she loves her brother so much that she loads up on her meds and flies to Greenland in an attempt to find out what happened to him.

What she finds is equal parts strange and magical. As research scientist Wyatt Speeks tells her, "Nobody normal comes here. This place is just natural selection for people who want to leap off the edge of the world." And no one at the station is really normal. The magical part of the experience is Sigrid, the girl who was thawed back to life. Although Sigrid has a will of her own and, for the most part, refuses to cooperate, it soon becomes apparent that she knows more than she's letting on. Watching the interplay between these people is almost like reading a locked-room mystery.

There is so much to like about Girl in Ice. The scenes focusing on linguistics are stellar, and I loved learning why the Vikings named Iceland and Greenland the way they did. There's also a wonderful scene involving narwhals. But. Normally I have no problem willingly suspending my disbelief while reading a book. Something has to throw me back out of the pages. In Girl in Ice, two of the characters were almost too good to be true while another two were on the opposite end of the spectrum. And then there was the explanation for Sigrid's being able to be thawed out. How in the world did her people come across that little trick?

So while Girl in Ice has many good parts to it, it also raised some questions. Give it a read and see what you think.

Three stars for the effort...
Val is a linguist with extreme fears and phobias that necessitate her taking meds or alcohol just to function.
Her twin brother, Andy, apparently took his own life at an isolated outpost in the Arctic circle. Andy was their dad's favorite and is suspicious of the manner of Andy's death, so is Val.
When Andy's research partner calls Val to help decipher the language of an eight-year-old girl he recently thawed and brought back to life, she reluctantly agrees hoping to find the answers about her brothers death while also getting to communicate with the girl who speaks a language she's never heard before.
From here this slow burn of a novel ventures into the unbelievable (but plausible? a stretch for sure) territory of suspended animation and life after being found encased in ice. The story does feel claustrophobic in its isolated location with descriptions of the snowy, frozen surroundings. I just didn't like Val as a character. I found her to be unbelievable and annoying. The story is pretty slow going until the last third or so when it earns the label of being a thriller but even here one must suspend disbelief a bit more than I wanted to. That all said, I was still curious as to how the story would resolve so I read to the end.

Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik is a different type of read. This book made me cold since it was set north of Greenland. The description of the weather made the story stand out. It is the story however, that truly made it different. The main character Val is depressed and sad. Her twin brother died out on this remote outpost and she has been asked to go to the same place to help out.

Val is a language specialist. She can speak, determine, and explain various languages. She is asked to come out and see if she can help a girl who seems to speak a new language. It seems the girl speaks a language that is unknown. Val has listened to the tape again and again and is intrigued. She is determined to be brave and find out all she can.

Meanwhile, the people on the outpost are quirky (as scientists in isolation I think would be). Val is determined to help the girl and figure out the language and help the girl. Only nothing is clear and easily figured out. The language is one not heard before. The girl has been thawed from a glacier.

The book draws you in and you feel claustrophobic and cold and sweaty all at once. Trips to the outside and the glacier are fascinating while building suspense. I think the book might technically be a murder mystery crossed with a thriller. I will admit, I put the book down twice because it was wigging me out. What a strange journey that I had to finish no matter what. Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik is an interesting read.

This is a story about a girl out of time.

I really loved The River at Night by the same author, so I was super excited to read this one, and it did not disappoint. This perfectly utilized the claustrophobic, cold environment to further a sense of dread. The linguistic part was fascinating & I loved the sci-fi elements! Such a unique book.

I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys environmental thrillers & has been curious about branching out into science fiction.

Thank you so much netgalley & gallerybooks for the eArc!

This is the first book I have read by Erica Ferencik. The author gives a very detailed world readers can dive into. At times the details take readers out of the story and can be distracting.

The story has interesting elements, but the end feels extremely rushed taking away and unbalanced. The author tries to pull the everything together instead of taking away from endless details and giving the ending it truly needed.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy of Erica Ferencik Girl In The Ice.
3 1\2 stars

Val studies linguistics and receives and email asking for her help deciphering a spoken message. It is nothing Val has heard of before and she is intrigued. She’s so intrigued she fights her anxiety and goes to the Arctic Circle where the girl in the message is located. It’s also the same place her twin brother died.

The thought of thawing someONE from ice and having them alive seems far fetched but not at the same time. It’s even more interesting when the someONE is found under layers of Arctic ice and she’s been there for awhile (thousands of years). This is what happens to a little girl and is the reason Val is called. She needs to communicate with the girl and find out about her.

Beyond the people the setting is amazing. The author does a great job describing the living conditions and dangers associated with living in the Arctic Circle. I wanted to curl up in a blanket!

I can’t say enough good things about this book. You can’t help but sympathize with the little girl who is in a strange place and needs help communicating. The others in the Arctic are fascinating. I learned about linguistics as Val worked with the little girl. The fact that Val’s brother died there is always in the background because Val does not believe his death was an accident. This book will help you suspend reality and think what could happen!
Thank you to the publisher for an advanced reading copy.

Val Chesterfield has always been the introverted twin, the subdued one. Compared to her brother Andy, her whole existence has been quietly domestic. She’s dedicated herself to a semi-cloistered life in the halls of academia, studying diverse and dead languages, while gregarious, gorgeous Andy traveled around the world following his passion for climate science, in the hopes of finding a way to save the planet. It‘s never been about a lack of travel opportunity for her, either. Val has turned down plenty of field work because she suffers quietly from

QUOTE
Anxiety: the crippling kind. I’m tethered to the familiar, the safe, or what I perceive as safe. I function normally in only a handful of locations: my apartment, most places on campus–excluding the football stadium, too much open space–the grocery store, my father’s nursing home. During my inaugural trip to the new, huge, and sparkly Whole Foods–chilled out on a double dose of meds–a bird flew overhead in the rafters. All I could think was, <i>When is it going to swoop down and peck my eyes out?</i> I never went back.
END QUOTE

After Andy dies while working at a remote Greenlandic outpost, her world seems to shrink even further without his adventures for her to vicariously live through. But when his mentor up in the Arctic Circle, Wyatt Speeks, sends her a message asking for her help, Val is caught between the anxiety that weighs her down and her genuine desire not only to preserve Andy’s legacy but also to use her very specialized skill set to help a vulnerable young girl.

For Wyatt has sent her the voice recording of a girl he’s found, who’s clearly in distress and also clearly speaking in a language Val has never heard before. While Val is familiar with a wide-ranging variety of languages, her specialty is in the Nordic, whether living or dead. The things the girl is saying, however, are incomprehensible not only to Val but also to the local guide the arctic outpost has hired to bring in supplies. Wyatt begs Val to come and see if she can use her skills to help figure out what the clearly terrified and disoriented girl is saying. Val, after all, knows better than anyone the value of communication:

QUOTE
Languages reveal what it is to be human. This desire to make ourselves understood is primal. We make marks on paper, babble snippets of sound–then agree, by way of miracle–that these scribblings or syllables actually mean something, all so we can touch each other in some precise way. Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love, from the particular love of a new mother for her baby to one for unrequited love, but it has twice as many for grief. My favorite is <i>sokaparayana</i>, which means “wholly given up to sorrow.” A strange balm of a word, gentle coming off my tongue.
END QUOTE

Even if Val doesn’t believe Wyatt’s story about finding the girl frozen in ice and thawing her out – or his hypothesis that she must be hundreds of years old, all scientific impossibilities – Val’s certain that she’s the person most capable of helping the girl communicate with the baffled people around her. Plus, going to the Arctic will hopefully help Val find closure with her brother’s death, which she still can’t believe was a suicide. Armed with anti-anxiety pills and her formidable language skills, Val makes the arduous trek… only to discover that flying north is only the beginning of an ordeal that will change her life forever.

This literary speculative fiction thriller not only tackles issues of language and first-contact colonialism, as well as climate change and what we’re doing to the planet, but also what it means to overcome your greatest fears in order to do the right thing. At its heart is the little girl that Val and the staff of the Arctic Circle outpost are trying to get through to, though more than one person has their own ulterior motives for learning how to communicate with her and discovering the truth behind her unusual circumstances. The mysteries are many-layered and intriguing as Val navigates a forbidding landscape of bleak cold and low survivability in order to protect her young charge, while unearthing the dark truths lurking in the heart of the place that claimed her brother’s life and could, if she isn’t careful, claim hers as well.

Wow wow wow I love this book! What an enthralling reading experience. This is my first book by Erica Ferencik, but I'm definitely planning to go pick up some of her other books.

READ THIS IF YOU LIKE:
-remote snowy settings
-science and linguistics
-the movie Arrival (starring Amy Adams)
-locked-room mysteries

Val is a world-renowned linguist and her twin brother Andy is a leading climate scientist. While working in an Arctic outpost in Greenland, Andy turns up dead. He is found frozen to death just outside the compound, and his colleagues assume it is suicide. Val is not convinced but is wrapped in her grief when she is summoned by Andy's professor/mentor Wyatt to come to Greenland. The team there has uncovered a young girl frozen in the ice, and when they thawed her out, she was alive. She is speaking a language no one can understand and they need Val's skills with language to communicate with the girl. When Val arrives in Greenland, things are tense. There are only a few other researchers present and Wyatt is a mercurial and enigmatic personality. Adding to the tension is the fact that Val has only a few weeks to work before the long dark of winter sets in and the last plane out leaves.

The author clearly did a great deal of research into language and Greenland for the story. I felt like I learned a lot while reading. The characters were all well-drawn and I truly could not have guessed where the story would go. This is an original and gripping story, and one to watch for. It'll be out on March 1.

Thank you to NetGalley, Gallery Books, and the author for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Girl in Ice By: Erica Ferencik is such a wonderful read. It sure made we realize how bad we are killing our planet and that part is sad.

Valerie Chesterfield is a Linguist, she was asked to go to an outpost off Greenland when a child was found frozen, thawed and lived! This little girl didn’t speak a language that was understood and sounded so frantic. Val was torn between her safe, secure life she created for herself due to high anxiety and phobias or going to the freezing Artic cold where her brother, who was her twin, committed suicide which she questions. She decides to go thinking she can help this child and research her brothers death.

This book was a fast paced, page turner that I really enjoyed reading and I highly recommend. I’m sure I will purchase this book as it is a keeper and I know I will re-read it. .

Thank you Netgalley for the early read in exchange for my honest review.