The latest book by Camilla Sten is titled The Resting Place. Most of the story takes place during a major snowstorm at a lonely family mansion in Sweden. Eleanor and her aunt Veronika have come to the home to take an inventory and decide what to do with the house and contents. Elenanor's boyfriend and an attorney are there as well. A hidden diary gives some clues to 50 years ago. The house has been empty for years but well seen to by a caretaker. Surprises await the visitors and the readers. I want to thank NetGalley and Minotaur Books for an early copy to review.

Thank you to Minotaur Books and Camilla Sten for the copy in exchange for review.

I love a good ghost story setting! Stormy nights, ominous settings, a killer on the loose. What more could you ask for? Prosopagnosia (face blindness) prevents Eleanor from identifying her grandmother's killer, which means the killer could be closer than the reader thinks. Throughout the story we get small clues about the secrets that the family has and the darkness of their past. After her grandmother's murder Eleanor inherits an old manor house in the woods, that was bestowed upon her grandmother by her late husband. Eleanor decides to go to the manor to see what the past hides with her lawyer, boyfriend, and disgruntled aunt. Que: no reception, no neighbors, and strange occurrences.

Past and present blend together brilliantly, and the diary bringing about the clues are what truly made this such a spine tingling read! A psychological thriller to the core The Resting Place is creepy, claustrophobic, and down right scary! Devoured this book!.. The short chapters keep you turning the pages until the very end!

Thanks to St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books and NetGalley for providing me a digital ARC of this book. The opinions are my own and freely given.
Eleanor goes to her grandmother Vivianne's apartment for dinner only to meet someone at the front door, leaving. When Eleanor goes inside, she discovers her grandmother on the floor bleeding to death. Eleanor has a disorder called prosopagnosia, or face blindness; therefore, she is unable to describe the killer to the police.
Months later, Eleanor goes to her grandmother's country mansion, with her boyfriend Sebastian, aunt Veronika and the estate lawyer Rickard. No one is able to get in touch with the groundskeeper Mats, who has been employed by Vivianne for years. Eleanor thinks she sees someone on the grounds and things start happening, but she feels like no one will believe her. Eleanor and Sebastian find a diary hidden in the floorboards of a room, written by a maid who worked for Vivianne in the 60's.
This is a "locked room mystery", with a creepy feel. They are trapped on the estate due to the weather with no cell service and eventually no electric. Eleanor and after some convincing Sebastian thinks there is something wrong with the house and try desperately to leave. This was a suspenseful read leading up to what happened to Vivianne.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced reader copy of The Resting Place!

Living with prosopagnosia is no walk in the park. You can't recognize faces so you must recognize other features of the people close to you. The sound of your loved ones voice, their signature wardrobe, how it fits their body just right, how their hair falls around their face or the familiar smell of their skin. But what if you needed to recognize someone who changed their familiar flags, someone you needed to recognize in a situation that this life or death?

Eleanor has met the killer of her grandmother, Vivianne. She won't recognize them, of course, but she needs to go to the mysterious house in the Swedish woods that Vivanne left her to uncover the history of the sprawling estate that has stayed in their family in secret to Eleanor for decades. But with a shady lawyer, and estranged aunt, and a boyfriend who always looks at you with just a flash of doubt, Eleanor will need to work quiet and fast to uncover the secrets of what happened at that house, and what has now happened to her family.

I loved Camila Stein's The Lost Village and I loved this one just the same. The dueling timelines, unraveling the past just as the present starts to catch up, Camila has done that element with unrivaled expertise. As difficult as this can be, I genuinely did not see this ending coming. I love nothing more than a shocking, clean wrap up and this book did not fail.

Thank you to Minotaur Books and Camilla Sten for the complimentary advance readers’ edition of THE RESTING PLACE for an honest review.

THE RESTING PLACE follows Eleanor, a woman with a condition called prosopagnosia, most commonly known as face blindness. She has ways of managing this condition by remembering particular physical traits about those close to her, but when she stumbles into the middle of the murder of the grandmother who raised her, she can’t assist the police in finding the culprit even though she walked right past them.

Eleanor is surprised to learn that her grandmother has left her an old family estate located in the Swedish woods, far from anything else. Eleanor never knew of this home’s existence and her aunt who grew up there thought the home was long sold off. With her boyfriend, aunt, and their lawyer, Eleanor heads to the house to uncover family secrets and determine what will be done with the estate. While there, they find a room that has been closed off and a journal written by the servant who once lived there which might give Eleanor some of the answers she seeks if she can translate it enough to read.

Camilla Sten does a fantastic job of writing a very atmospheric setting, something I really appreciated when I read her THE LOST VILLAGE last year. There are so many questions in this book and it really kept me guessing and wanting to read more as I went. The house is in the middle of nowhere with conditions that leave them almost entirely cut off from the outside world. The story being disclosed in the journal adds more mystery than answers for much of the book as well.

There are some sensitive subjects covered so there are trigger warnings in here for mental health, miscarriage, infertility, and suicide. I can’t really speak to how well the prosopagnosia was portrayed, but I did do a bit of reading on the subject because this book peaked my curiosity and I wanted to wrap my head around the limitations of the condition as Eleanor was dealing with them. The idea that the murderer could be standing right in front of her without her knowing really added an interesting layer onto this mystery.

I very much enjoyed reading this book and suggest it to the thriller fans! THE RESTING PLACE is out on 3/29/2022!

This book was scary and I loved it! I couldn't put the book down once I started reading it. And let me say that I loved Camilla's book the Lost Village. That was another book that I couldn't stop reading. Getting back to this scary book...I loved Eleanor's character and I really felt sympathy for her to be raised by such a viscous and cruel grandmother. So many eerie details that makes ones spine tingle as you are reading. this book is not for someone who is afraid of the dark!

A traumatic event leads a young heiress to an old, abandoned summer home in this creepy thriller. Dark and atmospheric, the Resting Place hooks the reader immediately on the first page. The story is revolving around Eleanor as well as diary entries from a mysterious young maid in 1966. As the story unfolds, we meet several characters both past and present that create the events leading Eleanor to the discovery of an old family estate. Not everything is as it seems, and it quickly spirals out of control and has the reader on the edge of his/her seat. Great characters, though I wish a little more attention was paid to a few that are very important to the storyline. The plot had a few twists that were unexpected, and the conclusion was very satisfying.

3.5 stars, rounded up.
Another wonderful book by Camilla Sten. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the writing. The mystery was great. I also enjoyed the alternating timelines. Something about this book, though, just fell a bit flat. Loved almost everything about it though, and the twist was unexpected.
Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press, for a copy in exchange for my honest review!

Born with face blindness, Eleanor witnesses her grandmother's murder but can't identify the killer. Terrified the murderer will come for her, Eleanor begins to have severe anxiety and nightmares. When she unexpectedly inherits her grandmother's vast estate in the Swedish woods, Eleanor also inherits the dark secrets that come with it.

Camilla Sten's Swedish thriller has the perfect spooky setting at an abandoned estate in the woods. Eleanor's face blindness and the tensions between the characters give the whole novel a suspenseful vibe. Yet, the lackluster character development left me wanting more depth. That said, you will appreciate Sten's twist, as the backstory of Eleanor's grandmother collides with the present-day events.

I enjoyed this book a lot. The chapters were short and I liked switching between timelines. It was a really good mystery and the creepy house made it even better. The twist was great but the various names and switching of characters confused me a little. A picture with the family tree might have helped to keep things together in my mind.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Minotaur Books for the eARC.

The Resting Place is a slow-paced horror/thriller with a novel premise and lyrical prose. 

The novel is told in two timelines. In the present day chapters, Eleanor is venturing into the secret mansion that her grandmother bequeathed her in her will. She's accompanied by her boyfriend, her aunt, and a lawyer. She had never even known that her grandmother had this mansion out in the middle of nowhere, and there is a lot of mystery surrounding why she would keep this place a secret. Five months ago, Eleanor's grandmother had been murdered, and Eleanor saw the killer. The catch? She suffers from prosopagnosia–a rare mental disorder that makes her unable to recognize faces. She can’t recognize anyone, not her boyfriend of six years, her grandmother, or even the woman staring back at her in her reflection. The killer could be right in front of her, and she would never know. 

The past timeline is diary entries written in the 1960s, following a young woman, Anushka, who works as a maid for Eleanor’s grandmother. This storyline is much slower paced, though these chapters are quite short and span over a much greater amount of time. 

The psychological aspects of the story go far beyond just Eleanor’s inability to recognize faces. Her grandmother, Vivian, was mentally abusive, and even in death, the effects of her maltreatment resonate throughout the narrative. Eleanor regularly has intrusive thoughts--critical, cruel asides in the voice of her grandmother. This adds to the suspense in otherwise slow-paced scenes, racketing up the tension, as these comments and insertions are far from benign. 

This book, while slow paced, is engaging and unputdownable. I read it for the POPSUGAR reading challenge category “Read in one sitting”, and I literally didn’t get up once, not even for a bathroom break! (Granted, I was on a plane, so I really didn't want to get up!)  I thought I’d predicted the end of the story early on, and while I had some aspects figured out, the twists were well plotted out and cleverly surprised me in the end. 

One thing that I do want to point out is that Eleanor’s inability to recognize faces didn’t play as big of a role in the plot as I’d been hoping. I saw the Milla Jovovich film “Faces in the Crowd” years ago, where Jovovich played a character with this same condition. Part of the suspense in that film was that she never truly knew who she was interacting with, and anyone could be the killer, even those she trusted. In this book, while her prosopagnosia is critical to the main premise of the book, the rest of the story only has a handful of characters. The book would have been more suspenseful had she regularly encountered strangers or acquaintances and constantly questioned if they could have been the killer. 

All in all, this is a suspenseful, beautifully written psychological thriller.

Eleanor walks in on her grandmother’s murder but is unable to recognize the killer. Eleanor has prosopagnosia, a condition where she cannot identify human faces. Frightened of a faceless murderer, Eleanor takes a trip to the country. However, past and present follow behind, and Eleanor must uncover both before she understands her grandmother’s fate. Remote location thrills at a breakneck pace.

Dark, cold setting for the unraveling of long held family secrets. Camilla Stein has another hit on their hands. It’s eerie, twisty, and one story that takes you on a ride. The Lost Village was one of my favorite books of 2020, and The Resting Place completely lived up to my expectations! It wasn't a formulaic thriller; it was fresh, exciting, and unexpected, with fabulously unreliable narration. I couldn't put it down!

he Resting Place, out 3/29/22, should 1000% be on your radar if you like nordic noirs, creepy big mansions (major Shirley Jackson vibes), and hidden family history☠️

𝕲𝖊𝖓𝖗𝖊: Nordic Noir (with both mystery and thriller elements)
𝕿𝖗𝖔𝖕𝖊: locked house mystery w/ blasts from the past
𝕻𝖚𝖇. 𝕯𝖆𝖙𝖊: 3/29/2022
𝕸𝖞 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗 𝕽𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌: 5 stars
𝕲𝖔𝖔𝖉𝖗𝖊𝖆𝖉𝖘 𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗 𝕽𝖆𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖌: 3.69

Set in old country home (I.e. mansion) in Sweden, this novel is PERFECT Haunting of Hill House fans. The Resting Place is an extremely atmospheric read that won’t be for everyone but if you know you enjoy, or want to try out a nordic noir novel, this book is a wonderful place to start!

Quick synopsis:

Eleanor has prosopagnosia, face blindness. (And I think this one way better and super different than Rock Paper Scissors) When Eleanor walks in on a gruesome scene of her grandmother’s murder, she is unable to identify the killer. After a lawyer calls, Eleanor finds out that her grandmother, Vivianne, left her a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The house has been untouched for 50 years. NATURALLY, Eleanor and her boyfriend travel out to the house looking for answers, where they are met with only more questions🥶🥶🥶🥶

For fans of: Ragnar Jonasson, Jo Nesbo, Shirley Jackson, and D. J. Palmer👏🏻

How can you help to catch your grandmother’s killer when you suffer from face blindness? This is the exact situation Eleanor finds herself in on the day she goes to visit her grandmother, finds her dead, just moments after passing the killer. When a lawyer calls to notify Eleanor she’s been left an estate to her located in the wooded area of Sweden. Maybe some clues at the mystery house in the woods will help solve this psychological thriller?

Sten’s 2021 release, The Lost Village, was a great read with a creepy atmosphere and dual timelines that were impeccably crafted. The Resting Place also created a spooky atmosphere with the isolated Solhöga mansion in the Swedish woods. The house itself gave me goosebumps because of its dark and mysterious history. It was the perfect backdrop for sinister events to unfold and Sten described it with just enough detail and left the rest to the reader’s imagination.

Our MC, Eleanor, suffers from prosopagnosia, which is better known as face blindness. This condition added an ominous feel to an already disturbing experience for Eleanor because she’s unable to identify who killed her grandmother. This causes severe anxiety for our protagonist, which leads us to doubt what she claims to see at Solhöga.

I loved the dual timelines and multi-POVs in this book. It was interesting to see the past revealed alongside the present period. I honestly didn’t guess the culprit and that made this a winning read!

As I said in my stories last week, this book is similar to Rock, Paper, Scissors by Alice Feeney. The MCs each had face blindness and were in wintry, remote locations. However, The Resting Place had a more propulsive plot that had me rapidly turning pages.

Thanks to Minotaur for my advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

4.5/5 (rounded up to 5 on here!)

Okay, this was my first book by Camilla Sten and I absolutely loved it! This book gives off such spine tingling vibes that you want to read this page straight through in order to figure out what’s going on. There are different POV with one being Eleanor and the other being an older diary that gives you information little by little about the history of the family. The author does such a great job going back and forth between the different storylines. However, I will say it took me a bit to remember all the different characters and differentiate them because a lot of them had names that started with ‘V’! I am also loving storylines featuring prosopagnosia and how it affects the characters. I think Sten did a fabulous job with describing how this condition adds to the MCs fears and anxieties throughout the book. This book was so fast paced and you just feel chilled reading this book! I love how Sten just makes the atmosphere of this book so eerie that it keeps you entertained the entire time. If you enjoy fast paced thrillers, then you are definitely going to enjoy this one!

This review will be posted to my Instagram blog (read_betweenthecovers) in the near future!

Eleanor suffers from prosopagnosia, meaning she can't recognize faces. After coming face to face with her grandmother's murderer, Eleonor can't identify the person. Later, Eleonor learns that she has inherited a mysterious estate from her grandmother. Eleanor meets her estranged aunt and a lawyer at the estate, where they begin to uncover many family secrets. Could her grandmother's murderer be there too!? I liked this book overall. The beginning was confusing with all the different periods and perspectives. Thank you, NetGalley.

-4.5/5-

When Eleanor walks into her grandmother, Vivianne's, apartment for their weekly meetup, she never imagined she'd walk right into an active murder scene, even bumping into the perpetrator as they walked out the door. To add insult to injury, the identification of Vivianne's killer evades her even more due to her prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. Eleanor's anxiety about this starts to mount. Does she know this person? Do they know her? Are they searching for her? These questions follow her as she is tasked (along with her boyfriend, Sebastian, her aunt, Veronika, and a lawyer, Rickard) to sort through the family summer home she never even knew existed.

I absolutely loved the atmosphere and setting of this book, which was set in a summer estate in the Swedish countryside. The home was creepy and ominous, the wind and blowing snow kept me on the edge of my seat, and overall, I just really enjoy reading books set in Scandinavia. I really enjoyed reading about these casts of characters, and I thought they were complex and interesting individuals.

In this book, there were two major twists. I thought the first twist was excellent, albeit, predictable. The second twist felt as if it had been overshadowed by the first twist. True, I didn't see it coming, but I was still on such a reading high from the first twist that I didn't feel like it had as much of an impact.

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this book, and I'm already looking for more books from this author to add to my library. Thank you so much to St. Martin's Press and Minotaur Books for giving me this copy through NetGalley, and check this out when it's released 29 March, 2022!

The Resting Place was a dark and twisty thriller that had be guessing around ever turn!

Elenor came face to face with her grandmothers killer and can’t remember a detail about them. Diagnosed with prosopagnosia, Elenor lives in fear wondering if the killer will come for her next and she would never know because she can’t recognize them. As she navigates her anxiety, she is called back to the scene of the crime to untangle the secrets of her grandmothers life and figure out why the family home was left to her. As things start to go wrong, Elenor fears the murderer is lurking in the shadows waiting for her.

This is the second title I’ve read by Camilla Sten and it did not disappoint! I really enjoyed the plot and the unsettling, creepy atmosphere Camilla created. I would recommend this to anyone who is a fan of suspense-horror novels! Can’t wait to read what Camilla writes next.