The Night Guest was a quick and entertaining read overall. The first 95% of this book I was completely hooked and all about the disorienting atmosphere the main character is put in. As we get closer to the end though I think it became a little too ambiguous and I personally would’ve enjoyed an ending with some of the loose ends tied up neater. All and all I do recommend this for a quick unsettling horror read. Thank you to the publisher for the free digital copy of this novel.

This was an excellent psychological horror about a woman’s descent into madness. The constant impending sense of doom was stressing me out, so I’m glad this was a short read 😂

I absolutely loved 98% of it. The translation was SO good. I feel like humor and emotion can sometimes get lost in translation, but I loved the dry humor/sarcasm of our main character. I also liked that the author touched briefly on societal issues related to women (healthcare, misogyny).

Despite that, I feel like the last 2% kind of came out of left field? No spoilers, but basically I thought one thing was going on… and it didn’t make sense for what showed up in the end. But a descent into madness can cause WILD stuff to “happen,” so I’m gonna chalk it up to that. I just have so many unanswered questions:

Like was the dirt on her body and under her nails from digging up her sister’s corpse!?
Before she turned GPS tracking on, was she digging up her corpse!?
Were the spirals necessary for a ceremony to reanimate her corpse?
Did the sisters hate each other or did they love each other?
Was the sister murdered by our main character because she could sense that she was evil!?
Who gave her the black eye? Herself? The reanimated corpse?
Was there EVER a reanimated corpse or was the body in the end just a figment of her imagination????

4.5/5 stars
What a ride! A story about a single woman with parents who could honestly do better by her. She has a love for cats and is very honest with herself, to a point. On discovering she is exhausted from unknown causes, she seeks help. I have met so many patients like this main character, and the author writes her spot on and completely believable. She is a feminist who wants to be responsible and well informed. She wants to be taken seriously and wants actual care. The things this woman experiences are bizarre, sad and so very disturbing. I could only imagine finding out that when I sleep, I completely lose control over my body no matter my efforts. The ending was truly bittersweet. You finally get the reveal and the cause still can be left up to the reader, but part of me yearned for an epilogue.

Despite this being a translation, the novel was fun and very easy to consume. There’s a bit of comedy that relieves the darkness. I will share a few things that stood out to me:

Because there is nothing worse than having unexplained symptoms. Feeling like there’s something terribly wrong- but nothing can be measured in exams, and you know the doctor thinks it’s all in your head. Ch2

I come to the realization that it’s not just twinkling stars ahead of me. There’s also the dark between them. Ch 17

He may sound like a domestic rooster, but this is not his domain. Ch48

Iðunn is a captivating character with incredible depth. It appears the author intends for the reader to psychoanalyze Iðunn in order understand the open ended last scene. With help from my fantastic friend, Katie, I believe we worked out the deeper meaning. If you are interested in her analysis, it is hidden in her comment below. I have updated my rating, as I knew I would when I finally understood it! I will be reading this one again!! The Night Guest would be a terrific book club read.

Like many people, Iðunn feels like she's not getting enough sleep. She's constantly exhausted and falls down a health anxiety spiral trying to figure out what's wrong with her. Despite reassurances from physicians that there's nothing wrong with her, Iðunn's sleep-deprived state continues. Soon she wakes with aches, pains, scratches, bruises, and substances under her nails. A smartwatch tracks her nighttime activity, showing she's walking thousands of steps. What is happening? Where is she going and why?

Iõunn has mysterious symptoms which doctors are ignoring. She wakes up so tired and sore. When she falls asleep one night with her watch on she realizes she walked over 40,000 steps in the night. What is happening while she sleeps?

The good news is that this book is very short and a super fast read. The bad news is that I ended with too many questions and not enough answers. If you like thrillers with a little ambivalence and open ended to interpretation, you should try this one but personally I need the conclusion spelled out more. Also bummer for the animal cruelty that completely blind sided me.

The Night Guest comes out 9/3.

Short and sweet - well, short and terrifying.

A woman has been suffering fatigue for weeks. Doctors fine nothing wrong. One night, she falls asleep with a step-counting watch and wakes up to see that she's walked 40,000....when she should have been asleep.

It's the terror of the unknown that makes this scary. The buildup and then.....an open-eded ending.

I loved it.

The cover and title are initially what drew me to read this novella.
It was very fast paced, quick chapters, very to the point. A bit more description would have been nice because I found myself having a hard time picturing the story as I read.

Thank you NetGalley, and Tor Publishing Group for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

4.25 stars

I really enjoyed this one!
It was short and sweet. The story jumped right in with atmosphere and tension. I enjoyed the character selections the author made. Everyone felt fully developed with such few pages, and the situations our main character found herself in felt authentic.

Speaking of our main character, her fear and confusion were palpable. I enjoyed being in this perspective. The author wasted no words; every observation and thought our MC has is significant. This is my first time with this author, but I would definitely read more from her in the future. My only negative is that I found the ending a bit underwhelming, but that will be subjective.

I would recommend this to fans of books like Come Closer by Sara Gran.

This book keeps you on your toes. It's such a different concept than what I expected, but I enjoyed it.

Simple short read but feels unfinished. You could easily devour this book in one sitting. It is eerie at times but you actually never get many answers about the sister.

Thank you to Tor Nightfire for an e-book copy of this short horror novella. This book publishes on September 3rd, 2024.

SIGH. This book started SO strongly for me. I would rate this book 5 stars for the first 75% of it, and then 1 star for the last 25% of it. With that being said, I'll give it a solid 3 stars, but I'm not sure I would recommend this. This book is translated from Icelandic to English. Really really short chapters keep you fully engaged.

This book is about Iðunn, a woman who is having a lot of health issues, mainly fatigue, exhaustion, and overall soreness. She eventually invests in a smartwatch after all her friends (and stupid male doctors) tell her to "Just get some exercise! :D". Iðunn accidentally falls asleep with her smartwatch on and the next day is extremely shocked and confused by the pedometer reading - she got 40,000 steps last night after midnight???!!! OOOOO was this CREEPTASTIC to me! I freaking loved the setup of this novella. But even though this is a novella, I still thought it could do SO SO much more. The ending wasn't just ambiguous - it was abrupt. I found that really disappointing. Also, the slaughter of cats was also disappointing and did nothing to progress the story. It was just sad.

This is a fast paced book, about Iðunn an Icelander, who keeps waking up feeling more tired than when she went to bed and in pain, she visits several Dr's and has blood tests, but nothing is showing up as the cause to all this.

Iðunn tries everything she can think of sleeping pills, more exercise, eating well, everything her friends and family suggest, nothing works, so she buys a smart watch (step-counting) which reveals she's walked 40,000 steps while she was sleeping, Iðunn naturally assumes that the watch is faulty, but it keeps happening.

What is she doing in her sleep, from here the story escalates....

I loved this book, it is short at only 208 pages, but brilliantly written, with short snappy chapters that keep the story moving along at a great pace, unfolding the mystery in a wonderfully horrific way.

If you enjoy mysteries and horrors then this is a great combination of the two.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC.

An intriguing descent into the shadow self as the main character loses autonomy and control of her body in her sleep as another entity takes control.

The night guest

Iðunn can’t sleep. Well, she can, but it’s not restful and she goes to a doctor to help with her restlessness and fatigue. But what is happening to her when she sleeps? The fact that she wakes up with scrapes and bruises makes her not want to sleep. The fact that she is still just so tired and restless is enough to push her over the edge. Iðunn has lost her sister. To suicide? Murder? Honestly, we don’t ever get a true, clear answer. But Iðunn keeps mentioning HER. Nothing feels right in her life. Nothing. Work, the neighborhood cats, her sleep patterns. All of these areas just feel off. And that’s what it felt like reading The Night Guest. Everything just felt OFF. It was like a horror laced fever dream and I loved every single bit of it. The pacing was perfect. The way the author is able to describe Iðunn through her inner monologue and outer relationships. Iðunn is obviously struggling with so much from her past. The whole novella to me felt very ambiguous. Like you could pick what you *think* it means. I love books like that.

5 ⭐️ the writing and story were superb, the translation was fantastic. Very creepy and worth going in blind (if you can).

TW for animal abuse/death

I had the opportunity to read The Night Guest, by Hildur Knútsdóttir, which will be released on September 3, 2024.

Thank you NetGalley and Tor Publishing for the chance to read this one early.

**Major Trigger Warning for animal:cat cruelty and death**

This is a fast paced novella that took me about 1.5 hours to read. While I wish I would have had a heads up about the cruelty to cats, I was intrigued by the read and unable to put it down.

It was easy to empathize with our main character who is seeking help for her chronic fatigue. We see first hand how difficult it is to receive treatment when all tests come back “normal” and your symptoms are considered psychosomatic.

lounn, our FMC, continues to wake up fatigued each morning. However, things begin to escalate when she begins to wake up with injuries that get worse and worse. This is an ultra bizarre read and I don’t want to reveal too much as the story is short.

Please be warned that this story could definitely be considered disturbing and there’s no shame in not reading if it will affect your mental health!

Iðunn's character was a bit frustrating, but realistic enough. I was annoyed that she didn’t want to even try to tell anyone remotely what was happening, and the book’s reasoning boiled down to, “What if they don’t believe me?” That’s all well and good and a reasonable enough fear, but Idunn doesn’t come remotely close to telling anyone, only having passing thoughts about it that she shoves away without fanfare. This is part of her personality, and maybe emphasizes the ways her experience in this novel is largely psychological, but the story could have benefitted from a bit of the tension coming from actual disbelief (or even solutions that go awry or are ignored altogether). Instead, Iðunn doesn’t offer any details about her troubles at all to any character in the book.
Maybe this avoidance and the isolation she obtains by pushing everyone she knows away (or, the situation wholly consuming her) is part of what led to the ending Iðunn faced in this novel. Perhaps different motivations and actions on Idunn’s part would have led to something entirely different, but it just wasn’t in Iðunn’s character to share her vulnerabilities. Instead, it was in her character to try to solve her problems herself, even when she knew she couldn’t stop whatever took her body over during her sleep. The result of her confusion and fear is a chilling ending where Iðunn must come face-to-face with every action she’s taken, asleep and awake, in the past months while her life slipped away from underneath her.
Because the novel is so short, I found myself wanting more from the characters and story itself. It could’ve done with more narration and motivation behind the characters. However, it’s a good, quick horror read even considering the lack of detail, and I didn't want to put it down until it the story was finished.

“I wake up with blood on my right knee. The blood is clotted and brown and it is not mine.” 🍷💤

Rating: 3/5 ⭐️
Review: An interesting horror novella on sleepwalking. Automatically if you love cats, do not read this one; huge cruelty towards them. The concept and writing style was so unique and captivating, up until the last few chapters. I finished it in one sitting because I just had to know what was going to happen, the less you know the better before going into this one!

Thank you to the author and netgalley for the ARC 💕

Put your thinking cap on for this one, The Night Guest is an effectively told psychological horror novella that is easy to consume with its concise language and short chapters (many used brilliantly to intentionally setting up tension and dread), but also trust its readers to pick up clues along the way to decode its ambiguous ending.

I'll confess when I first got to the end, I was very confused by its out of left field strangeness. It was not until digging through other reviews and comments where I started to piece together the author's intent, and how the more nuanced, layered interpretation could be constructed via the various incidents, mentions happening prior to that point.

I love puzzle games, and The Night Guest was a refreshing reminder how passive I might have become this season, expecting stories to explain themselves to me in the end. Very excited to re-read this again now knowing how the pieces fall together! vibe-wise this reminds me greatly of Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.

A huge thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the eARC!

Sleepless night, forgotten memories, and an unknown illness. The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir taps into the deepest horrors of the subconscious during those precious hours of unawareness, sleep. Despite many trips to the doctor and leading a fairly healthy life, Iðunn is at a loss for what is causing her intense fatigue. That is until a pedometer reveals her nights are spent in motion, moving in a direction she cannot know. Combating this mobility proves to be detrimental, resulting in a downward spiral that is wrapped in suspense and darkness for Iðunn.

Horrors surrounding sleep are some of the most primal, relatable terrors imaginable. This has been explored through sleep paralysis, nightmares, and now the phenomena of sleepwalking. The premise of this story in and of itself is frightening before the details are made real. The loss of autonomy associated with sleepwalking, a journey that is made with the sole party wholly unaware, is incredibly unnerving. There’s a certain horror that thrives in the loss of control which is something that Knútsdóttir utilizes expertly.

While horrors surrounding sleep aren’t a new facet of horror, The Night Guest does explore this propulsive sense of suspense and mystery quite well. Iðunn’s mysterious illness eventually spins out into something much larger, much more personal for her. This is only compounded by the increasing atmosphere of dread created by Iðunn’s multiple unsuccessful attempts at seeking help from a medical professional. Women in particular know this dismissal, the feeling of knowing there’s a possibility that no cure exists, or that no one is listening. It’s dark material that expands into a volatile atmosphere of isolation with feelings of desperation and mistrust running awry.

The Night Guest is a story that capitalizes on the most primal aspects of the human experience. The need for rest, the possibility of insanity, and the looming question mark of your own actions combine to form a tale of immense mistrust and bleak dread. Hildur Knútsdóttir pens a propulsive, dark story following Iðunn that utilizes the characteristics that work best in the realm of sleep related terrors. It may just keep you up at night.