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Plot holes the size of a car (SPOILERS AHEAD)

Revisado: 07-28-22

CW: This book contains at least one graphic depiction of death by suicide and deals poorly with mental health issues in general and also by stigmatizing those who die by suicide

This was the second book I’ve read by this author (the first was The Lost Village) and I was so disappointed in both. Camilla Sten can write an exceptional atmosphere and decent characters. And this story seemed to hold promise where the plot was concerned as well—it had a murder, a summons to an isolated (albeit very Lost-Village-esque) sprawling property with secrets tucked away to be discovered. There were moments of suspense and tension, (SPOILER) flashbacks between the past and present via the discovery by the main character of a diary. But all the ways the plot seemed to be carefully crafted unraveled as Sten began ignoring both her own narrative and basic reality.

(SPOILERS) Cell phones worked until they just didn’t. (Later in the story battery life became an issue but not during crucial moments when Sten just decides the cell phone arbitrarily has no signal.) Characters’ behavior was erratic and nonsensical (also an issue in Lost Village). And during one of the clench points of the plot (SPOILER) some of the characters were trying to urgently escape and all that stood between them and freedom was . . . a car with its door open that was blocking the icy road. I was literally screaming at the book, “THE DOOR IS OPEN, PUT THE DAMN THING IN NEUTRAL AND PUSH!” Sten could have chosen a fallen tree, but she chose one of the easiest obstacles to move in an emergency and it completely flummoxed the characters.

The denouement of the book failed to let us know what happened to two of the significant characters. Also, remember the diary? That useful little discovery that could help clear so many things up if actually shared with anyone else? (SPOILER) The main character never divulges that she found it useful or even bothers to hold onto it. And it quite literally is the key to the entire conflict center of the entire book. But at the end, nope, what diary? Who said anything about a diary? It’s like Sten forgot that she let her main character discover it in the first place.

I so wanted this book to be well constructed. It had the potential. The bones of the story were good. It just needed the author to pay attention to the little details she had written for us and use them to plug in the various plot holes she inexplicably left in order to form a more complete story.

And for god’s sake, a dead car with an open door is not an insurmountable obstacle.

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Ableist Tropes and Little Substance

Revisado: 05-10-22

This book promised a chilling mystery and, with comparisons to Midsommar among the reviews, I expected mental health issues to be part of the story. However, the way the author dealt with the characters, storylines, and “facts” of mental health disorders was stigmatizing, unscientific, and in multiple places completely false.

The mystery of the plot and even the excellent potential for rich development and nuance of the characters is hampered by overt misunderstandings of diagnoses, medications and their prescribed uses and contraindications, and applications of harmful stereotypes in place of supernatural phenomena (which honestly would have been more enjoyable to read given how the author treated the characters).

The story is fine, if derivative and predictable. What could have made the book worth reading was investing actual research into mental health disorders and treatment modalities—if you’re going to include them in your characters, using tropes is not only damaging but also lazy storytelling. The characters were the driving force of this story and none of them were trustworthy or sympathetic because of the author’s ableist biases.

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