Camilla Sten

If you are looking for a chilling gothic-esqe thriller, The Resting Place is for you. Eleanor has face blindness, and when she walks in on Vivianne, her grandmother, being murdered, she cannot remember the murderer's face and has no idea who it could be, possibly even someone she knows. While coping with the trauma, Eleanor discovers that her grandmother has a long held secret - an estate deep in the woods unknown to Eleanor until her passing. Eleanor, her boyfriend, Sebastian, her aunt, Veronika, and a lawyer, Rickard, meet at the estate to settle Vivianne's affairs and soon uncover secrets long buried away much like the property itself.

The story swaps between two perspectives: current day with Eleanor, and late 1960s from the perspective of Anushka, Vivianne's maid.

One of the book's greatest strengths is its strong sense of place at an unsettling estate in Sweden in the middle of winter. The characters get stuck in a blizzard - increasing the anxiety and disorientation of the story. With the combination of the twisting story and the frigid environment, I felt the chill my bones as I read. Each chapter is relatively short, which made me not want to put it down - I had to find out what was next. There were certain aspects I began to guess prior to their reveal, but others came as a shock. Ultimately, the conclusion was unexpected and it wrapped up everything in a way that I felt satisfied.

I much preferred The Resting Place to The Lost Village from last year, I felt like the story wrapped up much better. I enjoy that Camilla Sten brings mental health into her stories and humanizes them. I found this with both of these titles. Additionally, Eleanor having face blindness made me understand the condition a lot more, and has brought me to research it to further my understanding.

In conclusion - if you are looking for a twisting mystery set in a creepy old estate in the dead of winter, definitely pick up this one!

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an eARC of this title!… (more)

The story is creepy and kept me wondering where it would go next. It ended up being slightly different than my expectations but I still really enjoyed it. With its comparison to Midsommar and The Blair Witch Project, I wasn't sure if we were going to go down the supernatural or cult route, and you will just have to read to find out for yourself.

One of the books greatest strengths is how the author frames mental illness and provides different perspectives of mental illness. We also see this through the lens of two different time periods: current day and 1959. There are characters who have suffered severe depression, psychosis, and an unnamed illness which sounds like a form of autism - it is unclear exactly what it is which is why I don't want to diagnose it, the characters within the 1959 storyline also do not have a name for it as they would not have known at the time. It focuses a lot on the perspectives of different people - the perspective and thoughts of the person struggling, those who love and support them even as they struggle to understand how to help, and the outside world or those separated enough from the situation that they lack understanding and often with that, compassion.

The "Now" storyline is told in first person from Alice, who has struggled with severe anxiety and depression in her life, and her inner monologue highlights the guilt, self loathing, doubt, and hopelessness associated with that. It was a great surprise to me how this book tackled these difficult topics without making it "about depression". An unknowing reader may pick up this book looking for a scary thriller, which they definitely will get, but also will hopefully gain an understanding of those affected by mental illness. It is extremely difficult to explain mental illness to those who have not been directly affected and I feel like this book really explored them in a way that is accessible and empathetic.… (more)

"The Resting Place," by Camilla Sten, translated from the Swedish by Alexandra Fleming, is the bleak story of Eleanor who, after her mother's death, is raised by her harsh grandmother, Vivianne Fälth. Eleanor suffers from prosopagnosia or "face blindness." She is unable to recognize an individual by observing his or her features. Therefore, she distinguishes one person from another by taking note of their hair style, clothing, eye color, and scent. One Sunday, when Eleanor arrives at Vivianne's house for dinner, she finds her grandmother on the floor with her throat slashed.

Sten moves back and forth in time between the present and the mid-1960s to tell this complex tale of family dysfunction, mental illness, murder, and a sordid past filled with secrets and lies. After her grandmother's passing, Eleanor and her boyfriend, Sebastian, visits Solhöga, a spooky manor house north of Stockholm that Vivanne had inherited from her late husband. Eleanor, her Aunt Veronika, and a probate lawyer named Rickard Snäll are there to take an inventory of the property.

When the significance of the flashbacks is revealed, the resolution is mind-boggling. In addition, the author trots out a well-worn thriller trope: a fierce blizzard cuts out phone service in Solhöga, so Eleanor, Sebastian, Veronika, and Rickard are at the mercy of a homicidal maniac. The gloomy plot makes little sense, and the characters are too superficial to earn our sympathy. In this grim tale, heinous sins committed decades earlier come back to haunt everyone involved.
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