Camilla Sten

The Resting Place is Camilla Sten's brilliantly chilling follow-up to this winter's buzziest debut thriller, The Lost Village...

The Resting Place

Geoffrey Froggatt

Ever since the episode of Hannibal featuring the character of Georgia Madchen, a woman who had prosopagnosia (also known as face blindness), I have been intrigued by the cognitive disorder and wanted to follow a story featuring a protagonist who experiences this condition. This book caught my attention when I learned that the protagonist has prosopagnosia and the story itself is within the thriller genre. When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer, a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this, or if they’d be back, overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality. Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house, a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years. I loved the initial premise, but it took me awhile to realize that we were alternating back and forth from past to present, switching from a maid named Annushka’s diary from 1965 to the present day narration of Eleanor. It took me a few chapters before I understood that Victoria and Eleanor are the same person. I really enjoyed this story, though I did find it a bit confusing until I finally sorted out the characters. There is Vivianne, Veronika, Vendela and Victoria (who wants to be called Eleanor.) Yeah, that’s a lot of “V”s to keep track of, and it can be hard to keep track of who is who until you sort it out. Vivianne is the grandmother, Vendala and Veronika are her daughters and Victoria (Eleanor) is the daughter of Vendala. Vendala died before the current story takes place and Eleanor was mainly raised by her grandmother, Vivianne. I think that this book’s translator does a decent job at translating the original Swedish novel into English, and I think that the mysterious atmosphere is retained. The pacing slowed down the deeper we got into the story, which I didn’t like. I lost interest in the diary entries and Annushka’s perspective, it also felt a little convoluted. I was disappointed with how the concept of prosopagnosia was utilized in this story. It was an interesting concept, but Eleanor could have easily just briefly seen the killer’s silhouette in the dark as they escaped, and this novel would have been the same. I wish that the face blindness had been explored more deeply or been utilized more effectively as that was the main thing that attracted me to this book and this story. The ending reveal unfortunately fell flat for me, but only because I realized I hadn’t been paying attention to big parts of the book. The ending felt unnecessarily complicated and convoluted. It just didn’t come together for me in a satisfying way. Despite how much this book didn’t work for me, I still recommend this book for fans of thrillers about dark family histories.

Cheri McElroy

Vivianne wasn’t always kind. She wasn’t even a good mother. But Eleanor didn’t want her to die. Especially in such a brutal way.

Now she finds out Vivianne has left her property that Eleanor knew nothing about. As Eleanor goes to this remote home, secrets emerge and strange things happen -while a blizzard rages on.

This was a very atmospheric book. I didn’t know who the killer was, loved the dual timelines, and felt tense while listening. The narration was fantastic. Definitely check this one out!

Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC of the audiobook.

Nash

The beginning of this story seemed simple enough. Eleanor got a house, which she knew nothing about, from her grandmother's will. She is suffering from prosopagnosia and of course needs specific pointers to know who she's talking with. Everyone in her family has a secret and a dark past. Okay, we’re are doing good so far… 

As soon as they crossed the threshold, it was like opening a pandora's box. Secrets and lies left and right started pouring out. Nothing was what it seemed. She didn’t know who to trust. The person she trusted the most, started insinuating that everything might be happening in her head, because of course there might be something wrong with her. 

Eleanor is on the hunt. She is on the hunt for the truth. She has a lot of questions and the answers might be kidding inside the house. 

This book kept me on my toes. It was absolutely chilling. The backstory of the family was unbelievably interesting and I felt like I couldn’t trust anyone the whole time. The back and forth between the timelines were so important. It gave a new perspective and made you doubt everything about the present. You can tell that there is definitely something wrong with everyone from the beginning. The spine-tingling sensation of “I’m not alone in here” is present the whole time giving you ghostly vibes, and I’m here for them. 

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press; Minotaur Books, for providing an early copy of this brilliant story.

Caroline Clutterbuck Kapulkin

A quick, half-thriller, half-epistolary mystery. I liked the audiobook & tore through it in the past couple days, but I didn’t feel very connected to the story.

The Resting Place is not a gothic novel, as some of the reviews mentioned. This is a house with secrets, but I felt there wasn’t enough unusual stirrings to qualify as a haunted house book. (Overall, seeing the “gothic” comparison made me long for Mexican Gothic again!)

I feel the book could have been shorter — I had figured out most of the mystery 60% thru — it’s fun to see things coming, but the pacing lagged a bit as I waited for the characters to catch up with my hunches.
That being said, the last twist at the end did surprise me. Everything is tied up nicely and I appreciated that.

The characters were well-built for this quick mystery novel, but I didn’t feel much for any of them. I’m curious to read other books by this author, so one of her other works may be more to my tastes!

danielle bush

Camilla Sten is quickly becoming one of my favorite authors! 
The Resting Place is a story about deep.. dark.. family secrets. We follow 2 characters, in the present we follow Eleanor who after her grandmother Vivianne is murdered her and her aunt inherit the family mansion.. One she had no idea even existed. The other perspective is Anushka.. a maid living and working for Vivianne when she was a young woman.. 
This book was spooky and soo atmospheric..Full of twists and turns, some I saw coming and some were complete surprises,, It takes place in a mansion in the middle of nowhere in winter.. and of course while our characters are exporing a huge blizzard blows in... So when things go missing, the groundkeeper is nowhere to be found, and Eleanor has the feeling that she is being watched.. there is nowhere to go.. They are completly snowed in.. When Eleanor finds the diary of Anushka she begins to unravel the story of her families past.. and what a past it is.. 
I read this book in one sitting, and I can't wait to see what Camilla Sten comes out with next

The Resting Place

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