Name: Jule's review of The Tenant by Katrine Engberg
Item: The Tenant
Rating: 4
Author: Jule

Katrine Engberg

An Indie Next Pick An O, The Oprah Magazine Titles to Pick Up Now A People Book Pick A New York Post Best Book of the Week A Parade Most Anticipated Books of Early 2020 A Bustle Most Anticipated Books of January 2020 A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020 A She Reads Most Anticipated Thrillers of 2020 An electrifying work of literary suspense from internationally bestselling author Katrine Engberg, The Tenant—heralded as a “stunning debut” by #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Reichs—follows two Copenhagen police detectives struggling to solve a shocking murder and stop a killer hell-bent on revenge. When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist—and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings. Evocative and original, The Tenant promises “dark family secrets—and a smorgasbord of surprises” (People).

The Tenant

Krokodillevogteren

”Krokodilväktaren” är den första delen i den danska succéförfattaren Katrine Engbergs hyllade Köpenhamnsserie. En oavlåtligt spännande kriminalroman om svek, hämnd och övergivna barn. En tidig morgon hittas en ung kvinna mördad i sin lägenhet. Det blir inledningen på en mardröm för alla i det slitna bostadshuset. Liksom för polisinspektörerna Jeppe Kørner och Anette Werner som får ta sig an fallet. Kvinnan har ett fått ett mönster ristat i ansiktet, och de vill snabbt hitta den skyldige innan vetskapen och paniken sprider sig. Men utredningen går trögt. Ända tills det visar sig att kvinnans hyresvärd håller på att skriva en deckare där mordet finns exakt återgivet. Vem kan ha läst den och låtit en grym fantasi bli verklighet? Översättare: Margareta Järnebrand

Krokodilväktaren

Matthew 

Insekter surrade omkring bland papperskorgens glasspapper och i strandkanten stod en häger och spejade orörlig ner i vattenspegeln. 

Hannah

Jule

3.5 
.
The case was cool but I am over the the self-medicating detective who is sad because his wife left him.

Det polisiära arbetet och dess detaljer i denna bok imponerade mig. 

An Indie Next Pick An O, The Oprah Magazine Titles to Pick Up Now A People Book Pick A New York Post Best Book of the Week A theSkimm Best Book to Read This Winter A BookPage Top Ten Books for February A Parade Most Anticipated Books of Early 2020 A Bustle Most Anticipated Books of January 2020 A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Crime Books of 2020 A She Reads Most Anticipated Thrillers of 2020 An electrifying work of literary suspense from international bestselling author Katrine Engberg, this stunning debut introduces two police detectives struggling to solve a shocking murder and stop a killer hell-bent on revenge. When a young woman is discovered brutally murdered in her own apartment, with an intricate pattern of lines carved into her face, Copenhagen police detectives Jeppe Korner and Anette Werner are assigned to the case. In short order, they establish a link between the victim, Julie Stender, and her landlady, Esther de Laurenti, who’s a bit too fond of drink and the host of raucous dinner parties with her artist friends. Esther also turns out to be a budding novelist—and when Julie turns up as a murder victim in the still-unfinished mystery she’s writing, the link between fiction and real life grows both more urgent and more dangerous. But Esther’s role in this twisted scenario is not quite as clear as it first seems. Is she the culprit—or just another victim, trapped in a twisted game of vengeance? Anette and Jeppe must dig more deeply into the two women’s pasts to discover the identity of the brutal puppet-master pulling the strings in this electrifying literary thriller. Hailed as “inconceivably thrilling” (Fyens Stiftstidende, Denmark), The Tenant is a work of stunning originality that will keep readers on the edge of their seats.

Cheri McElroy

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This addition to the Nordic Noir genre was amazing. It’s part police procedural, part heartbreaking treatise of grief and loss. I can’t wait for the next book.

Kaytlynn Friesen

Boring, predictable & played out. Plus a lot of cliff hangers. The point of views changed all the time and Anettes pov was unnecessary. 

Lauren Attaway

At the start, a young woman is murdered and it feels very typical. I continued along because the acclaim made me expect something special was coming. I went back and forth between the audiobook and ebook from the library, the audiobook is very well read. This book is compellingly written and characters felt fresh, even as the mystery/story did not have my complete interest.

Jessica De Hoyos

Unfortunately this book was a 3 star for me. Not enough plot twists or suspense to keep me wanting more. I only finished to find out who the killer was. So happy to finally be done with this book!!

Kerri McDonald

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher, and the author for sending me a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

You know how everyone has their own, individual reading tastes? How some people love enemies-to-lovers while others despise it? Well, I have an admission to make.

I’m 37 years old and I have no firm grasp on my reading preferences. I mean, I know that I tend to prefer fantasy to contemporary, but, beyond that, I’m honestly still learning my tastes. In a way, this is a good thing because it causes me to pick up books without a previous bias. But then there’s always the possibility that I’ll read something that just doesn’t jive with me because it’s not to my tastes.

I think that’s what happened with The Tenant. It’s a murder mystery, it has detectives and focuses heavily on the process of solving a crime, and I have found that books like that are just… not my thing. This just happened to be the book that fully cemented this fact in my mind. I will say, however, that I don’t think that this was the sole reason that this book didn’t work for me.

The Tenant follows two detectives, Jeppe and Anette, who are assigned to investigate the murder of a young woman at an apartment complex in Copenhagen. During the course of the investigation, they discover that murder mirrors a scene in an unpublished novel that the young woman’s landlord, Esther, is writing. As the investigation unfolds, the twists and turns just get weirder and more melodramatic.

And therein lay one of my issues with this book. It was just so over-the-top at times! And the characters were weirdly self-aware of the drama, too. At one point, one of the characters literally says “Tell me, are we in the middle of some f*cking crime novel, or what?” and I just… cringed. I understand that some drama is necessary or else why would anyone read it? It was just a bit much and it felt like things were piling up without anything being resolved.

My other issue with this book was the fact that the “who” part of “whodunit” was completely obvious as soon as the character was introduced. I’ve guessed the ending of mystery novels before and still managed to enjoy the journey, but that was not the case with this one. The character is introduced, I thought “Welp, it was definitely this person”, and then I spent the rest of the book wishing it would get to the point. I was just so bored and it didn’t help that every. single. character. was completely dull. They were like caricatures of your typical, street-wise detective who is down-on-their-luck. Especially Jeppe. Uggggh, Jeppe! There were several instances where I wrote in my notebook “Get your sh*t together, Jeppe!” and, honestly, he never does.

My last issue with this book was some of the writing. It was just… odd. For instance, our hot-mess detective, Jeppe, has to interview a woman that he finds attractive and, I quote, he “feels a ripple in his scrotum”.

…What?

There’s more instances of this and it completely took me out of the story. Mostly because I had to put my iPad down, find my husband, and tell him about whatever silly line I had just read. There are also a lot of instances of slightly misogynistic writing. For example, Jeppe is texting the woman that made his scrotum ripple and makes the observation that she doesn’t use “emoticons or hard to decode statements” and goes on to observe how “amazingly unwomanlike” he finds it. I mean, perhaps the author is just trying to write an unlikable protagonist, but I did not care for it.

The longer I write this, the more I feel like bumping my rating down…

However, I will say that I did enjoy the plot of the story. Though I didn’t care for the entire execution, there were genuinely good bits of this book that hooked me into the story. Unfortunately, I had to read through all that other stuff to get to them. Still… it was compelling at times and I was surprised by one aspect of the ending. So… there’s that, I guess?

Final thoughts: Though the concept was super interesting, the execution was pretty boring. The characters were flat and the writing was just weird at points. There were good bits near the end, but this definitely cemented the fact that detective novels just aren’t for me.

Cyndi Thompson-Goodchild

Saili

Helen Bright

En tidlig morgen i indre København bevæger folkepensionist Gregers Hermansen sig forsigtigt ned ad bagtrappen med sin skraldepose. Hos underboen står køkkendøren på klem. Det bekymrer Gregers, som kigger diskret ind for at se, om der er noget galt, men snubler og falder ind i lejligheden. Da han kommer til sig selv, opdager han, at han ligger oven på det blodige lig af en ung kvinde.

Det bliver begyndelsen på et mareridt for beboerne i byhuset og for kriminalbetjent Jeppe Kørner og hans kollega Anette Werner. Ikke mindst fordi det snart viser sig, at en anden af husets beboere skriver på en krimi – en krimi, hvor netop en ung kvinde i lejligheden under Gregers er blevet myrdet.

En krokodillevogter er en afrikansk vadefugl, der har fået sit navn, fordi den angiveligt hjælper krokodillen med at fjerne madrester fra tænderne og derfor ikke bliver spist.

Maria Bæk Christensen

Denislava 

Christine W

L'enfant étoile

Yana

Manuel J. Rivera

Helena Pedersen

Davanti al corpo tagliuzzato di Julie, giovane studentessa trovata morta nel suo appartamento, la polizia di Copenaghen non ha risposte: la sola traccia lasciata dall’assassino sembra essere il misterioso disegno, simile a un origami, che la lama di un coltello ha inciso sul viso della ragazza. A guidare le indagini è l’investigatore Jeppe Kørner, affiancato da Anette Werner: lui – con l’aria del classico sbirro separato – in profonda crisi di autostima, lei energica e dirompente, sempre di buonumore. La loro attenzione si concentra sulla padrona di casa, che vive al terzo piano della stessa graziosa palazzina in cui è stato rinvenuto il cadavere, nel centro storico della capitale danese. Docente di letteratura in pensione con la tendenza a organizzare scintillanti cene mondano-artistiche, Esther de Laurenti si rivela infatti essere un’aspirante scrittrice di gialli. E, curiosamente, l’omicidio di cui si legge nel manoscritto al quale sta lavorando ricalca esattamente le modalità con cui è stata uccisa la sua inquilina. Un collegamento tra finzione e realtà troppo clamoroso perché possa essere ignorato. Con la leggerezza e l’ironia che la contraddistinguono, Katrine Engberg è la sorprendente rivelazione del poliziesco scandinavo, di cui rinnova la tradizione con una voce fresca, la ricchezza emotiva e psicologica dei suoi personaggi, i colpi di scena e una profonda sensibilità nel ritrarre gli abissi dell’animo e i destini umani.

Hannah &
The Tenant by Katrine Engberg

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Hannah &
The Tenant by Katrine Engberg