I’m little late to the game reading this book, but it was definitely worth the read. The dual timeline keep the past and present run well together. The plot of the story was what pulled me in more and more as I read.

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten is a haunting and suspenseful thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Alice Lindstedt, a documentary filmmaker, has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, known as “The Lost Village,” since her childhood. Her grandmother's entire family disappeared in 1959, and the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left have plagued her ever since.

Alice and her small crew set up camp in the remote village to make a film about what really happened, but soon they begin to experience strange and terrifying occurrences. As equipment is destroyed, and people go missing, Alice realizes they are not alone, and something sinister is happening in the Lost Village.

The author expertly weaves the past and present timelines to build a gripping and suspenseful narrative that keeps the reader guessing until the very end. The characters are well-developed and their fears and doubts feel real, adding to the tension of the story.

The Lost Village is a chilling and atmospheric thriller that will appeal to fans of mysteries, ghost stories, and horror. The author has created a vivid and eerie setting that will haunt readers long after they finish the book.

I loved this book! It's moody and atmospheric and creepy and thrilling. First off, the premise drew me in. A lost village with an attached mystery? Yes, please! If you like your thrillers with a tinge of the supernatural, you need to read this book!

A town where all the villagers have mysteriously went missing and years later a new crew comes in to do a documentary on the town and what really happened to everyone in the town dubbed as “the Lost Village.” ⁣
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The summary of The Lost Village alone had me extremely interested in this novel and it reminded me a lot of the show and podcast of Limetown. When it comes to mysterious disappearances either true or fiction they completely fascinate me!⁣
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The Lost Village did not at all disappoint this novel is a truly creepy eerie read that you must add to your TBR. I loved getting to know all the characters, and I loved the spooky vibes that was created from the village itself.⁣
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I literally binged read this because I just had to know what happened to everyone and the ending truly shocked me. Overall read this because you will definitely enjoy it!

Extremely spooky, and I love books about documentaries gone wrong. I couldn't put this one down, and I loved the alternating timelines. Thanks to Netgalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.

I appreciate the publisher allowing me to read this book. I really enjoyed this book the characters were interesting and the book was hard to put down. I highly recommend

Something truly terrible happened to the villagers of Silvertjarn in 1959. Over nine hundred citizens vanished without a trace leaving behind only two, a girl brutally murdered in the town square and a newborn baby left to fend for itself in the school's nurses office. Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt's relatives were among the missing and she is determined to solve the mystery of what happened there. Having her grandmother's letters to her sister and mother who both vanished all those decades ago to guide her, Alice pulls together a team to go to the abandoned town to research content for their film. But once they arrive they soon realize that someone...something...or maybe the village itself doesn't want them there. Accidents start to plague the crew. Equipment is destroyed. People start to disappear. As fear and suspicion creeps over the group they soon begin to question if they are truly alone in Silvertjarn or if the dangers that plagued the village never really left. I have to be honest, I am not a fan of horror books, movies, whatever. The fact that this is plugged for fans of "Blair Witch" should have been my first indication to run but I kept on. "The Lost Village" was really such a page-turner...until the end. The is it/isn't it paranormal vibes just didn't quite hit the mark for me but the mystery aspect of it had me gripped. I love podcasts and documentaries so I could see this having a real market to get optioned into a series or movie at some point. Thriller/horror/mystery fans should give this one a try. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I had so much hope for this story. The synopsis did not hold up to the actual story presented in this book.

Wow, this one was such a creepy read and I loved every moment about it. The pacing was slow, really letting you get the know the characters both past and present and really settle in to the unsettling atmosphere. I love a good read about a creepy abandoned town and this totally did not go the direction that I expected it to. Highly recommend!

A great read by this author. I definitely recommend checking this one out!
Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martins Press for allowing me to read this book in exchange for my honest review. What a creepy and chilling story. I couldn't put it down, had to know more! I can't wait to read more books by this author. Keep the creepy stories coming!

This had such a strong premise and start that it made up for the ending, which felt like it was wrapping up too many ends to make sense. Fantastic worldbuilding, though.

4.5/5!

The Lost Village is my second read from Camilla Sten and I can easily say she’s officially on my auto-buy list. Sten has a great knack for building atmospheric stories filled with dread and unease. It’s clear early on that there is something wrong with the village that Alice and her film crew have set up camp in. Instead of being a straightforward answer on what is causing that feeling of unease, Sten sends the reader, along with her characters, on a series of suspicious conclusions until an epic reveal. I loved how methodical and precise this unraveling felt.

While this book might be about a crew making a documentary, it actually felt like a found footage style horror movie. I was on my seat,nervous, and even jumpy right along with the crew throughout the entire story. Adding another layer of depth, Sten also provides a past timeline narrative that gives readers a first hand account of what truly happened in the village. I loved the way everything connected and wrapped up at the end of the story. Truly a chilling piece of psychological suspense!

A huge thank you to Minotaur Books for my gifted copy!

3 stars for now. I’ll update my review once I finish reading.
I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review

Author Camilla is a Force. Her storytelling chops, in this her debut novel!, are truly impressive. Usually split timelines, here denoted by labeling chapters "Now" and "Then", give me pause. It so seldom adds impetus to the natural pace of the story. In Author Sten's case she overcame this. By itself that merits praise...but to use it, as here, in setting a perceptual "trap" for her readers, is extraordinarily tough to pull off.

The framing device that threatened, at first, to derail my enjoyment of the story was also the biggest surprise to me: A long stretch of "Now" spent reading letters discovered in the Lost Village. While that by itself isn't bad, so very often it is a deus ex machina and so feels like a cheat to me. I re-read parts of the section to see if I could find the seams but I couldn't...I kept running across images I lingered over (eg doubts creeping up on a character like "stinging little devils") and action I wanted to follow right now. That's good horror writing...good writing, period.

Much of the seemingly inevitable comparison-to-known-things marketing has borne down hard on <I>Midsommar</i>, a stunningly beautiful folk-horror film whose story is stretched to the point of snapping in order to make its beautiful scenes...seriously, go look at it, the stills should be sold as art!...work. Also harked back to is <I>The Blair Witch Project</i>, whose shakycam found-footage horror story was, to put it mildly, a farrago but whose fascinating editing (predictable and pedestrian aren't necessarily ineffective in horror storytelling) has deeply influenced the entire field of visual horror storytelling. This comparison is, to me, fair and reasonable; the Midsommar one is a stretch and honestly a disservice to the story here told.

This is folk horror as only a Swede setting her story in Sweden would, possibly could, produce. But it's much, much more unnerving to me, more frightening, than Midsommar because this story is about the intersection of mental illness and religious fanaticism that is its own form of mental illness...but grounded in a solid, meaningful, and thoughtful take-down of capitalism and patriarchy.
<blockquote>We perceive women suffering from mental illness with a sort of paradoxical double-sidedness; both victims and monsters, simultaneously infantilized and feared. A certain level of dysfunction is accepted—after all, women who are suffering mild depression and starving themselves aren’t going to leave their husbands or start revolutions, which is very practical indeed.
–and–
We view a depressed upper-class woman from a stable family background dealing with depression as “having the blues,” while the homeless woman on the street corner battling auditory hallucinations is a thing to be feared, a threatening monster. Not a person in need of help. Not someone with thoughts, dreams, fears, and needs of their own. Not a fully formed human being with agency and identity, suffering from an illness and doing their best to function as well as they can.</blockquote>
Author Sten is singin' my song; Translator Fleming is wrapping it in stylish English.

Several friends of mine who read and reviewed the book, all of them women, weren't impressed with the author's feminist take as presented, and to a woman they were dismissive of the "folk horror" trappings the US publisher wrapped around the story. In that latter I hesitantly join them, but as a man I felt the feminist, or more accurately anti-patriarchal, views the author quite clearly espouses by way of contrast to the "Then" action and more clearly espouses in the "Now" if via a dark means, rang me like a bell.

Permaybehaps I'm settling, in the sense that it might not be as clear to the women because it's not enough of a feminist standpoint. I can't say; I can say that, to me, this read bound together creepy, scary real-life threats and challenges with a social and political slant I am in sympathy with. You should give Author Camilla Sten a shot, see what you think.

Wow..."relentlessly creepy" is a perfect way to describe this book. Secrets, secrets and more secrets made for a fascinating read that will stay with me for awhile!!!

The Lost Village Camilla Sten
This book isn't for me, not grabbing my attention unfortunately, I might come back to it later.

I did not have a good time with this one.
This was a slow burn. Very slow. Almost glacial.
The characters are hard to root for as none of them are particularly pleasant or dynamic.
The setting was good. There was lots of creepy atmosphere. The remote and abandoned nature of this town worked really well. I also enjoyed the lore of it. The backstory of how this town was slowly taken over and why everyone went missing was a very interesting story. So interesting that I kept being disappointed when I was sent back to the present to the film crew.
The "horror" in the present seemed to mostly revolve around walking up different staircases that were rickety. I'm not kidding. This happened like 12 times. What's scarier than failing infrastructure, am I right?

I loved this book! I loved the cult aspect and the switching timelines was really interesting. I loved how everything tied together in the end!

This was a great book! I found it to be creepy and eerie. I'm a really big fan of Midsommar and this book totally gave the same vibes.

I wasn't a big fan of the ending but the overall story was good and the ominous town kept me running through my house avoiding the dark for a few days, lol!