Alice Lindstendt returns to the small village where her grandmother was born to film a documentary about how, in 1959, the entire village disappeared without a trace. Shortly after her and a small crew get to the remote location, strange things start happening. It appears that someone or something doesn’t want them to find the answers they seek. This book had exactly the spooky atmosphere that I was looking for at the time. I enjoyed the writing and felt that the plot was perfectly paced. I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to Minotaur and NetGalley for my early copy of The Lost Village.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ Lots on intriguing aspects to this book but none of them fully realized. I enjoyed the Blair Witch but this was nothing like that. I suspected that this was going to be a great fast read but it was hard to get through.

After hearing that "The Lost Village" was the love child of "The Blair Witch Project" and "Midsommar", I instantly was in the mood for some spookiness and couldn't wait to dive into this new to me author novel.

Did it live up to my expectations? No. A lot of things can go wrong with a novel such as the beginning of the story—if it’s too slow and a whole lot of nothing is happening (which was the case here), I will zone out and find myself browsing for another book to cure my boredom. The second—the characters. Those two can make or break a novel for me, especially if it’s a thriller or mystery series. The characters weren’t anything to rave about. The petty bickering and the relationships between the characters were confusing and all in all, didn’t make sense. Overall, “The Lost Village” reminded me of a B-rated horror flick that no one wants to see (or read in this case).

Full review to come on Instagram and Amazon. Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for a review copy.

I enjoyed this book, the plot was suspenseful but I felt like not much happened in the first half of the book. At times it was a bit predictable. The ending was good and answered a lot of the questions I had about what had happened. I disliked Alice, the protagonist, because it felt as though she had caused a lot of the troubles for the group. Overall it was a decent read.

I have tried to go back and read this book three times now, long after it’s release but I decided to stop altogether unfortunately.
I can’t really say what made me do that and I’m rarely dnf books but I just couldn’t get into this story at all.
Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy

THE LOST VILLAGE is a horror and thriller fan's dream! Having documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt investigate the disappearance of an entire village sets the stage for something wicked to enter into the story. Sten brilliantly ups the scare factor while still developing a solid plot through her fabulously tense and addictive writing style. This book is sooooo good. I cannot wait for more from the author.

This book interested me for its Blair Witch Project meets the lost colony of Roanoke premise. While it does deliver some atmospheric, creepy moments, overall The Lost Village fell a little short for me. Firstly, Sten relies heavily on telling vs. showing to develop characters and plot. Secondly, the "Then" portions are written in a really heavy-handed way without leaving much for the reader to intuit or weaving much of a mystery. Thirdly, the dialogue is lackluster and the sentence structure itself is very stunted. The whole book has a stilted, disjointed feel. I recognize that some of this could be attributed to translation, but character development is very thin, and the 'Now" narrator, Alice - despite all her internal musing - comes across as shallow and uninspired. That she's attempting to make a film isn't believable. I typically enjoy books with shifting timelines and varying points of view, but the 'Now' and 'Then' chapter headers themselves were even nondescript yet somehow distracting in their generic-ness, adding to the abrupt transitions and feeling throughout that something was just missing here - and it wasn't just the village inhabitants.

So this was a SUPER fun read. I loved the creepy atmosphere and the question aid who or what was creeping around. This was absolutely a great creepy thriller!

This was an amazing horror and paranormal story, so much suspense and a lot of good details that makes the book more interesting. Overall was a good story, but to me something was missing I don’t know what but it didn’t fulfill all my expectations.

A documentary film crew goes to investigate a tiny mining village that has been abandoned for sixty years. Why was the village abandoned? No one knows. One day over nine hundred residents simply disappeared, leaving behind houses full of furniture, clothing, and food. The streets stood empty save for the broken body of a woman tied to a wooden post, stoned to death. Only one living soul remained in the village - a days old baby found crying in the nurse's office of the school.

Hoping to find answers, Alice and her crew drive out to the town - miles away from any other sign of civilization, and begin to make their way through the ghostly buildings. But something - or someone - else seems to be there with them, and quickly all order turns to chaos as the five crew members face the evil within and without.

This book is a slow but steady tale of quiet horror, with crumbling buildings, disembodied footsteps, the tension of old wounds between the characters, silhouettes in the rain, giggles and moaning songs echoing through the emptiness. The tension and fear builds up like a humming in the ears as you read, as the strange occurrences of the present day warp and merge with the even stranger mystery of what happened to all those people sixty years ago. A closed down mine, a town full of desperate people, a handsome preacher come to save them all, a mentally challenged woman abused and murdered in the name of cleansing the town of evil.... what exactly happened then, and why is it affecting the filmmakers today?

I loved this book. Isolation and fear, grief and doubt weep off the pages. The story will leave you with discomfort in your gut and ice water in your veins.

I received this as an ARC from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

There are many books that I do not really like, and most of the time when I do not like a book, I usually just say it did not work for me and keep moving. There are so many great books out there that need reviewing that I don’t waste much time reviewing books I do not enjoy. Having said that, there is something about The Lost Village that really makes me angry enough to vocalize my frustrations. I will be spoiling some of this book, which is also something I never do, but I will be putting a warning before this section.

I usually find the good in everything I read. In The Lost Village, I really was attracted to the story. Five people are going to a mining village where everyone disappeared sixty years earlier. The mystery of that set up with the horrors that are likely to come to the five new visitors is very appealing. I was very excited to read this. When I got into the story, the writing was clunky but okay. I do not know if it was the authors or the translator who made some of the prose kind of stiff and boring, but it was definitely noticeable that this is a translated work. I was not terribly disappointed in most of the story, but there are elements of it that I have very strong feelings about. It is upsetting that this novel turned out the way it ends. I am one to suspend belief sometimes to make a plot work, but the turns that The Lost Village make are not things that I can overlook.

*Spoilers below*

There are some really dumb things that happen, like the main villian in the end is someone who has been living in the village since it has been empty. For sixty years. The village had lost its mining jobs long before everyone disappeared, so the likelihood that anyone found enough food in that time to sustain herself seems a little far fetched.

It is also far-fetched that the five people who are supposed to be there to film a documentary does not film anything. They take pictures with cameras, not video recorders, that are rented for a short period of time. I do not know how cheap it is to rent equipment, but I do now it would probably be just as expensive to buy a few GoPro cameras and use their smartphones to record video footage. All of their phones end up with dead batteries, but I would think that if the entire project relied on electricity to film, there would be a small generator or something they could bring to charge up their phones.

But these are not my biggest complaints. My biggest complaint is the treatment of Tone, one of the characters who sprains her ankle badly enough to need to take pain killers. To do this, she does not take her antipsychotic meds for a few days. So of course when she wanders off and bad stuff happens to the rest of the group, she is instantly demonized for being the mentally unstable woman off her medication. Not only is this a dangerous stereotype for people who have mental health issues, it is just plain untrue. Tone’s mental health is not so bad that she is going to turn into a raging killer after missing her pills for two days. I don’t think any psychiatric medicine is out of your system that quickly. What we have is characters who perpetuate stereotypes more than awareness, and for this alone The Lost Village is a damaging book.

When a small film crew come to "The Lost Village" a deserted mining town where everyone went missing in 1959. All that was left in the town was a woman stoned to death tied to a pole and a crying newborn in the nurses office at the school. The crew have come for answers in hopes to film their own documentary, shortly after setting up camp though things start happening. People go missing, equipment gets destroyed. It soon becomes clear that perhaps they were never as alone as they once thought.

The spooky vibes in this book were so strong and great! With a small cast of characters you get to know each and everyone of them quickly and the dynamics between them. Of course you do get to know some of the characters better than others as the story is told from Alice's point of view. I also enjoyed the dual time line, so not only are you hearing from the current documentary crew, but also from one of the villagers who lived in the town in the days that led up to everyone disappearing. I think it was the 'then' time line I enjoyed the most.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a spooky vibe book. For those who enjoy a secluded setting, and small cast. It is a great read for the autumn months when things are getting colder and spooky season is all around us. Anyone who likes horror or thrillers (without a lot of revels or twists).

I found this to be an enjoyable read, keeping me on my toes throughout. The storyline was written well and flowed seamlessly. I look forward to reading more by this author!

Creepy and very atmospheric. I knew something was going on, obviously, but couldn't guess WHAT, and the alternation timelines kept me guessing. I didn't see the end coming, and I had to suspend slight disbelief with the way everything was resolved.... that said, it was all in all a pretty good book, and I am grateful to have been afforded the opportunity to read it.

At the start the tone is set that something gruesome has happened and very possibly could happen again. When I heard there was a town where all the people seemingly vanished, I was like "Oh no, here we go again Roanoke!", but thankfully this isn't that story. What this is is a mystery that a modern day film crew is trying to solve in their new documentary. They return to the town for a week to get some preliminary footage to show to the financial backers in order to get more money to make the actual film. There are five of them, some with actual ties to the town and some that are just very good at their jobs and agreed to help on the film. Back in 1959, the people of the town seemingly vanish into thin air, leaving behind a baby and really no other clues as to what happened. Through letters, diaries and research, the film crew starts piecing together some of the events. This is about where I have to stop with the plot so as not to ruin the mystery, but suffice it to say, it's a good one. The back and forth from Now to Then is done well and easy enough to follow which is helpful as there are a lot of characters to keep track of. The atmosphere is successfully creepy in it's ghost town-like nature and the descriptions are such that you get a great idea of how things look, but still have room for imagination. The characters are fairly well fleshed out, you get some background but not a life story which is fine by me, you know enough to know how you feel about them. The only reason I didn't give more stars is because I still have questions that I want answered, but perhaps there is opportunity for a prequel??? I would actually love that!

Unfortunately, this book is a little too creepy for me. After reading the synopsis and then the beginning of this book, I had to call it quits because it was giving me the creeps and I had to turn all of the lights on in the house. I guess I should have read the synopsis in advance, instead of just requesting the book based on the title and the cover. I'm sure this "Blair Witch Project' style book would be someone's cup of tea, but unfortunately it is not mine. Good luck to anyone who reads it!

I loved this book so much! Eery and spooky and kept me guessing until the end. This was my first book by the author and I am definitely looking forward to more of her work!

SO GOOD! I was thoroughly creeped out by this book and had nightmares after one night of reading! I loved the atmosphere of this book and will definitely be recommending!!

2 stars. I had heard this wasn't good, but I still hoped I would love it. People were right, this one was not a good one for me. Full review to come. I mainly had issues with the treatment of mental health and the mixed messaging.