This book was super weird, yet awesome. Nothing is what it seems, which is what I loved the most about it. I definitely recommend that you read this one in the daytime because it is just that spooky. Overall, a wonderful read that left me with goosebumps.

THE LOST VILLAGE
By: Camilla Sten
Available where books are sold!

Ever wish you could escape the heat of the summer? Next time try it with a book. One summer day in 2018, I had an out-of-this-world experience reading THE DEATH OF MRS WESTAWAY by Ruth Ware all on one gloomy afternoon. I would say one sitting, but the magic that day was that it took all day. And all day, as the California sky loomed on, I explored the dark corners of gothic fiction. I will never forget that experience.

I picked up THE LOST VILLAGE in curiosity as I had certain feelings about it when I read a sampler back in October 2020. I thought the storyline was fascinating but felt the Blair Witch vibes it was trying to elicit were not very “spooky,” Gothic yes, mysterious, yes. Scary, chilly air when it's warm outside, fingerprints in the fogged-up mirror, Midsommar, lost-in-the-forest-vibes, that’s a big NO!

So, how does the entire book compare to the sample, or shall I say the first 20 pages?

About the same….

I think it’s about a 3.5 rounded down to 3 Stars. It was fair and “moody.” Which may have been my biggest problem with it. At times I felt it lost focus, and any vibe it had going on snapped. Like someone letting the cool air in the room. It feels good but totally kills the vibe.

It is hard to keep that tenuous feeling of atmosphere. Too many descriptions can slow the plot to a crawl. Too many characters and red herrings, pov’s, and multiple storylines can send energy askew. You, as the reader, are focused on one character, wrapped up in their story, and immediately you’re with someone else, possibly somewhere else, some other time, some other story, and at times the plots are not interceding. If you make me wait too long for that intersection to happen ill lose interest. Which is what I think happened here for me. The mood must stay the same.

3 stars

Thanks to @netgalley and Minotaur Books for this gifted copy, many months ago!

I tried to finish this but it was just not my thing. The beginning didn't catch my interest which is a deal breaker. So sorry

In 1959, the people of the mining village Silvertjärn in Sweden disappeared without a trace. Alice is a documentary filmmaker and set on finding out the truth about what happened to her grandmother´s family. Together with her team, she will spend five days in Silvertjärn. Shortly after their arrival, strange things starts to happen. And soon they are stuck, and people starts dying …

Swedish Camilla Sten have written a thriller slash horror that gets really intense. The plot is strong and the mystery intriguing. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and she has created a creepy vibe that pervades the story. Readers who love Yrsa Sigurdardôttir may put this one on their radar. The beginning is a bit slow, though, but when I came to the last part of the book I raced through it. If you love horror movies like «The Blair Witch Project», this might be something for you. The story is told in a double timeline, gradually we get to know the people who used to live in Silvertjärn, whilst the documentary team are getting to know the village themselves.

Speaking of horror: one of the drawbacks of this genre can be the lack of depth and development of the characters. Alice felt anonymous to me, and I also had a hard time getting a grip on the other characters. Elsa in the past was the character that felt most alive.

The main theme is how we fight our inner and outer demons. The book is also about finding the courage to stand up for oneself and others, and serves as a warning for what may happen if we fail to think independently and just go with the flow. The ending was satisfactory, but I did not find everything believable. Even though I have some small reservations towards this book, I will definitely pick up the author´s next novel.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this arc.

I was excited to be approved for this book. I’ve heard so many things about it, and it was something I was really looking forward to reading. However, even at 10% in the book, I was already confused, and a little bored. The writer does try to put you right in the middle of Silvertjarn, a village in Sweden, but it’s so descriptive that it started getting confusing and just overwhelming. I did not relate to any of the characters. In fact, they annoyed me. This book was something that I did not enjoy, I’m sad to say.

Very Blair Witch vibes and I’m here for it! I loved every single second of this ghost story. I can’t wait to read more from this author as I devoured this masterpiece.

I was immediately intrigued by this book given the summary and the cover. I love the idea of a relatively amateur documentary film maker setting off to create her dream film, and I enjoyed seeing her passion for the project. The book was incredibly atmospheric, and the lead up - while a slow burn - kept me interested to see how the project panned out. While the story took a few turns that I enjoyed in part, and found a bit beyond belief, I appreciated the way the pieces were revealed - almost as if I were watching a film, catching brief glimpses that can only be appreciated collectively over the course of the story. I loved the dual narratives - seeing the past revealed slowly through letters - and the family connection between the past and present. While the ending was a little unexpected to me, and the characters are not ones I felt too invested in, this was an enjoyable read for sure.

A mix of horror and thriller, a creepy atmosphere and a gripping plot.
This is an interesting debut and a very good book.
It somehow reminded me of Blair Witch Project and I liked the dual timeline.
The storytelling is good and the characters are fleshed out.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This was a different kind of story for me! You have the past,you have the future. Camilla Sten did a great job in doing this with the story she tells,I was able to follow and not get confused on the year of the characters that are in this story.. It has a little bit of everything and anything that you would want in any kind of story.. I just wanted to know more about The past and had to stop and figure out some things that tied to the now but I did!! You will enjoy this book just as much as I did,it's a different kind of story I'm used to reading but I'm glad I stepped out of my safe zone for this one !! Received from Net Gallery!

I’m grumpy because one of my most anticipated reads this year fell way short.

The Lost Village is told in two timelines: 1959 and now. We remain mostly in the present timeline, with occasional flashbacks to the past that lead us to the moment when the entire town disappeared.

I wish the book had been solely about the group of people in 1959. Their story fascinated me. The present timeline, not so much.

From the beginning, we have a vague ominous undercurrent. We know something isn’t right. Something bad is going to happen. Yet, nothing happens, bad or otherwise, for the longest time. All we have are a group of people who dislike each other and behave like they’re in a bad B-rated horror movie.

The pace picks up around the halfway point, and the final third of the book is where everything happens. Unfortunately, the things that happen are… Well, no spoilers here, so I’ll just say I couldn’t roll with it.

The conclusion—when we find out what happened to the people who lived in the town and who’s responsible for the current chaos—made me roll my eyes so hard they hurt.

And can I just mention the excessive nodding in this book? Everyone nods, at everything, all the time. 94 times! (Yes, I counted.) Drove me crazy. I hope some of the Bobblehead movements were edited out of the final copy.

Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. Now a budding documentary filmmaker, she has gathered a small crew of friends to make a film about what really happened. But after they set up camp, things start disappearing and Alice realizes that they are not alone.

I am a very big fan of books within the mystery/thriller genre, but this book was on a new level of creepy -- and I loved it! It certainly had some Blair Witch vibes, and I could not put it down! A fantastic read for 2021.

It was soo good UNTIL the supernatural stuff was happening. So freaking good and twisty and dark and fun until the supernatural explanations were coming in.

The last half of the book was such a disappointment and I really wanted it to be good.

Alice Lindstedt is a filmmaker who has decided to do a documentary on the residents of an old mining town known as “The Lost Village” who all vanished. In 1959, her grandmother’s family all disappeared there in a mysterious tragedy. The only people left were a woman stoned to death and an abandoned newborn baby. Alice gathers a small crew to make a film of what really happened.

Once they arrive at camp, mysterious things start to happen such as walkie-talkies malfunctioning, destroyed equipment, and people going missing. Alice really wants to get to the truth of what happened in the village back in 1959, but she begins to fear they are not alone. Something sinister is lurking around the lost village and seems to be looking for them.

The Lost Village by Camilla Sten is told from dual timelines. “Now” is from Alice’s point of view, and “then” is from her great-grandmother Elsa’s perspective. I found the “now” perspective to be a bit creepier, but preferred the storyline of “then”. I felt it brought more to the story giving us the background of what happened to the people of the village.

This book had all the makings for a great horror story. It has been compared to The Blair Witch Project, which I can see because it does have similarly eerie vibes; however, the story did fall short for me. I feel like there was not enough character development, which would have helped the story a lot. There were times the author would bring something up that would have benefited the book, but then it was never mentioned again. I’m not going to give examples to avoid spoilers. I also think the author would have benefited to include more about the creepiness of the village itself. It would have set the mood better. Overall, this book had a good premise that fell a little short.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

According to the introductory material in The Lost Village, framed as a proposal for a documentary, Silvertjärn is “Sweden’s one and only ghost town,” deserted since 1959, when all 900 of its residents, with the exception of a newborn baby and a woman who had been the victim of a grisly “execution.” Alice Lindstedt, the producer, whose grandmother was from the town, heads into Silvertjärn with four colleagues for a six-day exploratory visit, during which she hopes to get enough footage to intrigue investors and raise funds for the project. Things very quickly begin going wrong, however, and the novel alternates between “Then,” showing what happened in the village before its desertion, as it slowly falls under the sway of a charismatic preacher, and “Now,” relating events in the present.

I found the first half of the book to be a very slow burn, but the suspense picked up after that as the tiny group is fragmented and increasingly isolated from one another, with tragic results. Has Alice’s companion Tone, who has her own connection to Silvertjärn, suffered a psychotic break, or are they being stalked by a mysterious “other,” and if the latter, who is this person? All, or nearly all, is revealed at the end, which for me was for the most part satisfying, although I wish that there had been more character development, particularly of the men in the group. 3.5 stars.

I received a copy of The Lost Village for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I love Scandinavian fiction, especially when it dips into thriller or horror vibes. This book was good, but I think the initial description and hype had my expectations so high that I was bound to be let down. It is a good book but to me some of the plot was underwhelming. I guess I shouldn’t really be surprised that I felt this way because Midsommar was similar to me, as far as, a good premise but the actions of the characters and the plot became a bit much, straying too far from believability.
If Scandinavian literature is your thing, do not hesitate to give it a try. I think it just wasn’t a perfect fit for me.
#TheLostVillageBook #NetGalley #StMartinsPress #MinotaurBooks

I was granted eARC access to The Lost Village via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

Alright, so, fellow NetGalley reviewers, you know how NetGalley likes to send out emails hyping up particular books and you get tempted into requesting/claiming review copies you wouldn't have picked up just browsing? This is one of those books for me. Some author I'm already familiar with gave it a great quote and that was used in the email, I hit request (or maybe it was read now that day?) and then forgot about it. Then it started creeping up on my spreadsheet of publication dates and I was dreading picking this one up because I no longer remembered anything about it and regretted my impulse click from months ago.

So I waited for pub day and requested the audiobook through Libby, assuming I would DNF it somewhere around 30% and get to report that I gave it an honest try, suggest the right audience, drop that on NetGalley to clear this from my pending list and move on.

And then I started listening to it, and I couldn't stop.

What hooked me wasn't the thriller set-up. That was actually fairly mild and I couldn't place which genre this was meant to be at first. (Again, I remembered nothing about why I clicked request in the first place.) What grabbed me was the characters and the setting. I was raised well-steeped in the remnants of the Norwegian heritage my great-grandparents brought with them to the colony of Upper Canada. My childhood was full of baked goods, folk dances, fairytales, and Christmas carols from the Nordic countries. My Barbie dolls had Scandinavian names and wore bunads I sewed from grandma's fabric scraps. Some of my most treasured possessions were tourist merchandise sent over from my cousins in Norway and Sweden. The first thing that caught my eye (ear) was the character name Tone. I quickly realized I was about to take a gothic horror ride through a Swedish town, and I buckled up.

A film crew of 5 set out to document all they can about the village of Silvertjärn where mysterious tragedy struck in the late 1950s leaving only a baby born on the eve of disaster and those who chose to flee in time as survivors. What some of the film crew don't know is that two of the members have familial connections to the village, one of them even being the granddaughter of that baby. It's obvious from the start that the crew isn't alone in Silvertjärn, but no one wants to admit it. When things start to go horribly wrong tensions soar, accusatory fingers fly, and people start dying. Will anyone make it out alive? Will they ever learn what happened all those decades ago?

I'm going to admit that I don't know if this book truly deserves the 5 or if the nostalgic yearning for Scandinavian settings and stories has coloured my glasses on this one and it's actually a 4, but either way it's a very good book. I would absolutely classify it as gothic horror, and I think the comparison to The Blair Witch Project is fair. It's psychological, it deals with religious corruption and teases the paranormal, it makes family connections to a tragic past, and it explores a ghost town sort of setting. There's very little on-page violence.

Personally, I fell in love with the gothic horror subgenre through film first, with movies like The Village and The Blair Witch Project, and I've only ventured into gothic horror literature outside of (totally awesome) assigned reading for college English courses quite recently. So far I honestly haven't found a gothic horror book I didn't like, but don't let that diminish my giving this one 5 stars. This book blew me away! I absolutely loved it.

If you love thrillers or gothic horror, or if you love Scandinavian stories like me and don't mind being spooked along the way, you need to read The Lost Village!

Bringing an unpopular opinion here because I was extremely underwhelmed.

This book was compared to The Blair Witch Project and Midsommar, so I was intrigued and excited to see where this story would go. We have Alice, an aspiring documentary filmmaker who is infatuated with the story of the missing/vanished residents of "The Lost Village." Her grandmothers family disappeared from this village in the 1950's, and all that remained was a hanging woman and an infant found crying inside of a building. Alice gathers a team to help her film a documentary on Silvertjarn and The Lost Village, to perhaps uncover the truth behind the disappearance of the towns residents.

This had so much potential for me, however, it fell very flat. I was never excited to pick this one up and I think it's because it took too long to get even a little exciting. While this book claims to be about a group of filmmakers making a documentary, no filming happened. I never got any Blair Witch vibes. There were so many flashbacks to the village in the 1950's that give some insight in to what happened, however, I felt that it was all poorly executed. This book was just very strange and I never felt the eerie vibes that others have felt while reading it.

If I'm being honest, this one was like a horror movie that looks good on the trailer, but then when you see the actual movie, you're disappointed that you wasted your time.

Appreciate the e-arc of this one Netgalley, but it's a no from me.

The Lost Village
By Camilla Sten

I really enjoy Scandinavian horror and thriller tropes and the opening of this book already grabbed me and immersed me into the thrilling and quite scary story line. I mean an abandoned village where entire families have disappeared, a documentary filmmaker obsessed with the disappearance, and a remote village mining town. All key ingredients to make this amazing story dual time line story incredible suspenseful that I really enjoyed.

This was fantastic and so well done.

I believe this is my horror/thriller novel of 2021. I was honestly surprised with how much I enjoyed it, considering I rarely read these types of books. However, my interest peaked with “The Lost Village,” and the documentary premise made it better. I also want to point out some triggers such as suicide attempt and abuse of a mentally ill person. I did give this a 3 out of 5 stars, because, again I am not the biggest fan of this genre. It felt like I was watching a low budget, indie movie, it was not really bad, but also not the greatest. I did not like the characters enough to form any type of attachment, and I found myself skimming towards the end. It was not something out of the ordinary. I did like the atmospheric setting, the background story, and the documentary aspect of it. Thank you to Netgalley for the copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Lost Village claims to follow a film crew making a documentary about a village where all 900 of its inhabitants mysteriously disappeared in the 1950s so I felt a little tricked considering I was looking forward to the doc aspect yet no one ever actually did any filming in the book.

In my opinion, it's the equivalent of a B horror movie - sometimes entertaining but mostly just corny.