Cover Image: The Resting Place

The Resting Place

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I am generally not a fan of locked room style mysteries. The singular setting tends to limit the plot and the stories get a bit tedious and boring. The Resting Place is one of the best ones that I've read so far. The dualing timelines and multiple mysteries, lend to a thrilling story line. I did not want to put this book down. When I wasn't reading, I was thinking about what was happening and how it would all unravel. I did figure out one of the mysteries but I was never completely sure that I was right so I loved the reveals. There was some misdirection so I had an inkling about a character that didn't play out like I imagined. While most of the characters were unlikable in some way, I hated Sebastian. I found his character to be so annoying but it didn't change my view of the book. I also thought the book could have been a tad shorter but overall it was an excellent read.

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For me, there are few things better than Gothic-inspired mysteries set in snowy climates, so this book is pretty much perfect.

Eleanor walked in on her grandmother, Vivianne’s murderer. But she has a disorder that makes it impossible to identify faces, so she doesn’t know who the killer was.

Months later, she travels to the family summer estate she didn’t know existed with her aunt, Veronika, boyfriend, Sebastian, and attorney, Rickard. Although the longtime caretaker, Mats, is not answering their calls, Eleanor senses another presence. A terrific snowstorm blows in and Rickard goes missing. With their phones and car batteries dead, they are trapped with the malevolent presence and generations of family secrets.

Told in a dual timeline, with flashbacks to the 1960s, THE RESTING PLACE is impossible to put down spooky, and utterly fabulous.

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"The Resting Place," by Camilla Sten, translated from the Swedish by Alexandra Fleming, is the bleak story of Eleanor who, after her mother's death, is raised by her harsh grandmother, Vivianne Fälth. Eleanor suffers from prosopagnosia or "face blindness." She is unable to recognize an individual by observing his or her features. Therefore, she distinguishes one person from another by taking note of their hair style, clothing, eye color, and scent. One Sunday, when Eleanor arrives at Vivianne's house for dinner, she finds her grandmother on the floor with her throat slashed.

Sten moves back and forth in time between the present and the mid-1960s to tell this complex tale of family dysfunction, mental illness, murder, and a sordid past filled with secrets and lies. After her grandmother's passing, Eleanor and her boyfriend, Sebastian, visits Solhöga, a spooky manor house north of Stockholm that Vivanne had inherited from her late husband. Eleanor, her Aunt Veronika, and a probate lawyer named Rickard Snäll are there to take an inventory of the property.

When the significance of the flashbacks is revealed, the resolution is mind-boggling. In addition, the author trots out a well-worn thriller trope: a fierce blizzard cuts out phone service in Solhöga, so Eleanor, Sebastian, Veronika, and Rickard are at the mercy of a homicidal maniac. The gloomy plot makes little sense, and the characters are too superficial to earn our sympathy. In this grim tale, heinous sins committed decades earlier come back to haunt everyone involved.

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Interesting book. It was a suspenseful, creepy read that kept you me on the edge of my seat. I was kept reading until the last page.

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This was my first novel by Sten and I'm excited to check out more of her work.

This novel kept me at the edge of my seat and I was excited that it surprised me. I had a feeling early on where the book would go and I was completely and utterly wrong.

Eleanor has prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, so when she sees her grandmother's killer running out of her apartment, she has no way to identify the murderer. Haunted by her inability to avenge her grandmother's death, Eleanor and her boyfriend hope to find answers when they are summoned to Solhoga to tie up some loose ends with her grandmother's estate. But once at the estate, ghosts of Vivianne's past that should have lain dormant are resurrected and the truth will leave a trail of bodies in its wake.

Overall I enjoyed this novel, however, I didn't feel a connection to the characters and part of me felt like the meat of the story was jumped into a little too quickly. With a little more buildup and setting the stage, I would have been more connected to the storyline.

The prosopagnosia addition was a unique twist (though I have read another book recently with the same disorder!) and it added a lot to the storyline. I felt the author was consistent in making it relevant without harping on it too much.

There were a lot of moving pieces to this plot and my lack of attachment to the characters made it hard for me to really get invested. I struggled to predict what would happen next - perhaps because I wasn't overly invested or maybe because not enough bread crumbs were provided. Either way, it was ultimately a very enjoyable read and I one I would definitely recommend if you enjoy eerie novels that keep you guessing.

Finally, this is a translated work and the translation was exceptional. Often with translated novels, the text is choppy or doesn't have a great flow, but that was not the case here.

Thank you very much to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for a copy of this novel.

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Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and Camilla Sten. This was a very atmospheric book and very creepy because of the main premise that surrounds this book. This book has two strong timelines that is not always achieved in most books but this was well written in both parts. I won't outline the synopsis but the book was just so well thought through and made it easy to read as it always held my attention while reading. As the authors second book that I have read, I have to say that her books are to be looked out for as they are always intriguing.

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Eleanor has prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces. This causes her distress when she walks in on her grandmothers murder, even coming face to face with the killer, and being unable to identify who it was. Anxious as ever, Eleanor is invited by a lawyer out to her grandmothers abandoned country estate because it was left to her in the will. Accompanied by her boyfriend, Sebastian, and aunt, Veronika, the group explores the eerie house and start to unravel secrets that were better left buried.

Murder? Mysterious house? Family secrets? These are some of my favorite elements to a thriller and The Resting Place has all three! I loved the creepy atmosphere that Camilla Sten created in this book, especially the “locked room” feeling of being in a house in the woods. Not only was the setting mysterious, but the characters as well. I enjoy when books throw suspicion on multiple characters, and this book does it well. Overall, I enjoyed this thriller and look forward to reading more by Camilla Sten!

Thank you St. Martins Press, Minotaur Books and NetGalley for an e-arc of The Resting Place.

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The Resting Place is a solid thriller, complete with similar creepy/gothic/nordic vibes. Seriously, if you like slow burn horror, check this one out.

Eleanor suffers from prosopagnosia - she can't remember faces. So when she literally walks in on her grandmother's murderer, she isn't much help to the police. Naturally, she's devastated by the death, but she and her grandmother had a complicated relationship. Apparently, this comes second nature to her family, as estrangement and buried secrets are the name of the game. Imagine Eleanor's surprise, then, when she learns she's inherited a secret country mansion - and then finds herself stranded there, in a snowstorm, with her boyfriend, her aunt, and her grandmother's mysterious lawyer. The mystery grows as the house seems to come alive and Eleanor wonders just how many more secrets she has to find.

When I say slow burn, I'm not kidding, so if you're someone who likes their thrillers with a ton of action and twists and turns, this may not be the book for you. But if you like creepy, isolated stories where you're just waiting for the killer to pop out - and as you read, you just *know* that has to be coming - then I think you will dig this one.

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Review of The Resting Place by Camilla Sten

⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

This book was a bit of a roller coaster for me. I thought it started off strong with such a good premise but then in the middle it was somewhat slow and dull and dragged. I thought the ending was very solid though which made me glad I read it. I feel overall somewhat disappointed because it had such promise to be a 4.5-5 star read for me and I just wanted more overall from it than it delivered. It didn’t have the extremely creepy vibes I wanted either.

Quick synopsis: The book opens as Eleanor, who suffers from facial blindness (this must be a new thing in books lately but it was used such a cool way in this book!) goes to her grandmother Vivianne’s home for dinner. Upon arrival she finds her grandmother has been viciously attacked and is dying. Eleanor comes face to face with the killer, but can’t recognize them due to her condition. Creeeeeeepy! Shortly thereafter she and her boyfriend travel to her grandmother’s country home along with a lawyer and her aunt. They are there to settle the estate but it’s clear they either aren’t alone or one of them is the killer. To add mystery, Eleanor finds an old diary of someone who used to work for her grandmother at the home and the secrets keep unfolding.

A big thank you to @netgalley and @minotaurbooks for the ecopy of this one.

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I am not always a fan of the slow burn thriller, but this one drew me in. I’d use creepy, gothic and atmospheric to describe the tone the author sets. This is the ultimate who can you trust since Eleanor has prosopagnosia or face blindness, where you cannot recognize the face of anyone, even the people you know best. After her Grandmother’s death, she inherits a cottage she didn’t know about with a dark past.

The story unfolds in a dual timeline with twists and turns. Some you might figure out, but a few you won’t see coming.

If you are a fan of slow burn gothic thrillers, you should check this one out.

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You won’t get much rest while reading Camilla Sten’s The Resting Place! Read it on a warm spring or summer day while the sun is out. Don’t read it by the light of your cell phone after a blizzard or thunderstorm has knocked out your power.

The story opens in September as the police question Eleanor about what she witnessed a few hours earlier when arriving for her routine Sunday dinner with Vivianne, the grandmother who largely raised her. Something was wrong. The face Eleanor saw leaving as she opened the door was not Vivianne. Vivianne lay dead on the floor. Eleanor can’t describe the likely murderer. Not only did Eleanor see the fleeing person only briefly, she also suffers from prosopagnosia, face blindness, meaning she needs to commit “markers” to memory, such as eye color and hair style, to later recognize anyone when seeing him or her again.

Time passes. It’s mid-February and a lawyer contacts Eleanor and her aunt, the deceased’s sister, to meet him at Solhöga, an estate Vivianne owned in the countryside, one Eleanor never knew existed. It’s time to inventory the estate as part of the probate process. Eleanor, boyfriend Sebastian, Aunt Veronika, and the lawyer Rickard Snäll are soon snowbound at remote Solhöga, far from civilization.

An alternate timeline occasionally interrupts Eleanor’s plot line, gradually bringing the past and the present together to resolve this suspenseful novel. The secondary plot line focuses on Anushka, a servant working for Eleanor’s grandmother Vivianne during the mid-1960s. All changes in timeline are clearly marked with either Anushka’s or Eleanor’s name

As the blizzard intensifies, the suspense builds. Eleanor finds Anushka’s decades-old diary, written in Polish, and begins to translate it using her cell phone and an online translation app. Why had Vivianne kept Solhöga a secret from Eleanor, the granddaughter she raised? Is there any connection between Solhöga and the last words Vivianne had left in Eleanor’s voice mail on Friday night before their ritual Sunday dinner: “I can hear them in the walls’ they’re whispering to me”? Where is Bengtsson, the groundskeeper, who has not been answering calls, all going directly to voicemail?

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for this spooky thriller. Remember to read it in daylight, preferably with people you trust nearby.

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I loved the premise for this one and I was excited to read it but in the end it just didn't work for me. The book has a great really creepy atmosphere and the tension is a constant throughout the book. I enjoyed the mystery and the twist of the main character having face blindness. I think the setting and the plot were well done but I just didn't care for the main character at all. She felt flat for me so I just never connected with her, which made connecting with the story hard as well.

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What It's About: Five months after Vivianne's brutal murder, four person arrive at Solhoga, an old manor house tucked away in the Swedish woods to do an inventory on this house - Eleanor (Vivianne's granddaughter), Sebastian (Eleanor's boyfriend), Viktoria (Eleanor's aunt), & Rickard (lawyer). As soon as they arrive, strange things begin to occur. It seems that the house is alive, harboring dark secrets and want them to stay buried.

My thoughts: This book gives me all the creepy and eerie vibes and I loved it! I loved that it was set in an isolated place, and the descriptions of the manor reminds me of Hill House and Bly Manor - a house with a lot of character and a dark past.

The story is told through the POVs of Eleanor in the present time and Anushka during the 1960s. I enjoyed both the POVs equally. The author did a wonderful job in building the suspense throughout the story. Is the manor really haunted or is it something that can be explained? It got me invested in the story and it was really interesting to see how the pieces of the puzzle fit together in the end.

Eleanor's prosopagnosia (face blindness) was definitely an interesting element in the story. She has to learn to manage it in her daily life and reading how she does that is interesting.

Overall, this was a twisty page-turner and I enjoyed it so much! Truth be told, I may enjoyed it a tad more than The Lost Village!


Pub Date: March 29th, 2022

***Thank you St. Martin's Press, Minotaur Books and NetGalley for this gifted ARC copy. All opinions expressed are my own.***

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Despite having very few likeable characters, this one grabbed me and held on. Very good tension, and an ending that was fun to read even though I saw it coming.

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For me its prosopagnosia. Individuals with this medical diagnosis cannot recognize familiar faces. The character in this novel, Eleanor, focuses on specific aspects of a person's face, like their specific hair cut. When she walks in on her grandmothers murder and the murderer walking out the door, things get less than ideal. And you can imagine how that weighs on someone.

Sten has a way of effortlessly bringing sinister and building atmosphere to her novels. While I enjoyed The Lost Village a smidge more than this one, I still found myself eager to know the outcome. The narrative was extremely on the slow building side but there was a well done past and present timeline. The reveal brought everything together for me too.

The audiobook from Macmillan Audio is narrated by Angela Dawe. I enjoyed being able to go back and forth between bed time reading and day time listening. I felt Dawe kept an excellent pace and brought a good bit of emotion to her voice. There are points when accents come into play and those are beautifully done!

It took me a little longer than expected to get into overall. I also wouldn't label this as horrific or horror driven. I felt it was more a suspenseful mystery with a truly well thought out familial past. Can you tell the past was my favorite part?! Downright captivating!

Thank you Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio for the ability to read and listen to this novel. If you're into family secrets and suspense than I have a feeling you'll enjoy this one too. True rating 3.5/5.

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"There's something about the house...Something happened here. I don't know what, but whatever it is...it has something to do with this house."

In the claustrophobic atmospheric psychological thriller The Resting Place by Camilla Sten most of the story takes place in an old hidden manor in the cold dark Swedish woods but let's be real it's not the spooky house to fear but the people in the house...or outside it!

One of the most fascinating aspects of this thriller is that the one person, Eleanor, who comes face to face with a killer right after they murder her Grandmother is that she can't ever recognize them. Eleanor suffers from Prosopagnosia better known as "face blindness" a real disease. The murderer must know her since they don't bother to kill her too.

When a lawyer calls saying Eleanor has been left a house no one knew about she travels with her boyfriend and Great Aunt to see it and all hell breaks loose. The caretaker is missing, when the lawyer looks for him he doesn't come back and then there is the mysterious dumbwaiter. There is a storm, no cell reception and an old diary from the 1960s that messes with everyone including me.

Besides the author's ability to create spine tingling moments, narrator Angela Dawe has this very quiet voice that adds to the goosebump moments. It took awhile to figure it all out but partly because not all the players are revealed until near the end. I listened and read this story which gave me an appreciation of the flawless talent of translator Alexandria Fleming

As in her last book, The Lost Village, the writer creates an atmosphere that makes you hold your breath, wonder if something unworldly is happening but knowing it's humans that are most scary.

I received a free copy of this book and audiobook from the publishers via #netgalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

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Eleanor witnesses her grandmother’s murder but is unable to identify the culprit due to a rare condition that leaves her unable to distinguish faces. She leaves behind a mansion Eleanor knew nothing about called Solhoga. When she is contacted by a lawyer to catalogue the estate, Eleanor and her boyfriend travel out there for the weekend. They are totally unaware of the family secrets they are about to uncover.

I read Sten’s debut and liked it a lot. This novel stalled out for me pretty quickly. While there is a nice back and forth between present day and the past, I found the characters to be flat. It was difficult to connect with anyone, especially the protagonist. The supporting characters were hardly developed and I don’t understand why Eleanor’s boyfriend stuck around. There were some plot holes as well (argh) which I just couldn’t get past. The setting was very eerie and creepy but Sten’s second novel just didn’t do it for me.

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I really enjoyed this book. There’s so much to say! I loved the characters and their personalities, but I wasn’t fond of all the “V” names. It became cumbersome, especially when they were all talked about at once. It made sense for the family to have those names though. As for the story, there were lots of clues and breadcrumbs along the way. One I guessed in the beginning and then began to second guess myself, and then later when back to my guess (and ended up being right 😊). Others, I didn’t see coming-and it was great! There are some questions I still have now in terms of wanting closure with the rest of it, but I still feel as though this book ended in a good place.

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Thank you so much to Minotaur, Camilla and NetGalley for the review copy! Without a doubt, another creepy read by Camilla that I really enjoyed!

Solhöga is a house that’s seen it’s fair share of dark and twisted history. It’s a house that has many stories but, doesn’t want to divulge them all at once. Instead, the tension builds and builds and trickle by trickle, she gives up her secrets. Eleanor’s grandmother was murdered and she saw the murdered but, because of a condition where she can’t recognize faces, the grief and guilt start to consume her. She returns to her grandmothers estate and that’s when the house slowly starts talking…

The story was well thought out, it flowed nicely and ended up being a great story! I enjoyed it! 4 stars! Happy PUB Day Camilla!!!

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Thanks to St. Martin's Press for the free book.
Camilla Sten has a way of creating a bingeable plot that starts off right at the beginning of the book and doesn't let up until the last page. I was fascinated by the beginning of the book, and I had to know where it was going. I liked the diary past timeline mixed with the current timeline. Eleanor wants to know who killed Vivianne, and she is intrigued and confused about the secret estate she inherits. Upon visiting the house, she knows that something isn't quite right. There are plenty of thrills in the book. The blizzard mixed with the seclusion adds a layer of anticipation and creepiness that kept me turning the pages way into the night.
I did figure out one of the twists, but I did not figure out the big end reveal, which was shocking, yet not unrealistic. I can't wait to read more from this author.

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