3.75 stars

In stories like this one, when a man (because it’s almost always a man) spends a lot of time and energy trying to convince a woman (and it’s almost always a woman) that she’s imagining things, that situations are all in her head, that she’s delusional…you can almost guarantee that she’s not imagining things, that’s it’s not all in her head, and that she’s very much in touch with reality. Even when he’s not directly responsible for the unsettling and dangerous events, the gaslighting is still intense. (Exception: when the writer pulls out the “oh haha look, this woman was crazy and dysfunctional all along” and calls it a plot twist instead of a cliché/stereotype.) Regardless of this one being rather predictable, I did still like it and enjoyed some of the characters; it also included some tropes and setting elements that I really enjoy. It was a fun, interesting story that I’ve been meaning to read for quite a while now. Glad I finally got there!

“The Resting Place” by Camilla Sten is my second of hers and I have to say, she’s quickly becoming one of my favorite authors. In this book, a girl named Eleanor walks in on her grandmother’s murder- but she has a condition that makes her unable to recognize faces. As she grapples with whether she might know the killer, she receives a call from a lawyer to go to her grandmother’s mysterious secret country estate. The longer she stays there, the more she realizes that there’s a lot to her grandmother’s history that she doesn’t know, but worse, these secrets are likely to get everyone staying at the house killed.

If you know me, I love a good “And Then There Were None” scenario. This book is one of those type of mystery thrillers, mixed with a dose of noir gothic vibes. Eleanor, her boyfriend, her aunt, and the lawyer are isolated in this recluse country mansion during a snowstorm with the road out blocked. A lack of cell service and the addition of mysterious old house noise puts you on edge. As you shuffle through the names you know, you know the killer has to be familiar, but how?

I could not put this book down. Sten is a great writer and she creates interesting characters. “The Resting Place” was an easy 5 star rating for me and I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves a good mystery book.

Thanks to Minotaur Books and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

If you’re looking for a spooky, atmospheric mystery to get lost in, this is the perfect book.
Set at a remote mansion in Sweden, a small group of people become trapped at the mansion due to a snowstorm. The trouble is, there are some dangerous things going on and no one feels safe.

After the death of matriarch Vivianne, an attorney named Rickard gets in touch with the family in order to go and inventory what is at the mansion. The granddaughter Eleanor, her boyfriend and her aunt Veronika all gather to help with the inventory. Eleanor had never been there or even knew of its existence until after Vivianne died. Vivianne kept many secrets and they are soon to be revealed during their stay at the mansion.

I was loving this mysterious tale and the haunting atmosphere until the very end. I felt that the author left some loose ends at the conclusion of the story, but overall this was a great read for a cold, dreary day by the fire.

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press/Minotaur Books for allowing me to read an advance copy. I am happy to offer my honest review.

Camilla Sten is back with another gripping, spine-tingling thriller- The Resting Place. It follows our main character Eleanor, whom we don't get much background information on but we know she had a complicated relationship with .her grandmother, Vivianne. Tensions rise when Vivianne is brutally murdered, leaving Eleanor devastated. She soon embarks on a trip to a farmhouse she had no idea existed, and there the truth begins to unravel all of her family's secrets. The book flips back and forth between present day Eleanor, and 1960s with a character named Anushka. The way these two stories begin to intermingle had me asking so many questions! This book gave me "The Family Upstairs" vibes by Lisa Jewell, where you know something is going on with the characters but it hasn't been revealed yet. The first half of the book had me engrossed; Sten does a wonderful job of making you as paranoid as her main characters-the way they see shadows lurking but can't be sure. We don't really get to know much about Eleanor, other than her diagnosed face blindness. I do wish we had gotten to know her a little better, what her life was like outside of this situation, but this was more of a plot-driven novel than character so I am okay with it. The last 50 pages of the book is where it really picked up, answering all of my questions and the story coming together in a way I had hoped. I really enjoyed this book, more than The Lost Village, and I liked that one quite a bit! Thank you Netgalley and Minotaur Books for this copy in exchange for an honest review!

I couldn’t wait to read this one after reading the premise and I’m so glad I did; I really enjoyed this. An engaging thriller throughout, Camilla Sten’s The Resting Place is a perfect read over a rainy weekend.

This is my first book by Ms. Sten and I’m looking forward to reading more of her works.


Thanks to Minotaur Books, St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for an eARC of this title. Opinions shared are influenced by nothing other than my reading experience.

Loved the short chapters, the creepy atmosphere and elements that this read had. The alternative time line and pov made for a quick fast paced read.

This one was dark and twisted and oh so good! Face blindness in a thriller?! You can’t go wrong! It’s such a brilliant plot idea! Despite the multiple characters introduced in this story and the dual timeline, I was still completely engaged. I love the short chapters and twists and turns at every corner. You can kind of figure out the ending of the story by the clues she leaves, but it was a wonderful thriller in my opinion!

I really enjoyed this claustrophobic, spooky read about a woman with face blindness who witnessed the murder of her often cantankerous grandmother and is now forced to stay in a remote home her grandmother once owned. This is told two 2 different storylines, one being diary entries from someone who worked in the home years ago and I really liked how those 2 stories came together. A great one to read when it's snowing as our characters soon get trapped at the house by a blizzard, adding to the claustrophobic feeling of much of the book.

This psychological horror/suspense/thriller follows Eleanor after she witnesses her grandmother's murder. She came face to face with the killer as they fled the scene but Eleanor can't identify the killer because she has prosopagnosia - or face blindness. Eleanor's relationship with her cruel grandmother is complicated, but not being able to help find her killer and knowing that the killer could be right in front of her and she'd never know causes Eleanor's anxiety to spike, leading to stress-induced hallucinations. Months after the murder, after Eleanor got some psychological help, a lawyer calls and advises of an estate deep in the countryside that her grandmother never told Eleanor about. Now, Eleanor, her boyfriend Sebastian, her aunt Veronika, and the lawyer all meet up at this house to inspect and inventory it. The longer they stay there and more hidden secrets they unearth, the more they come to understand why the house has been left abandoned for over 50 years.

TW/CW: suicide, miscarriage, infidelity, child abuse

This was a really interesting blend of psychological horror, suspense, and thriller. Some aspects were more successful than others but overall this was a really great creepy read. We have a somewhat rundown estate in the middle of the wilderness, a snow storm blowing in, and uncovering unsavory family secrets from the past. I just want to mention one pet peeve of mine that was really prevalent in this story - we have 3 characters with names that start with M and 4 characters with names that start with V. For some reason, this just really bothers me and makes it harder for me to keep the characters distinct in my head.

I think the psychological horror portions of the book could have really been developed more. We're told that a few months prior, Eleanor was having stress induced hallucinations and ended up staying in a mental health facility for a while. We're told she's doing better now but when she mentions how she thought she saw someone out in the woods the first night, Sebastian is hesitant to believe her and thinks she's just getting too worked up with memories and grief of her grandmother. This makes sense in the grand scheme of the story, but it falls a bit flat because we're in Eleanor's POV and she never really questions herself. She's pretty much certain what she is seeing and experiencing in the house is real but just stops mentioning things to Sebastian because he thinks she's just getting stressed. I think if we got more of Eleanor also questioning herself and her own mind it really would have upped the horror elements. As it stands, this really felt more like an isolation thriller and less a psychological horror.

The thriller elements, I thought, were really well done. I really enjoy a good isolation thriller and this book really hit the spot. It really reminded me of Alice Feeney's Rock Paper Scissors with the tense interpersonal dynamic, snowy setting, and eerie feeling that our characters aren't alone. I feel like I could read a thousand snowy isolation thrillers and I'd never get tired of them. I think there was such a good gradual build up of the thriller elements where each character sort of came to the conclusion on their own that they might be in danger and then when the snow traps them at the house, they find out of their fears are correct. I also enjoyed how the thriller elements built on elements and places we'd seen in less-threatening situations. For example, we see Eleanor and Sebastian exploring the estate grounds early on and then later, when they're trying to figure out what is going on and if they're in danger or not, we see them revisit the same places but now they have a much different tone.

There's a dual timeline element that worked fantastically. I'm a big fan of dual timeline stories, especially when it isn't immediately clear how the two timelines will cross. In this case, we're following Eleanor in the present day and also 1965 following a maid in the home. The 1965 timeline starts off pretty mundane, but quickly becomes more interesting as we get more secrets revealed. Some of these secrets Eleanor discovers as well but some she doesn't so the reader has some extra information at times. Taken on their own, each timeline could be a bit slow but I think the simple act of flipping back and forth between the times allows the pacing to feel a bit quicker and more interesting.

Where this book lost me, a bit, was the ending. We had a good amount of tension built up by that point but then when it comes to the actual ending reveal and twist, the pacing felt like it ground to a halt. The actual twist, on paper, was good but just the way it was executed and the amount of exposition needed in that moment to put all the pieces together ended up really slowing down the story. There's also a pretty significant time skip in the ending where I was a bit confused. We get the big climax of the ending and then sort of skip over the resolution/come down portion and then to right to the epilogue. I had so many questions that were really more logistical than actual plot holes but I still would have liked maybe a chapter with some of this information to act as a gentle calm down for the reader. I did like the way Eleanor's face blindness came into play with the ending. Her condition is really important in the set up of the story and then I sort of forgot about it in the middle. It didn't feel, to me, like her face blindness was used as a crutch or 'easy' twist for Sten to use which I'm always concerned about when this particular condition is used in a thriller.

This is the second book I've read from Sten and I really enjoy the way she writes character group dynamics in these isolated settings. Both books I've read by her include a small group of characters who are somewhat connected, but often all members don't know each other super well which leads to some great tension moments. In this case, Eleanor is a bit estranged from her aunt and the lawyer is a complete stranger to everyone in the group. Despite only being in Eleanor's POV, Sten does a great job of giving us a good amount of characterization of the others in the group through their interactions. For example, Eleanor's aunt wasn't initially going to come but once she's in the house where she has memories from her early childhood, she becomes almost wistful at times which is a stark contrast to the person Eleanor knows. I really loved the ramp up from little snide remarks and hidden digs to when the gloves are fully off and each character is done with trying to keep things civil. I would have liked a bit more interpersonal drama before we get the outside threats taking over.

Overall, this was a fantastically atmospheric read. I loved the creepy atmosphere of this snowy, isolated estate. The character dynamics were spot-on and the thriller elements worked well. I do wish the ending was a bit snappier and that the psychological horror elements were a bit more developed. Sten is quickly becoming an auto-read author for me and I look forward to reading more from her in the future.



Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC

Expected publication date is March 29, 2022

Originally published in Swedish. English translation by Alexandra Fleming

Thank you to the publishers at St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for this e-ARC of The Resting Place!

Eleanor suffers from prosopagnosia, a condition that doesn’t allow her to recognize faces. Instead, she has to use other markers, such as hair color, hands, or clothing style to recognize even those she’s close to. During her arrival for her weekly Sunday meeting with her grandmother, Vivianne, a stranger flees from the home, leaving Eleanor to watch her grandmother bleed out on the hallway floor.

Now, 5 months later, she’s visiting the mansion in the Swedish forest that she’s never known about with her lawyer, boyfriend, and aunt. What other secrets did Vivianne hide from her, and how will this affect her future?

I really enjoyed this story! The atmosphere was very locked doors mystery. The four characters are essentially trapped in this house in the middle of nowhere during a blizzard in February. The phones don’t work and shady things start happening. There is also a secret diary hidden beneath the floorboards, written by the mysterious Anushka. I love the way the entire story came together, but I was a bit disappointed that we, the readers, seem to have all of the answers by the end, but the characters themselves didn’t. I guess this is more realistic, but I wanted them to have that closure. I can’t wait to read more from Camilla Sten in the future!

The Resting Place hits bookshelves March 29th! Preorder your copy today!

If you like a good Scandinavian horror story, then you should definitely like The Resting Place! The main character, Eleanor, suffers from prosopagnosia, a condition which prevents her from recognizing faces. On her weekly visit to her grandmother (Vivianne), she finds her Vivianne murdered and sees the murderer as he/she flees. But because she has face blindness, Eleanor cannot readily identify the killer. After Eleanor learns that she has inherited her a mansion in the Swedish woods, the place where her grandfather dies, the story begins to heat up and does not let up. Strange happenings at that mansion as well as the need to discover who killed Vivianne will keep you turning pages and on the edge of your seat.

TW: Infertility, language, family death, family drama, depression, smoking, abusive family, gaslighting, miscarriages, cheating

*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face, even the faces of those closest to you.When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.Then a lawyer calls. Vivianne has left her a house—a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years.Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to bringing the truth to light, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there.
Release Date: 03/29/2022
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 336
Rating: ⭐

What I Liked:
• I'm a sucker for people moving into a house with mystery

What I Didn't Like:
• I hate the jumping timeline
• The ending
• It is confusing

Overall Thoughts:
✔️Woman inherited mansion from rich aunt she knew nothing about.
✔️Suffers from some kind of issue (has face blindness).
✔️Needs sleeping pills because of traumatic situation.
✔️Jumpy as fuck to ANY sound or movement!
✔️Character named Eleanor who moves into a mansion (sounds familiar....)
✔️Storm that knocks out all communication.

Why would it take them so long to check on the caretaker?

What is with this weird Psycho mother voice that Eleanor keeps hearing and tells her stuff.

I will give this book credit I was engaged enough to want to know what was happening and how stupid Eleanor could be.

Prepare to have whiplash after reading this book because it makes you go back and forth so many times that you literally get confused on who's who and what's going on. Some books should just not have the timeline from the past to the present. Also be prepared to have the most unsatisfactory ending ever in a book. Like seriously where the fuck did this ending come from? The therapist! The therapist is the one who did all this! What a ridiculously stupid ending. I don't even know what you're supposed to think about this book.

This book's seriously has so many twists and doesn't even need them. Every single character is someone else that you think they are but they're not because you find out that it's really a different person living a different life.

Final Thoughts: I just can't..... The author and I are parting ways after this. I gave her two books. 😑

I was a bit skeptical at first because I am not a huge fan of the unreliable narrator; however this book proved me dead wrong. No pun intended

I'm afraid Camilla Sten missed the mark with her newest book, The Resting Place, her sophomore release after her debut adult thriller, The Lost Village, an international bestseller in 2021..
The Resting Place follows Eleanor, a young woman trying to recover from the grisly murder of her grandmother, Vivienne, a salty piece of work who probably should never have reproduced (but, hey, that's just my opinion). Eleanor; her boyfriend, Sebastian; her aunt, Veronika, and a mysterious lawyer decide to spend the weekend cataloguing the belongings in Vivienne's country estate, a place Eleanor never even knew existed. Adding to the mystery is the fact that Eleanor walked in on her grandmother's murderer but she can't describe the person because she has prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. If the term sounds familiar, it might be because Alice Feeney's 2021 thriller novel, Rock, Paper, Scissors, also used it as a plot device. This was the first thing about this novel that rubbed me the wrong way. Just how many books are going to feature characters with this disorder? Is this the new popular ailment featured in thriller novels? There can't be that many people in the world with this issue, can there? Well, it seems there can be. A recent study suggests that as many as 1 in 50 people may have prosopagnosia. OK, I'll give this a pass, Camilla.
But, even forgetting the prosopagnosia plot device, the book just didn't resonate with me. Due to the limited number of characters introduced, the who-done-it aspect of the novel was quickly resolved (at least in my mind). Sure, there are lots of red herrings and plot twists but none of them thrilled me. And isn't that what a thriller is meant to do?
I also just couldn't get worked up about Vivienne's murder. Based on the flash backs and Eleanor's internal thought dialogue, someone should have murdered the old hag sooner, before she mentally damaged her daughters and granddaughter. I was rooting for the killer by the end of the book.
The only character I had any investment in was Veronika. Eleanor just annoyed me with her feelings about her grandmother's murder (celebrate, the witch is dead!) and her boyfriend, Sebastien, read like a spineless, two-dimensional character (which was kind of refreshing, in a way, because that's usually a role played by female secondary characters in thriller books).
In the end, I liked the book, it was entertaining, but it just didn't grab me, like a thriller and suspense novel should.

A murder witnessed by a woman who can't remember faces, an inherited estate filled with long kept secrets, and a storm trapping everyone in place! What could possibly go wrong?
Sten returns with a new novel filled to the brim with mysteries to solve and a setting that is chilly, but figuratively and literally.
Mysteries unfold in the past and the present across dual timelines giving ample time for both stories to be engaging and satisfying. I did not see the ending coming and I enjoyed the ride immensely.

I liked this book, but for some reason the entire time I was reading it I felt like I had already read this exact story before but I can’t quite put my finger on what other book follows this plot line so well that I saw all the twists coming.

I did like that Eleanor suffered from prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness so she is unable to recognize people’s faces, and instead needs to remember other characteristics about them. This did add an interesting twist to the story, but it also meant that the idea of an unknown killer felt almost like a cop out. The entire story revolves around Eleanor not being able to recognize anyone, because if she could, she would’ve known who her grandmother’s killer was as well as recognizing people when they were isolated at the estate. I think the face blindness aspect could’ve added such an interesting twist on this story, but instead, it just made things more convenient for the plot to even happen.

The pacing for this was very slow for a thriller, almost to the point where it wasn’t thrilling at all. In fact, I think that this could’ve ended up being a much shorter book because there really isn’t much that happens, and what does happen was pretty underwhelming.

This story is also split between the past and the present, which normally I enjoy in a thriller but for some reason this just felt a little bland. The portions of the book that are in the past are more of a family drama kind of story, while the present is a typical isolated house with a possible killer outside kind of thriller. Essentially, it wasn’t anything new or especially gripping as a thriller. It’s by no means written badly, in fact, I did very much enjoy the writing style! I’ve heard that he first book The Lost Village is very good, so I may give that a try and see if maybe my issue was just with this particular book.

I did like the atmosphere present when the plot was happening at the manor house, but while it took place in Sweden, I would not have been able to tell the difference if it had been set anywhere else in Europe. There were also a lot of elements to the characters and the setting that didn’t seem to really mean anything to the overall story, and I was left wondering why it was included, such a particular character being from another country but keeping in concealed.

Overall, this was an okay read, but I think if you’ve read a lot of thrillers, this one does a lot that other thrillers have already done and in some cases, have done better. I will definitely be trying the author’s other book, because I’ve seen a lot of people mention how great it is!

Super creepy, super foreboding, and just how I like my thrillers. This will have your skin crawling and you won’t want to put it down. The plot twist FANTASTIC and one of the best I’ve read in awhile. I do think the paranormal element means this book might not appeal to everyone and more a niche within the suspense/thriller crowd will really enjoy this.

I finished this book months ago and honestly don't remember much of it. I remember that I read it fast and found it "gripping" but now a few weeks/months later, nothing stands out. It's a good quick read but nothing out of the ordinary "suspense/thriller" genre.

This book immediately sucked me in, as soon as I started it I binged the whole book in one day. I highly recommend reading this book to anyone who likes mysteries. Having the main character not recognize people's faces and still seeing the crime was so amazing.

I received a free Advanced Reading Copy via NetGalley in exchange for a complete and honest review.
This book was very interesting. I didn’t fully understand what was going on until the last 5%. This was probably due to there being too many characters with similar V-starting names. Also, I wish we got a little more backstory on Anushka, we only see her progression and growth in glances but nothing more than that. Also, Eleanor, the protagonist, has prosopagnosia but it's not even necessary. The blurb made it seem like Eleanor’s prosopagnosia was going to have such a huge impact on the plot, but it just wasn’t done well at all. I truly think the author should have done more research on it so that she could incorporate it more seamlessly. It felt as if Eleanor’s prosopagnosia was brought up only when it was convenient.
Overall, this book was okay. It was entertaining but I hated how it took so long to understand the plot.