This is a very interesting mystery, definitely a good follow up to the author’s first work A Nearly Normal Family. I really liked the writing style and I loved that the story was told in chunks through three characters’ perspectives and interviews with the police. It was a little show to get going, but the ending was great and more than made up for any early slowness. The characters were all interesting, compelling, and best of all for me deeply flawed. This is a story that has no true good guys (unless you count little Sally), but all the characters are doing their best to follow their own moral compass. Bill has lost his wife and his doing his best to take care of his 8 year old daughter, but he has run out of money and is at risk of losing anything. Karla is hoping to be a law student so she can be a judge if she can stick to her plan and not be dragged back by her substance abusing mother. Jennica is floating without a clear plan. She’s in school and working as a telephone psychic to pay her bills. But when the family Karla is cleaning for appears to be harboring secrets they all head towards chaos.

With this one, we can’t really get into the plot too much. The synopsis already tells us a good bit, as it relates to these great characters…

Steve and Regina are our couple found dead in their luxurious home. Steve is a respected pediatrician, and his wife is ill with some kind of a long virus. When she is found murdered and he’s found with an overdose of pills in his belly, the police are of course investigating the matter thoroughly. They are also looking into our other characters:

Bill, whose wife, Miranda, recently died of brain cancer, leaving them in a rough financial situation. She came from money, and Bill had been working at a movie theater for fun, until she died. Now she’s gone, and he realizes he knows nothing about real work experience. He’s raising their daughter, Sally, by himself now, and has had to bring in a renter named…

Karla, who is a law student and aspiring judge. Her fatherless childhood was filled with drugs and desperation, and she’s working hard to be a different member of society than her mother. She is employed part-time as a house cleaner for a wealthy couple (you guessed it - Steve and Regina!) and likes the stability of living with Bill and Sally.

Jennica is our Tinder-addicted Netflix junkie and fake phone psychic. During the day she’s usually in her filthy apartment with her cat, Dog, and at night she gives advice to people desperate enough to pay for it. She and Miranda were once good friends, but now…

In the beginning, this was a bit slow, but then it kept going and I kept getting better acquainted with the characters. I wouldn’t say I loved any of them (maybe Sally) but they were all flawed people written truly. Overall, this book was a lot of fun as police interviews are interspersed throughout to build up the mystery even more.

The ending wasn’t something I’d had in mind, so it did surprise me, but it wasn’t a crazy shock. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this enough to finish it in one sitting, and I liked this mystery-thriller that had me guessing from page one. Four stars!

(Thank you to Celadon Books, M.T. Edvardsson, and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review. This book is slated to be released on June 13, 2023.)

I really enjoyed this book. It is a slow burn mystery that it held my attention the while time. The author writes real, flawed characters that you can't help but root for them. I really liked how the story was told from several povs, police interviews, and news articles. I highly recommend this book.
The estimated publication is June 13, 2023.


Thank you Netgalley and Celedon Books for the e-arc.

This is such a good book! The compelling story starts with a double murder of an affluent couple. It slowly unfolds as we learn the backgrounds of the small cast of main characters, through multiple points of view in short chapters. No spoilers. This book was translated from the original Swedish and is an excellent translation of this well-crafted story. This is the first book I’ve read by this talented author. Please keep the translations coming! Highly recommended!

I really enjoyed this book! I found it to be a perfect whodunnit. It was a quick, fast-paced read & I had it finished in one sitting. I’m usually pretty good at figuring out the end or twists in books, but this one caught me off guard. That’s an automatic win for me!

Only downfall for me, was the multiple time lines & narratives going back & forth so often. It didn’t make it hard to follow, just had to keep up with who I was reading at each moment.

Overall, it’s a perfect read if you’re looking for a murder mystery!

Also, thanks to #Celadon & #NetGalley for the ARC! #TheWomanInside

Overall, this was a very interesting and engaging read. There were little things that annoyed me throughout, but not enough to severely dampen my enjoyment. Bill had issues. Lots of issues. And I wish he hadn't or that his story ended differently. I think I just didn't like his character. I also felt like the story dragged on a little bit. I recognize that it was to make sure the plot was fully laid out and everything tied together, but a little editing wouldn't have been bad. That all said, I did really enjoy how the story was set up, the different POVs, and the interesting way it was all resolved. Definitely a unique story and a book worth reading!

The woman inside is a wild tale. The story is told in multiple points of view even though there’s multiple characters they all flow together. Everything you think you know about the characters could be right…. We start out with a murder and everyone in the story has their own craziness. A twisty suspense that keeps you guessing even after you’re done reading.

I really enjoyed A Nearly Normal Family when I read it a couple of years ago. This book was no different. The multiple POVs worked so well and I found myself sucked in merely by the connections between the characters. It was also interesting to see the different ages and watch how these characters navigated Lund. I was also invested in finding out who dunnit. I love books that include excerpts from interviews and interrogations. The mystery is fun when you know the end and are trying to piece together what exactly happened. I did struggle at times to relate to the characters and they were not my favorite but the mystery redeemed the story. Sally was my favorite character and I primarily wanted to know what happened with her. She was the brightest spot in the story and of course, the most innocent. The final reveal was what I expected and I like how there is still a mystery as to whether Bill and Karla spill their guts. Overall, I enjoyed this one and look forward to more from M.T. Edvardsson!

It took me awhile to figure out the cast of characters: the young house cleaner who studies law, raised by a drug-addicted mother, renting a room in the accused killer’s house; the accused killer, a down and out single father, still grieving his wife’s death; the spoiled and lazy woman carrying on with the married man; and the murdered couple themselves, a doctor and his chronically ill wife.

The plot skips around time-wise quite a bit, mixing in interviews with the main characters that occur after the crime, as well as plot points told in chronological order. That choice just seemed a bit puzzling to me; I never quite found the rhythm.

And the characters? They came across as flat, a bit one-dimensional, and not all that likable or hateable, if that makes sense. Just a feeling of…meh.

I WAS curious enough about whodunnit to keep reading, and it was an appropriate length of book (at least it wasn’t 500 pages to find out the killer!) but sadly, it will end up being rather forgettable for me. I suspect others will enjoy this Scandinavian mystery however.

A wealthy murdered couple, the mistress, the housecleaner, the widowed father all come together with six degrees of separation for this domestic suspense thriller. Cleverly constructed relationships between the characters enhanced my engagement with this book.
Bill Ollson is a widow with a young daughter and is on the brink financially. However sad his predicament is, you find he's made some bad choices. Karla, the housekeeper, also in a bid to correct wrongs, makes some dubious choices when she connects with Ollson as his lodger.
Then there is the Woman Inside. Is she an innocent or a Machiavellian orchestrator of the eventual demise of the rich couple? I found myself drawn into each character's development which guaranteed a collision course and the eventual melt-down of one person.
The Woman Inside is a good foray into Nordic Noir and a recommended read.
4.25 stars

Thank you to Celadon Books for an early e-copy. All opinions are my own.

Alternating between the viewpoints of Bill, a jobless widower; Karla, an aspiring law student working as a housekeeper and lodger at Bill’s apartment; and Jennica, a fake psychic advisor with no life aspirations except dating wealthy pediatrician Steven Rytter, who turns up dead in his home. Interspersed with their viewpoints are interrogations into the Rytter murder and news articles reporting the story.

I liked the different viewpoints of the characters and watching them slowly come together and connect. The interrogations provided greater insight, cliffhangers, and curiosity so that you just had to keep reading to find out what came next.

This was okay but did not deliver on the reveal. The story felt very long and left me feeling underwhelmed. I feel like it could’ve been a tad bit shorter and would’ve been higher than a 3.

This one started off super promising. There are a lot of characters to keep up with and that made me nervous at first, but I was so hooked by the plot that it really didn't bother me. This one is an easy binge-read. I couldn't put it down because I had to know what happened. I formed so many different theories while reading because there were so many ways it could have gone. Which brings us to the ending. This is where it kind of lost me. The ending was very underwhelming compared to the rest of the story. It may have been intentional to leave things kind of open in regards to Steven and Regina (in order for the reader to form their own opinions about them), but I think further character development of both (especially Regina) would have sold the ending more. Overall, it was still a solid read, but it didn't really blow me away.

I really enjoyed the way the story was told. It was by 3 different points of view of the weeks/days leading up to the crime. Plus, police interviews conducted after the crime. It was an easy read. No big twists, but I still really enjoyed it!

I liked a lot of parts of this author’s last book. This one started off promising. I was instantly intrigued. But then, it just started dragging and I started drifting. The ending had a big reveal kind of feel. I realized that I felt like I was reading a formula. The book was OK but it followed too much in the style and rhythm of the last.

Thank you to @netgalley and Celadon Books for this ARC. A couple is found dead and everyone is guilty. Steven and are found dead in their home - was it the house cleaner Karla, Steven's mistress Jennica, Karla's male roommate Bill or someone else all together? I like how the author made you believe someone couldn't possibly hurt anyone and then quickly made them look guilty. I felt the ending was a little rushed but good read! #TheWomanInside #MTEdvardsson #CeladonBooks #June2023

The Woman Inside was a quick read. It had many colorful characters and I was curious from the start how they would interact. I feel like this story of a wife who is unwell and married to a rich husband has been done over and over again. There were added characters and pieces to the story but it wasn’t necessarily a new plot. The writing was engaging and easy to read and I got mildly invested in the characters. I felt like the whole story was predictable so it wasn’t much of a thriller for me. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC. I would certainly read another book by this author.

M.T. Edvardsson delivers another compelling, compulsively readable Scandi thriller with The Woman Inside. Steven and Regina Rytter, a wealthy pediatrician and his chronically ill wife, are found dead in their upscale home, one done in by a head wound and the other by an overdose. It’s being called a family tragedy by some in the press, but perhaps something more sinister has happened.

The story centers around three POVs: Bill, a recently widowed dad; Karla, a student and the Rytters’ housecleaner; and Jennica, a telephone psychic and Steven Rytter’s girlfriend. Bill is under police suspicion for the deaths, but he’s not the only one who might have had a motive. Excerpts from the police interrogation are interspersed with the three perspectives and help round out the narrative. The story is twisty and entertaining, with a cast of unlikeable but interesting characters and no shortage of potential culprits. It kept me guessing about whodunit and how the three character arcs would come together.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Celadon Books for providing me an advance copy of this book.

This started off as a quick and engaging read but as you get to about the 2/3 or 3/4 mark, it started to slow down for me. I felt I became less engaged and just wanted to “get on with it”. The ending was a little bleh for me and I didn’t love some of the unanswered stuff

Edvardsson has written an other great Swedish thriller/police investigation full of well developed characters including ones to root for and against. An interrogation of people possibly involved in the murder of a rich couple, a doctor and his ailing wife, We meet all the related ‘suspects’ as the details are slowly revealed. You keep reading one more chapter, then one more!