4 Stars from me
I always find there is something so beautiful about this story, steeped in Icelandic folklore along the black sand beaches. Having recently visited Reykjavik and walked along the black sand beach, I can testify that they have an otherworldly feel to them.
Freyja, lurks hidden the mind of Unnur who was her childhood friend for the briefest of times but it was a friendship that burned fast and bright; before it was replaced with dark memories.
Now, as an adult, with a daughter of her own, Unnur’s world is rocked when her ex-husband’s new girlfriend arrives in her life. She has a daughter called Freyja, she takes an unnatural interest in Unnur, and she has a scar just like Freyja had. But she can’t be her, can she?
Read on to discover what happened all those years ago – if Unnur can unlock the memory.
This was a fabulous and engrossing psychological thriller!
My thanks to the author, Netgalley and Spiegel & Grau for an ARC in return for an honest review.
Blurb: The unsolved case of a young girl’s disappearance reopens after twenty years in this moody, atmospheric debut of suspense set in Reykjavík and the Icelandic coast.
Unnur has secrets. A single mother to a beloved daughter, Lilja, she lives a deliberately quiet life in Reykjavík, working at a bakery under an assumed last name and pushing away haunting visions of the last summer of her childhood. Her safety—and Lilja’s—now hinges on discretion. But when her ex-husband returns to Iceland and brings with him a new girlfriend, who seems to know more about Unnur than she’s letting on, Unnur may finally have to face what happened long ago on a black sand beach in the remote Dark Valley—and the possibility that she might be responsible for the disappearance of her otherworldly friend Freyja.
As a cold case investigation reopens and the intricate threads of past and present begin to tangle, Unnur must race to recover the broken memory of what happened all those years ago, or risk losing her daughter. Steeped in Icelandic folklore and myth, Freyja is at once a gripping story of a child’s disappearance, a testament to the power of a mother’s love, and an enthralling tale of redemption and forgiveness from a gifted new voice.
Read and Rated 