The Resting Place
Camilla Sten
Synopsis: 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.
A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense.
My Rating: 3.75 Stars – Rounded up to 4.
cover 3; characters 4; plot 3; pace 4; writing 4; enjoyment 4
My review:
I never expected to read a mystery/thriller and come out sad on the other end.
If you like a closed in thriller, this book (sans the prologue/epilogue) all takes place in the same country house in the middle of nowhere. In winter. During a blizzard. It definitely ramped up the creep factor and the sense of foreboding. I think the atmosphere was done very well.
Character wise, I didn’t really like any of them. Eleanor was kind of a bitch who I had a hard time feeling sorry for, and Sam was an absolute wet blanket of a character. That being said, just because I didn’t like them, didn’t mean they weren’t done well. Because they were. They very much were exactly who they needed to be for the story to work.
As for the mystery, it was okay. There wasn’t really anything that absolutely shocked or surprised me. The end reveal wasn’t one I had expected but once it hit the page I was like, “okay, that makes sense”. Nothing like a “HOLY FUCK WTF JUST HAPPENED!” which is what I’m always looking for in a mystery/Thriller.
I want to talk spoilers for a minute: My original guess was that Vivienne & her husband had let Annika get pregnant and then they took her baby and Kiki and then killed their moms. Because like, surely Annika, the only fucking character that I was actually rooting for wasn’t going to become this absolute shit-hole of a woman. But she did and I really didn’t appreciate that part.
Also, when it came to that final showdown in the past, I don’t know why they didn’t just tell the police. I never get why people don’t just call the dang police in this situation. It easily could have been explained by “My with was sick with grief over losing another baby, she thought I was having an affair with our Maid. She shot her. She was going to kill the other maid because she was there too, the stable boy knocked her the fuck out and killed her.” I get that they said the cops wouldn’t believe them because she was this “well to do” lady. But you think in the 1950’s the middle-aged white guy isn’t going to have the most pull here? Had they just done this, Annika would have been free to be Annika. And she wouldn’t have had to become an absolute nightmare.
Also, also, there is no world where-in I believe that Kiki’s aunt wouldn’t have asked for her. She knew where her sister was working. They LIVED TOGETHER. She would have known something was up when she didn’t return when she was supposed to. She would have went looking for her sister and niece and I don’t believe that she would have just been like “Oh no, you’re right. You should raise this kid you don’t know because you have money.” I understand it happens but it just didn’t feel right to me.
All of that being said. I did enjoy the book. I had a good time being creeped out with the suspense and trying to put all of the pieces together. The ending was just okay. I didn’t love it and I wish some things could have been different. I would pick up more from this author in the future.
I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in an exchange for an honest review.