Review: You Can’t See Me, by Eva Bjorg AEgisdottir

The wealthy, powerful Snæberg clan has gathered for a family reunion at a futuristic hotel set amongst the dark lava flows of Iceland’s remote Snæfellsnes peninsula.

Petra Snæberg, a successful interior designer, is anxious about the event, and her troubled teenage daughter, Lea, whose social media presence has attracted the wrong kind of followers. Ageing carpenter Tryggvi is an outsider, only tolerated because he’s the boyfriend of Petra’s aunt, but he’s struggling to avoid alcohol because he knows what happens when he drinks … Humble hotel employee, Irma, is excited to meet this rich and famous family and observe them at close quarters … perhaps too close…

As the weather deteriorates and the alcohol flows, one of the guests disappears, and it becomes clear that there is a prowler lurking in the dark.

But is the real danger inside … within the family itself?

My Review

Thanks to Anne for organising this blog tour, and to the rest of the team at Orenda for my copy of this book. Yes, I have got the Goldsboro Books hardback on pre-order. Obviously! I have all of the Forbidden Iceland books in hardback and I see no reason not to add this one to my collection.

This book is set in the winter before Elma returns to Akranes. It features Saevar and Hordur, her future colleagues, investigating a death at a remote hotel. But the story is really about the fabulously wealthy Snaeburg clan, gathered for a family reunion at the hotel. Someone has died, but who? And why?

The story is told from the perspectives of Petra Snaeburg, and her teenaged daughter Lea; Tryggvi, Petra’s Aunt Oddny’s partner; Irma, a hotel employee, and Saevar, the detective. We follow the Snaeburg’s over their weekend, and interspersed in Saevar’s investigation. We learn the family’s secrets and their desperation that no one outside the family should ever find out, including the police.

The opening scene sets the reader up to believe a woman will be murdered in the snow. It’s not at all what you think. They may not even be a murder, although events in the past precipitate a death. There is some resolution for the characters who survive, the answer to a decades old mystery and release for those who are haunted by it, although not for Saevar.

I kept thinking it must be this character who dies and that one commits the murder, then I thought it must be someone else, and then someone else again. And I was wrong every time. So much glorious misdirection and confusion! The complex twisting of the plot lines together, introducing one character after another and the revelation of their past connections, and the motivations for their actions, kept me thoroughly intrigued and entertained.

The characters of Lea, Petra and Irma are really clear and others come through from their interactions with them, especially Victor, Ester and Steffy, although Tryggvi is a bit less clear; he has his secrets and keeps things to himself even when the story is written from his perspective. He sees and understands things as an outsider in the family. It’s only as events come to a head that he realises he has a connection with them that no one knows; an terrible anniversary that haunts him and drives him to drink.

The steadily worsening weather and increasingly bad behaviour of the Snaeburg family mirrors the tension building between the various characters, while the reader is left grasping for answers every time the book moves between the events in the hotel and the investigation. Nothing is quite what it seems and the tension ramps up, barely letting go until we get some answers.

As ever the writing is skilful, and I think the author might be getting better with practice. I’m not being snarky or anything, I genuinely think this book is better written than the first book by Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir that I read, Girls Who Lie, in 2021, and I liked that one so much I read the first book in the series, The Creak On The Stairs later the same year(I missed out on the blog tour for that one in 2020, did an extract post instead). I’ve also read book three, Night Shadows, from 2022. They’re all good. Highly recommend the series if you’re into Icelandic Noir.

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ABOUT EVA BJÖRG ÆGISDÓTTIR

Born in Akranes in 1988, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland to write her first novel. Combining writing with work as a stewardess and caring for her children, Eva finished her debut thriller The Creak on the Stairs, which was published in 2018. It became a bestseller in Iceland, going on to win the Blackbird Award. Published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, it became a digital number-one bestseller in three countries, was shortlisted for the Capital Crime/Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories and won the CWA John Creasey Dagger in 2021. Girls Who Lie, the second book in the Forbidden Iceland series was shortlisted for the Petrona Award and the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, and Night Shadows followed suit. With over 200,000 copies sold in English alone, Eva has become one of Iceland’s – and crime fiction’s – most highly regarded authors. She lives in Reykjavik with her husband and three children.