PUBLICATION DATE: 17th JULY 2025
HARDBACK ORIGINAL | £ 16. 99 | ORENDA BOOKS
November, 1967, Iceland.
Fourteen-year-old Marsí has a secret penpal – a boy who lives on the other side of the country – but she has been writing to him in her older sister’s name. Now she is excited to meet him for the first time.
But when the date arrives, Marsí is prevented from going, and during
the night her sister Stína goes missing – her bloodstained anorak later
found at the place where Marsí and her penpal had agreed to meet.
November, 1977.
Stína’s disappearance remains unsolved. Then an
unexpected letter arrives for Marsí It’s from her penpal, and he’s still
out there…
Desperate for news of her missing sister, but terrified that he might
coming after her next, Marsí returns to her hometown and embarks on
an investigation of her own.
But Marsí has always had trouble distinguishing her vivid dreams from
reality, and as insomnia threatens her sanity, it seems she can’t even
trust her own memories.
And her sister’s killer is still on the loose…
My Review
Thanks to the team at Orenda Books for my copy of this book, and to Anne Cater for organising the blog tour. I promise I’ll do my best to remember to share it on Blue Sky.
In November 1967 Kristin Karvelsdottir disappears on the same night her younger sister, Marsibil, had arranged to meet up with her penpal, Bergur. In November 1977 Marsi, now 25, returns home from Reykjavik for the anniversary of her sister’s disappearance. She can’t settle, certain that it’s her fault her sister has disappeared. With an old friend of her sister, Gusti, they look into the disappearance for themselves, after a journalist implies that the police didn’t do their best back in the day.
Marsi discovers secrets from the past that changes everything for her. Extending her visit, Marsi visits the local cafe-bar, and sees things she doesn’t realise are important at the time. After getting seriously drunk, and driven home by Gusti, Marsi finds out that a 19-year-old Danish woman has been found dead at the same place Kristen disappeared, and a note for Marsi was found by her body.
The book alternates between 1967 and 1977, from Kristin and Marsibil’s perspectives. We learn that things were much more complicated than Marsi realised and that her pen pal was much closer that she thought.
Marsi is a complicated character with some serious mental health problems, while her parents seem to be the cause of these struggles. There are dark secrets in their home. Kristen is a typical teenager, having fun in a small town, and cares about her sister. Kristen is a talented artist, like their mother.
While Marsi has few friends, Kristen has a small group of close friends, some she’s known for years and some for a few months by the time she disappears. There are tensions within the group, but Kristen navigates it with the help of her art teacher, Ivar. Kristen finds a project to focus on, investigating the history of the house where her evening art class is held, and one of the girls who lived there in 1943.
Look, there’s a lot in this novel, and I really want to tell you all about it, but I can’t, because no spoilers. But it’s a twisty-turny twisting-turning thing. Marsi has a limited understanding of events in the present and the past, made more difficult by her mental health issues and insomnia. The rumours and gossip in town add to her confusion. Marsi starts to drink heavily and self-harm as she tries to sort out what’s going on. This really increases the tension in the novel.
I started reading this book and only got a couple of pages in, but life got in the way, then I spent a day reading, and finished it in a few hours. I couldn’t put it down, and enjoyed it immensely. Eva Bjorg Aegisdottir has written another fantastic psychological thriller.
Author Bio
Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel.
Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestseller in Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.
Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel. You Can’t See Me won the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023.
In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key. The Forbidden Iceland series has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in eighteen languages with more than a million copies sold.
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