What if every face you see is just a white blank, even the face of the person you just saw murdering your grandmother? This is the nightmare that Eleanor lives every day with her condition called prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Five months after her grandmother Vivianne's murder, she gets a call from a lawyer that the estate in Sweden, called Solhöga, has been left to her. She and her boyfriend, Sebastian, her aunt Veronika, and the lawyer Rickard visit the dark and imposing mansion to inventory the assets. From the first, Eleanor feels uneasy, like she's being watched. Several times she sees a shadowy figure watching her outside. Is it just her imagination, or could it just be the missing groundskeeper? No one believes her, but unexplainable events keep happening. What happened here fifty years ago that caused the mansion to be abandoned?
This was a good mystery, creepy enough, but it didn't have that punch of dark haunting dread that I felt when reading her debut novel The Lost Village. I just recently read another book about prosopagnosia, but this book did better at using the condition to add to the creepiness of the story. While most women would feel comfort having their boyfriend with them for protection, Sebastian seemed whiny and spineless, making Eleanor seem even stronger by comparison. He just didn't seem that sympathetic to her situation. Overall, I liked this thriller and I love the author's writing style. I look forward to reading more of her spine-tingling fiction in future.
Thank you to the publisher St. Martin's Press for sending me an early copy of this chilling new book! I received an advance reader copy of this book through NetGalley. The views and opinions expressed in this review are completely my own and given voluntarily.
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