Absolutely spellbinding, The Lost Village will have you sleeping with the lights on, double checking your doors and windows, and jumping at every unexpected sound, and that is assuming you can actually put the book down! Camilla Sten has concocted an incredible recipe that combines mystery, thriller, horror, and ghost story, all in equal parts and has created something brilliant.
Alice is a documentary film maker (or at least wants to be) and has always been obsessed with her grandmother’s old stories about the village of Silvertjarn that one day in 1959 simply disappeared, leaving only a newborn baby, and the corpse of a woman who was stoned to death in the center of the village. Alice’s grandmother’s parents and younger sister were among those villagers that disappeared and now that her grandmother has passed away, Alice believes the only way to get some resolution for all of her unanswered questions it to go to Silvertjarn and make a movie to try to explain what really happened sixty years ago.
Along with four of her friends and colleagues, Alice has planned a short trip to do some preliminary filming in hopes of getting some financial backing for her planned documentary. Nothing about this trip, however, goes as planned and almost as soon as they arrive misfortune begins to befall the group, in both natural and unexplained ways.
Filled with creepy imagery, happenings with no rational cause, and a constant cloud of mystery, The Lost Village will have readers glued to the page from beginning to end. Just as the makers of The Blair Witch Project understood, Camilla Sten proves that what you can’t see is always so much scarier than what you can see.
Sten puts the puzzle pieces together for the reader in a gradual way, interspersing chapters that take place in the late 1950’s leading up to the mysterious disappearance with what is happening present day with Alice and her group of friends. Never allowing time to relax, Sten gut-punches the reader more than once, but also provides a climax that is both exciting and satisfying. I can not recommend The Lost Village highly enough and am eagerly awaiting what Camilla Sten does next!
The Lost Village is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of March 23rd 2021.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.
Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.
But there will be no turning back.
Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:
They are not alone.
They’re looking for the truth…
But what if it finds them first?
