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3.5 There is something that really captured my interest in this story and I am not quite sure what that was. The prose is unsentimental, almost detached and the characters were all multi-layered and complex. There was as much going on under the surface as there was in the face they presented to each Leggi tutto

Mystery and threat and gothic, haunting imagery mixed with quotidian life in a slightly foreign/slightly familiar environment. A momentum that had me racing through the story and yet I didn't read it as fast as I might have: several times I put the book down to let things reverberate (it was too goo Leggi tutto

Nordic Noir can be pretty tough slogging but it is usually leavened by the mystery. This is Nordic Noir without the mystery. Which means it is just a tough slog. I am not of the school that believes I have to "relate" to the characters in a novel nor am I the least put off if I can't "identify" with Leggi tutto

Why do we read? Why do I read? It's a question I ask myself over and over again while reading. What makes a book the end-all, be-all for me? Sometimes my sister and I have a conversation where we bond intensely over things. She says a line that rings so true with me (and why would it not? We have a s Leggi tutto

Me gusta como escribe pero la historia en sí no ha llegado a captar mi interés. Podría haber metido veinte páginas más y tener al menos un final decente y tampoco... 2/5

A fantastic read! I was absolutely mesmerized by Linn Ullmann's thriller about a dysfunctional family and how they each react to the murder of 19-year old Milla, a summer nanny for Jon Dreyer and his wife, Siri. This novel delves deeply into the marriage and the painful betrayals (on the part of Jo

I just finished The Cold Song and I really don’t know what to say about it. This book was intense and it made me feel tense while reading it. From the goodreads description we know that Milla the nanny disappears and is killed, but I was expecting the plot to lead up that happening. This is not the Leggi tutto

This is a very odd book. It's not really a murder mystery, although there is a murder, and there is a hunt for a body. From almost the beginning, the whodunnit question has already been answered. The rest of the book is devoted to the circumstances surrounding the event and is told (again and again) Leggi tutto

I won this book as part of the Goodreads First Reads program. It did not influence my rating or review. There was much I liked about The Cold Song . The writing is simple, solid, and flows well, making for an extremely quick read. The characters are complex and realistic. I never felt like they were m Leggi tutto

This novel wins first prize for the lamest book ending, to me, this year. Parts of the story were very insightful, especially the parts about the disturbing reality of young girls and the woes of a dysfunctional marriage. But much of the prose was just okay. Maybe it was simply due to a flawed trans Leggi tutto