Reviews - The Lost House | The StoryGraph

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Agnes Glin travels from California to Iceland to investigate the gruesome murders of her grandmother Marie and her infant daughter 40 years earlier. The case was never solved, but most people suspect that Einar, Agnes’ grandfather, killed his wife and daughter. Agnes’ beloved grandfather has died but she wants to clear his name so connects with Nora Carver, a true crime podcaster who has helped solve another case. Will Agnes be able to prove her grandfather’s innocence or will she only confirm what virtually everyone in the town of Bifröst already believes?

There are a couple of complications. Agnes has a dependence on pain medication after a major injury to her leg. Then, just as Agnes arrives in Iceland, a university student named Ása has gone missing in Bifröst after a party at Agnes’ ancestral home. Are the cases connected?

I found Agnes an unlikeable character and so had difficulty caring about what happens to her. She’s 26 years of age, but she seems very immature. Before arriving in Iceland and despite warnings from her father, it never occurred to her that her grandfather might be guilty? She’s in Iceland for two weeks in February, but doesn’t buy gloves to protect her hands from the cold? She is very self-centred, showing little consideration for other people’s struggles or emotions. She stays with Nora but not once offers to help with things like meals? Despite her life-altering injury, she doesn’t take care of herself; over and over again, she pushes her body beyond its limits and then seems shocked by the pain she experiences. She makes rash decisions without considering possible consequences; these seem choices more appropriate to a teenager. Though we are to believe she undergoes some character growth at the end of the novel, I wasn’t convinced.

The male characters feel underdeveloped, more like flat characters with one dominant trait: Óskar is hostile, Ingvar is sweet, Thor Senior is antagonistic, etc. And what’s with Óskar’s belief in a murder gene; he’s a university student so supposedly intelligent but thinks Agnes needs to be watched and calls her “’murderer’s child’”!

Pacing is an issue. Not much happens, especially in the middle of the plot. There are just a lot of conversations which are repetitive and reveal little new information. And so much else is repetitive; since so much of the narrative is Agnes’ interior monologue, there are repeated references to her injury, her struggles with opiate addiction, her fractured relationship with her father, and her feelings for Lilja. There is action at the end of the book, but readers might be tempted to stop reading before reaching the action-packed section.

There are plot issues. The author seems not to have researched Iceland’s weather very carefully because blizzards are not likely to happen so often and so conveniently in a two-week span. And where’s the reference to the Northern Lights since February is the best month to see them there? The search for Ása is so uncoordinated and no one thinks of a cellar in a farmhouse? Agnes, not once but twice, somehow finds herself at the back of houses? And what’s with the unnecessary romantic relationship, especially one which relies on the love-at-first-sight trope? Finally and most importantly, there is no great reveal because the plot is predictable. The repeated references to people’s ages give any astute reader the answer very early on.

I understand this is not the author’s first novel, but with its plot weaknesses it feels very much like a debut book.

Note: I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley.

lavenderravenpuff's review

5.0

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

reposefulreads's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

In an effort to possibly clear the name of her grandfather for a grisly crime and to escape the unstable remnants of her life, Agnes travels to her family’s remote former home in Bifröst, Iceland to be interviewed by podcaster Nora Carver for her true crime podcast.

The Lost House intertwines a mystery of the past with an unexpected disappearance in the present and provides a compelling and flawed character in its protagonist Agnes. Agnes struggles with her conflicted feelings related to her beloved-and somewhat infamous grandfather-as well as the effects of addiction and impulsive decisions.

The frigid and snowy town of Bifröst is an isolating and at times, dangerous location and helps to increase the tension as secrets are revealed and the possibility of escape becomes increasingly minuscule. Nora’s presence within The Lost House also illustrates how the influence of a true crime element can sometimes play both a helpful and hindering role in relation to a case.

The narration by Saskia Maarleveld is wonderful, I especially appreciated the pronunciations of names and places. I was hanging on every word, especially as events began to escalate.

The Lost House is a slow-burning and gripping story. Of the two mysteries, the resolution of only one of them surprised me, but I enjoyed learning I was correct in my assumptions.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing access to this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

Content Warnings

danubooks's review

4.75

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

She is compelled to discover the truth about her family's past

Forty years ago a violent murder ripped apart the fabric of a small Icelandic town, The bodies of a young mother, beloved local teacher Marie, and her infant daughter Agnes were discovered in the fields outside of Bifröst four days after they went missing. It was clear that Marie was murdered; her throat was cut wide open. Suspicion immediately fell upon her husband Einar, a professor at the local university, and although he was never charged with the crime he was quickly branded a murderer in the court of public opinion, ultimately having no choice but to take his remaining child, a nine year old boy named Magnús, and leave Iceland to start a new life in California. Nora Carver, a true crime podcaster who has recently had success in contributing to a cold case being solved, has been fascinated by the crime which became known as "the Frozen Madonna and Child" for years and has chosen it as the subject for the upcoming season of her show. She is in Iceland, in Bifröst, to begin her investigation and has reached out unsuccessfully to Magnús for an interview. Magnús's daughter Agnes, however, has agreed to travel to Iceland to spend time there and be interviewed by Nora, much to her father's chagrin. Agnes is at a very low point in her life. The grandfather whom she loved deeply and who lived most of his adult life under a cloud of suspicion, died a year ago; shortly thereafter, she had an accident which shattered a leg and which led to multiple surgeries and PT but from which she still suffers from significant pain. She is out of work, addicted to pain pills, and her girlfriend Emi and she broke up three months earlier. Growing up, it was her grandfather Einar to whom she was closest (her parents divorced, her mother remarried and moved across the country and her father is emotionally distant). Agnes believes that he was innocent of having murdered his wife and child (her grandmother and aunt), but it is a subject which neither Einar nor Magnús would ever discuss. She arrives in Bifröst to discover that a new drama has arisen there, the disappearance of university student Ása from a party held at the farmhouse where Einar and his young family had lived decades earlier. Nora is looking into that crime as well as the one involving Agnes' family, and there does seem to be a connection between the two. Emotionally fragile and out of her depth in a town which still believe in her grandfather's guilt, can Agnes find out the truth of what happened forty years earlier? Could the grandfather she loved deeply and who was the main source of warmth and love in her life actually be guilty after all?
Set primarily in the bleak winter landscape of a small Icelandic town, where everyone knows everyone else (and their family stories as well), there is an element of Nordic Noir to this latest novel by Melissa Larsen. The main character, Agnes, is a bit of a mess; in near constant pain unless she takes the pain pills to which she is clearly addicted, adrift after the loss first of her grandfather and more recently Emi, and at odds with her father over her decision to travel to Iceland and participate in Nora's podcast. Magnús does not feel that anything good will come of the investigation (he has always believed his father to be guilty of killing his mother and baby sister), and continues to be a disapproving figure to Agnes as he has been for years. As Agnes meets the locals....Thor, a distant relation who owns the house where Nora and now Agnes are staying; Ingvar, the man who as a young boy was a student of Marie and was the one who discovered her body; Óskar and Lilja, friends of the missing Ása who have not been entirely candid with the police...she becomes caught up in the current mystery even as she tries to make sense of what she is learning about Einar from those who knew him and have judged him guilty. As much a search for identity as it is an intriguing puzzle, my attention was grabbed at the very beginning and did not waver until the end. Possible villains in both the past and present are revealed and the damage left behind on a community years ago by one crime even as they struggle to deal with another in the present is explored, as the plot gradually unfolds. Readers of Larsen's previous book Shutter (which I also enjoyed and highly recommend) and authors like Hannah Morrissey, Vanessa Lillie and Carol Goodman as well as those who enjoy Nordic Noir should pick up a copy of this haunting story. Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press/Minotaur Books for allowing me access to The Lost House in exchange for my honest review.

kstoczanyn's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I was so interested in the story for the first 40% and then it meandered a bit. The podcast element just wasn’t part of the book like I imagined and that whole piece really was nonexistent. The ending picked up again, but that switch in the focus lost me for a while.