Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - The Lost Village

full thoughts: https://fictionmajorette.blogspot.com/2021/02/the-lost-village-camilla-sten.html

The first thing I'd like to address is that there are some really heavy topics/tropes used in this book that center around disability and mental health. I know this content may be divisive for readers, but in my reading experience I thought they were handled well. In both cases, the characters involved were treated with empathy and had other characters advocating for them. However, both cases did have the characters being blamed for bad things happening and in one case are treated pretty horrifically because of this.

The pacing of this book was phenomenal. I would categorize this as a straight-up thriller and it has been a while since I've read one of those (most of my reads end up being mystery with a bit of thriller at the end). Once you get past the set up, creepy stuff starts happening pretty much immediately. There's a bit of a question at the beginning as to if there's something supernatural going on but that is quickly rejected once more concrete threats happen. I was expecting this book to be much more creepy and atmospheric (which is what it started out as) so I was surprised when it took a turn where the characters are focusing on surviving this outside threat until they can either go get help or help arrives.

This book is a split timeline with chapters showing us the months in the past leading up to the villagers disappearing. These chapters in the past are much more quiet and disconcerting once we get an inkling to what is going on. They work as a nice balance between the more direct threat in the present day. It was also interesting where the present day characters would find something and then that same thing was discussed in the past. The chapters in the past are a bit short so the reader is quickly put back into the present timeline but the information we find out in the past really helps ramp up the tension in the book because the reader knows how the village ends up but no one ever figured out why or how almost 900 people just disappeared.

For all the tension and build up, I did find the actual reveal at the end regarding what happened to the villagers to be a bit more basic than I was expecting. I think the reveal made sense but was the most obvious (at least to me) option. I was hoping the real answer would be something a bit more unexpected or have a twist on what I was expecting. I think I feel this way because I guessed the ending about halfway through and thought there's no way that's it. So maybe if other readers don't guess, then maybe the ending would have been more of a surprise. I do feel that the ending was well hinted at and developed, I just wanted something a big more surprising at the end. The reveal about what is happening to the characters in present day was interesting and a bit surprising. This part, I felt does ask the reader to suspend some disbelief which I've seen some reviews feel this part got into plot hole territory. I personally liked how we didn't get too much detail into the how and why because our main characters weren't concerned with the details since they were busy trying to stay alive so it felt like the reader was in that situation as well.

I really enjoyed the character building in this story. We're following a 5 person film crew in present day and the web of connections and relationships was really interesting. They are all interconnected so when things start to go south on their trip, it really heightened the danger/suspense for me. I enjoyed how some of the connections we knew right from the beginning but others were slowly revealed over the course of the story which was really fun. Sten did a great job showing the reader the tension between some characters and hinted at something happening in the past which, again, ended up as a source of tension later in the story when stress levels were high.

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the ARC.

Expected publication date: March 23, 2021.

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