Review by tiasreads - The Lost House

tiasreads 's review for:

The Lost House by Melissa Larsen

3.75

dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Thanks to NetGalley and Minotaur Books for the ARC of this book. All opinions are my own.

In Melissa Larsen’s atmospheric Nordic noir, The Lost House, main character Agnes travels to a small village in Iceland to solve the 40-year-old murder of her grandmother and infant aunt. Did her grandfather do it, as the townspeople believe? Is the recent disappearance of a college student from her family’s abandoned house related?

This story was a slow burn, but kept me interested the whole time. While Agnes isn’t exactly an unreliable narrator, she’s not entirely reliable either, for reasons the reader discovers along the way. I felt deeply for her, even as I cringed at the mistakes and bad decisions. There is a lot of generational trauma and trigger warnings abound.

I did think the podcast element wasn’t used to its potential; that was one of the big draws for me from the blurb I read. Also, the pacing was a little uneven, dragging in a few places when the author got bogged down in too much description or got too deep in Agnes’ feelings.

Overall, though, I thought this was a decent mystery and I rated it 3.75 stars. It’s a good read for a cold winter’s day.

Content Warnings