I’ll tell you one thing: this was not the book to start the New Year with.

The author has written books for children, and this is her first book for adults. The book is an extremely slow-burn thriller where a 17-year-old Jennifer goes missing on New Year’s Eve 2018. The book is set in Skåne, Sweden. We follow three POV characters: Lollo (Jennifer’s mother), Nina (Lollo’s friend and mother of 17-year-old Smilla, who was Jennifer’s friend) and Fredrik (Nina’s husband).

It’s clear from the start that Fredrik has something to hide. Nina knows there’s something wrong with her husband but can’t quite figure out what it is. Lollo blames herself for Jennifer’s disappearance. Each of the characters has a very similar voice, and it would be hard to tell them apart unless the chapters were named after them. On top of that, none of the characters in this book is very likeable. And I found their names absolutely terrible. Lollo? Vilgot?

Slowly, we start to find out what has happened to Jennifer. Mostly, we just follow the three POV characters trying to navigate the complex emotions the situation has caused. This book is translated from Swedish, so it’s hard to tell whether this is an intentional part of the author’s original style, but the translated version has so many idioms that it’s almost painful to read at times, and some of the words choices seemed odd. The other thing that felt excessive was the amount of questions in the characters’ inner monologue. Why is this happening? Does he have something to do with this? Did I remember to feed the dog? When will the police do something? Do I look fat in this dress? How many drinks did I have at the party? It just goes on and on… 

On top of that, there were a few things that didn’t seem quite right to me. Nina has a six-year-old son, but he feels younger in the text. This seems odd, considering that the author has children of her own and writes for children. At one point, one of the characters loses their jacket, and the explanation is that perhaps the wind blew it away. A winter jacket? 

The characters felt shallow, and I didn’t care much for any of them. This book is so slow, and I felt frustrated because not much happened in the first half. At that point, I thought I had figured out what had happened, but I was mistaken. 

We spent most of the book thinking that maybe Fredrik had done it. He was certainly guild-ridden enough and tried to hide his involvement. But as it turns out, he didn’t do it, so why did he try to distract the police? The events that are implied in the text are guaranteed to reduce his sympathy points from the reader quite a bit. Eventually, it is revealed that Jennifer is his daughter, the result of an affair. I don’t think the reveal is done very well. There are so many options for what the author could have done with this information.

But the biggest let-down is the actual killer. We spend the entire book following three pointless people while the real culprit slides under the radar. If there are hints pointing to them, they were so subtle that I missed them completely. The ending felt very disappointing, especially when all the evidence pointed to Fredrik.