Admittedly I don't read a ton of thrillers so I might just not be the right audience for this one, but I wanted to buy a book by an Icelandic author while in Iceland and the premise of this one really intrigued me. There were some really good, spooky moments throughout and I was very into the mystery of how these all connected as I read this one, especially as we alternate perspectives between the investigation of these mysterious deaths after the fact and the point of view of one of the young women we know to have gone missing, which I thought was very effective. In general, each perspective was pretty interesting and had its own spooky moments and good descriptions. I think my issue with this one was just not feeling satisfied by how all these story lines came together in the end. There was so much build-up that I was really expecting something cool and cohesive when all the plotlines converged, but The Prey didn't really deliver on this. It felt more like random happenstance connected some of the plot lines together rather than something more satisfying. Other plotlines were definitely better connected, but with the amount going on in this book and how long it took to get to the conclusion, I expected more and what we got fell flat for me. The writing style was also very big on telling rather than showing--this might be a result of The Prey being a translated work, but it still wasn't my favorite to be spoon-fed all this information about the characters that I could've inferred from their actions anyways.

I also didn't love the reveal at the end that all of this happened just because this one human guy kind of sucks... since there were supernatural elements, I really wanted one big, connected supernatural threat to tie together each story line, not this random guy. I also just felt like his perspective was so brief that it couldn't really make him all that interesting or really explore why he's like this or anything like that. It was just a disappointment to me personally, rather than coming off as a clever, well-fitting twist.

Overall, I don't think The Prey was bad by any means, and there were plenty of strong points! The atmosphere and description of setting were great, and I always love the danger of a barren, freezing landscape and the isolation it provides in horror. The ending was just disappointing for me and I'm not huge on thrillers/mysteries to begin with.