The Lost Village: A Novel

By Camilla Sten

*BEST MYSTERY/THRILLER FOR THE YEAR* for NPR

"Come for the mounting horror and scares, but stay for a devastating examination of the nature of family secrets." - New York Times book review

"[A] scary, highly entertaining debut...that pays homage to Shirley Jackson." - South Florida Sun Sentinel

A Most Anticipated Book Goodreads * Publishers Weekly * Crime Reads * Popsugar * Bookish * #1 Loanstar Pick in Canada

An Indie Next pick!

A Library Reads Pick!

The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.

But there will be no turning back.

Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:

They are not alone.

They’re looking for the truth…
But what if it finds them first?

Come find out.

"RELENTLESSLY CREEPY." —Alma Katsu, author of The Hunger (An NPR Best Horror Novel)

"IMPOSSIBLE TO STOP READING." —Ragnar Jonasson, author of The Island

"Readers will revel in the chills." - Booklist

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781250249265

Camilla Sten

CAMILLA STEN (she/her) has been writing stories since she was a young girl. In 2019, Camilla published the now internationally acclaimed, hair-raising novel, The Lost Village. Rights for The Lost Village have been sold to nineteen territories around the world including film and TV. Her third novel for adults, The Resting Place, was one of Goodreads Most Popular Horror of 2022 and the same year Camilla was longlisted for the prestigious Viktor Crime Award in Germany. An ever prolific author, Camilla has released the third part in her YA series and continues to write new crime novels.

Book preview

TUESDAY

NOW

I’m woken by a shrill crackling noise that takes me from dozing to a dazed wakefulness in the blink of an eye.

As I sit up and bat the sleep out of my eyes, I see Tone reach out and turn off the radio. The crackling immediately disappears, replaced by the dull hum of the engine and the pent-up silence of the van.

What was that? I ask, running my fingers through my hair.

The radio’s been acting up for a few miles, Tone says. It jumped from dad rock to dance band, and then it just started crackling.

Must be the start of the dead zone, I say, feeling a fizz of excitement in my belly.

I take my phone out of my pocket, realizing as I do that it’s much later than I’d thought.

I still have signal, but only just, I say. I’ll post one last update before we lose it completely.

I log in to Instagram and take a quick shot of the sun-drenched evening road ahead.

How does this sound? I ask. ‘Getting closer! Almost inside the dead zone. See you in five days, if the ghosts don’t get us.…’

Tone grimaces.

Might be a bit much, she says.

They’re gonna love it, I say, clicking POST. Then, after checking that it has shared to both Twitter and Facebook, I put the phone back in my pocket.

Our fans eat that stuff up, I go on. Ghosts and horror films and shit. It’s our best unique selling proposition.

Our fans, Tone quips. All eleven of them.

I roll my eyes, but can’t deny that it hurts. The joke cuts a little too close to the bone.

Tone doesn’t notice. Her eyes are still fixed on the road. It’s empty and anonymous, a flat highway with neither bends nor turnoffs. Tall, impenetrable conifers enclose us on either side, and to our left the blazing sun drifts deeper into a bleeding sky that bathes us and the forest in its hue.

The exit should be pretty soon, she says. We’re starting to get close.

Would you like me to take over? I ask. I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I don’t know what happened.

Tone gives a tight, closed-mouth smile.

If you were up till four a.m. going through everything then it isn’t such a surprise, she says, without answering my question about taking over at the wheel.

I can’t tell if she means it as a dig or not.

No, I agree, I guess not.

Still, I am surprised. I’d thought that same tingling, feverish excitement that has kept me up the past few nights would prevent me from falling asleep here, too.

I cast a glance in the wing mirror and see the other white van that Emmy and the technician are driving immediately behind us. Max’s blue Volvo is just visible at the back of the caravan.

Is that excitement or anxiety I feel squirming inside me?

The intense light stains my white, cable-knit sweater a fiery red, and throws Tone’s face into a sharp silhouette. She’s one of those people who’s more beautiful in profile than front-on, with her enviably chiseled jawline and straight patrician nose. I’ve never seen her wearing any makeup, which makes me feel both ridiculous and exceptionally vain, especially as I’ve just had highlights put in to turn my naturally matte, wastewater hair into a cold, lustrous blond. This, despite it costing almost nine hundred kronor that I don’t have—not to mention the fact that I’m not even going to be in any of the footage we’re shooting over the next five days.

I did it for me. To settle my nerves. And we do need photos, I guess, for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and the blog. To give our few—but enthusiastic—fans and backers something to whet their appetites, keep that fire burning.

I have a musty taste in my mouth after my nap. Eyeing up the plastic cup Tone got at the gas station in the cup holder, I ask:

What’s in there?

Coke. Have some if you want, she says, adding that it’s Zero before I can even ask.

I pick up the cup and take a few big gulps of the flat, tepid drink. It’s not particularly refreshing, but I’m thirstier than I thought.

There, says Tone suddenly, and slows down.

The old exit doesn’t exist on GPS, as we discovered when trying to plan our route. We’ve had to use old maps from the forties and fifties, cross-referencing them with the Swedish Transport Administration’s archive on where the train tracks used to run when trains still puffed their way up to the village twice a week. Max is good with maps, and he guaranteed us that this was where the road would be. But it’s only now, as Tone slows to a crawl to take the narrow, almost completely overgrown exit that was once the only road to the village, that I start to feel sure.

The van coasts along for a while and then comes to a halt. I look at Tone, thrown.

What is it? I ask.

She’s even paler than normal, her freckles glowing against her wan skin. Her small mouth looks like a dash across her face, and her hands are clenched tightly around the wheel.

Tone? I ask, quieter this time.

At first she says nothing, just sits there staring quietly into the trees.

I just never thought I’d see it, she says softly.

I put my hand on her arm. Under the lightweight fabric of her long-sleeved T-shirt, her muscles are coiled up tightly like springs.

Would you like me to drive? I ask.

By now the others have stopped, too. The second van is right behind us, with Max’s blue Volvo presumably bringing up the rear.

Tone lets go of the wheel and leans back slightly.

Might be a good idea, she says. And then, without looking at me, she undoes her seat belt, opens the door, and jumps out.

I follow her lead: I unfasten my seat belt, jump out of the van, and walk around to the other side. The outside air comes as a shock, clear and fresh and very cold. It cuts right through my thick sweater, even in the absence of any wind.

By the time I climb into the driver’s seat, Tone has already fastened her seat belt. I wait for her to say something, but nothing comes. So I cautiously put my foot on the gas, and we pull off down the half-overgrown road.

An almost solemn silence descends on the car. Once we’re swallowed up by the trees, which seem to stoop down over us on the narrow road, the sound of Tone’s voice in the sudden semidarkness makes me jump.

Plus it’s only fitting that you should drive into the place. I mean, this is your project. You’re the one who wanted to come here. Right?

I snatch a glance at her out of the corner of my eye, but try to keep my attention on maneuvering the unwieldy van over gnarled roots and stones.

I guess, I say.

It’s a good thing we went for the extra insurance with the rentals; this is definitely not the terrain these vans were made for. But we needed them to get all of our equipment up here, and the cross-country vehicles were so eye-wateringly expensive that just one day’s rental would have blown our budget several times over.

We drive on in silence. As the minutes pass and we go deeper and deeper into the forest, it hits me just how isolated this small community must have been. From what Grandma said, only some of the villagers had a car, so the train was their only real connection to civilization, and that only ran twice a week. If it’s taken us this long to get here in our vans, it must have been a completely different world when the only option for getting out of town was to walk this entire stretch.

We drive past a small track that winds off into the forest. At first I wonder if I’ve missed a turnoff, but then I realize it must be the road that led to the mine. I carry on ahead, inching over undergrowth and fallen branches. The van grumbles and moans, but battles on.

Just when I start to worry that we’ve gotten it wrong—that this was just a forest path, a walking trail, and that we’ll keep on driving further and further into the forest, until we get mired in the weight of our vans and equipment, our stupidity and ambition—the trees open up like a miracle before our eyes.

There, I whisper, more to myself than to Tone.

It buoys me enough to speed up a little, just a little, and I feel the blood pumping through my veins as the fiery April sky swells before us.

We exit the forest onto a steep bank. And there it is, at the bottom of a valley that isn’t so much a valley as a slight depression in the ground.

The church looms large over the small buildings on the eastern side of the village, its tall, proud spire topped by a slender cross that glistens, impossibly bright, in the light of the setting sun. The houses look almost as if they’ve sprouted from the church like little mushrooms, falling and moldering to form walls and silhouettes along the coppery-red river running down to the small woodland lake that gave the village its name: silvertjärn, silver tarn. It may well have been silver at one point, but now it sits, glossy and black, like an aged secret. The mining company’s report stated that the lake had never been searched, nor had they been able to find any information on its depth. For all we know it could stretch all the way down to the groundwater. Bottomless.

Almost instinctively I undo my seat belt, open the door, jump down onto the soft wet spring topsoil, and look out over the village. It’s completely silent. The only sounds to be heard are the low, ever-present hum of the engine, and the wind’s soft sighs as it sweeps down over the village.

I hear Tone clamber out of the driver’s door behind me. She doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even close the door behind her.

I exhale—a prayer, an incantation—a welcome:

Silvertjärn.

THEN

Elsa is on her way home from Agneta Lindberg’s house when she realizes something isn’t right.

The walk should take only fifteen minutes at a brisk pace, but rarely does Elsa make it home in under forty, there are so many people who want to stop for a chat.

Elsa has been visiting Agneta every week for the past few months, ever since the poor dear got the news. Elsa normally sees her on a Wednesday, as it’s so convenient to pop by after one of the Wednesday lunches hosted by the pharmacist’s wife.

Nothing much ever gets done at those lunches; in essence they’re just a chance for some of the village ladies to get together and chew the fat, sip coffee from dainty little cups, and feel a fleeting sense of superiority. But it’s all harmless fun, and goodness knows the women of Silvertjärn feel all the better for having something to do. Elsa can’t deny that even she enjoys these sessions, although sometimes she does have to put her foot down when their chitchat becomes a little too barbed.

Insinuations about the paternity of the schoolmaster’s youngest child won’t do anyone any good. Elsa herself had been to visit him and his poor wife when the boy was refusing to take the breast, and she has rarely seen a father more doting—however red that boy’s hair might be.

It’s a hot afternoon, unusually close for April, and as Elsa walks she can feel herself start to perspire beneath her blouse. She likes to take the path down by the river’s edge; it’s nice and even underfoot, and if you look up you can see the lake shimmering in the distance. The meltwater has started to stream and ripple below the riverbank, and it’s enough to make you want to stop for a paddle.

Not that Elsa does that, of course. How it would look if she were to pull up her skirt and start splashing around, like a little girl without a care in the world? That really would give the village women something to gossip about!

It’s when Elsa smiles at this thought that it first strikes her that something is off, for when she looks around to see who might catch her would-be frolics in the river, she realizes that no one is there.

The river is lined with houses. It’s the old heart of Silvertjärn, and Elsa has a soft spot for this part of the village. When she and Staffan first moved to Silvertjärn, back when she was scarce more than a child herself, they had lived in one of the new buildings the mine had constructed. It had been a cold, soulless place, and Elsa is convinced that those cracked white walls were the reason why her first pregnancy was so difficult. She had made sure that they had moved away as soon as they could.

The houses down here by the river are older, with more personality, and Elsa knows everyone who lives down this way. Without boasting or bluster, Elsa can honestly claim to know everyone in Silvertjärn, but the area between the church and the river is her own, which means she goes the extra mile for those who live here. She likes to pass by the house with the sloping roof on the corner to say hello to Pia Etterström and her twin boys; to stop outside Emil Snäll’s porch and ask how his gout is treating him; to pause to admire Lise-Marie’s rosebushes.

But today not one person has stopped or waved.

Despite the warm weather, there’s not a soul to be seen in gardens or out on front steps, and not a single window is open. No one has bustled outside to say hello after seeing Elsa pass, even though she can see movements behind the kitchen curtains and closed windows. Everyone seems to have locked themselves away.

Her stomach turns.

In days to come, Elsa will wonder if some part of her already knows—before she sets off into a run, before she gets home, sweaty and disheveled, to find Staffan sitting at the kitchen table, his face empty with shock.

But no, she doesn’t know. She hasn’t realized, hasn’t guessed. She could never have guessed.

So when Staffan says with the voice of a sleepwalker …

They’re shutting down the mine, Elsie. We found out today. They sent us all home.

… she faints on the spot for the first and only time in her life.

NOW

I’ve never seen Silvertjärn with my own eyes. I’ve pictured it, sure, based on Grandma’s stories, spent late nights googling like a woman possessed, searching for some kind of description, but I’ve found next to nothing.

I turn around when I hear the click of Tone’s camera. She’s holding it up to her eyes, so half of her face is hidden.

What we should have done is filmed the view as we drove out of the forest. That would have made for a powerful, attention-grabbing opening, which is what you need when you’re applying for funding. No matter how much we post on Instagram or try to direct people to the Kickstarter page, the hard truth is we’ll need a grant to make the documentary I’ve envisaged. Without some form of state funding, we don’t stand a

Reviews for The Lost Village

[micareads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alice Lindenstat is an up-and-coming filmmaker with one goal in mind - secure funding for the documentary that is her life's dream…find out what happened to the people who lived and disappeared from her Grandmother's village and why only two people were left behind. She takes a crew and travels to the isolated village where her family comes from. When they arrive they find the town completely empty as if the residents had just left for a moment. Soon, strange things begin to happen and everyone is on edge. There are whispers in the air and unexplained footsteps and the sound of music all around them. One by one, the group suffers problems and losses but the question is who is behind all of these issues? This was a sufficiently creepy story that had me wondering what was next. I had attempted this story via audiobook and realized that was not the right medium for me. When I picked it up in paperback, I was able to melt right into it and enjoy the journey. It should be noted that this story was originally written in Swedish and translated to English but the story completely flows and there is no misunderstanding of any part of the story. This was my first Camilla Sten read for me but there I am definitely looking forward to more from her.

[icolford · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

In Camilla Sten’s chilling and suspenseful novel, The Lost Village, Alice Lindstedt is a young filmmaker who has been haunted by an excruciating mystery her entire life. Alice’s grandmother, Margareta, grew up in a tiny isolated village in rural Sweden called Silvertjärn. As a young adult in the late 1950s, Margareta moved to Stockholm. She never saw her family again because in the summer of 1959, the population of Silvertjärn (just under 900 people) vanished, with the exception of a newborn baby discovered in the school and the body of a woman who had been stoned to death tethered to a wooden post in the village square. For sixty years no one has been able to explain what happened or find any trace of Silvertjärn’s missing citizens. Alice wants to solve the mystery, for her own peace of mind. But she also believes her project will attract an audience and jump-start her stalled film career. To this end, she has assembled a small crew of like-minded people who have agreed to accompany her to Silvertjärn and help her make a documentary film about the disappearances. Alice narrates the lion’s share of the novel in the contemporary setting. But Sten also provides background with periodic chapters told from the perspective of Elsa, Margareta’s mother, who in 1959 remains in Silvertjärn and observes with growing alarm as the majority of the villagers fall under the spell of a charismatic new minister. Sten’s descriptions of the abandoned village are beyond creepy, and from the start we suspect something sinister is lurking in the shadows and empty rooms that Alice and her colleagues venture out to explore. Then things start happening. Alice’s friend Tone is injured, and later disappears. An explosion destroys most of the crew’s equipment along with their food supply. Conflicts within the remaining group escalate, and trust becomes an issue. With no means of transportation or communication, they are trapped. Sten drops hints along the way, but the resolution still comes as something of a surprise. The denouement satisfyingly ties up loose ends, with the tense final scenes comparable to what we might expect to see in a slasher film. Overall, The Lost Village, vividly conceived and competently written, provides an entertaining diversion that will keep readers up late into the wee hours turning the pages.

[Yedhu Krishnan · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

bad...poor imagination. Wasted a day of mine. The premise was so good...duh!

[richardderus · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Publisher Says: The Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar in this brilliantly disturbing thriller from Camilla Sten, an electrifying new voice in suspense.Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt has been obsessed with the vanishing residents of the old mining town, dubbed “The Lost Village,” since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother’s entire family disappeared in this mysterious tragedy, and ever since, the unanswered questions surrounding the only two people who were left—a woman stoned to death in the town center and an abandoned newborn—have plagued her. She’s gathered a small crew of friends in the remote village to make a film about what really happened.But there will be no turning back.Not long after they’ve set up camp, mysterious things begin to happen. Equipment is destroyed. People go missing. As doubt breeds fear and their very minds begin to crack, one thing becomes startlingly clear to Alice:They are not alone.They’re looking for the truth...But what if it finds them first?I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.My Review: Author Camilla is a Force. Her storytelling chops, in this her debut novel!, are truly impressive. Usually split timelines, here denoted by labeling chapters "Now" and "Then", give me pause. It so seldom adds impetus to the natural pace of the story. In Author Sten's case she overcame this. By itself that merits praise...but to use it, as here, in setting a perceptual "trap" for her readers, is extraordinarily tough to pull off.The framing device that threatened, at first, to derail my enjoyment of the story was also the biggest surprise to me: A long stretch of "Now" spent reading letters discovered in the Lost Village. While that by itself isn't bad, so very often it is a deus ex machina and so feels like a cheat to me. I re-read parts of the section to see if I could find the seams but I couldn't...I kept running across images I lingered over (eg doubts creeping up on a character like "stinging little devils") and action I wanted to follow right now. That's good horror writing...good writing, period.Much of the seemingly inevitable comparison-to-known-things marketing has borne down hard on Midsommar, a stunningly beautiful folk-horror film whose story is stretched to the point of snapping in order to make its beautiful scenes...seriously, go look at it, the stills should be sold as art!...work. Also harked back to is The Blair Witch Project, whose shakycam found-footage horror story was, to put it mildly, a farrago but whose fascinating editing (predictable and pedestrian aren't necessarily ineffective in horror storytelling) has deeply influenced the entire field of visual horror storytelling. This comparison is, to me, fair and reasonable; the Midsommar one is a stretch and honestly a disservice to the story here told.This is folk horror as only a Swede setting her story in Sweden would, possibly could, produce. But it's much, much more unnerving to me, more frightening, than Midsommar because this story is about the intersection of mental illness and religious fanaticism that is its own form of mental illness...but grounded in a solid, meaningful, and thoughtful take-down of capitalism and patriarchy.We perceive women suffering from mental illness with a sort of paradoxical double-sidedness; both victims and monsters, simultaneously infantilized and feared. A certain level of dysfunction is accepted—after all, women who are suffering mild depression and starving themselves aren’t going to leave their husbands or start revolutions, which is very practical indeed.–and–We view a depressed upper-class woman from a stable family background dealing with depression as “having the blues,” while the homeless woman on the street corner battling auditory hallucinations is a thing to be feared, a threatening monster. Not a person in need of help. Not someone with thoughts, dreams, fears, and needs of their own. Not a fully formed human being with agency and identity, suffering from an illness and doing their best to function as well as they can.Author Sten is singin' my song; Translator Fleming is wrapping it in stylish English.Several friends of mine who read and reviewed the book, all of them women, weren't impressed with the author's feminist take as presented, and to a woman they were dismissive of the "folk horror" trappings the US publisher wrapped around the story. In that latter I hesitantly join them, but as a man I felt the feminist, or more accurately anti-patriarchal, views the author quite clearly espouses by way of contrast to the "Then" action and more clearly espouses in the "Now" if via a dark means, rang me like a bell.Permaybehaps I'm settling, in the sense that it might not be as clear to the women because it's not enough of a feminist standpoint. I can't say; I can say that, to me, this read bound together creepy, scary real-life threats and challenges with a social and political slant I am in sympathy with. You should give Author Camilla Sten a shot, see what you think.

[librarycin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alice is a filmmaker still looking for her big break. Maybe this is it? Her grandmother grew up in a small isolated town in Sweden where something odd happened in 1959. Everyone disappeared. All almost-900 of them. (Alice’s grandmother had already moved to Stockholm by then.) There was one decomposing woman tied to a post in the town square and one baby still alive. 60 years later, Alice gets together five people to go film a promo to raise money to create an entire documentary trying to figure out what happened in this town all those years ago. But things go very very wrong...The start of this book pulled me right in. It did go back and forth in time between Alice and her crew there for five days filming and back in time to the townspeople and what went on at the time. It did slow down for a while with some set-up, but it picked up again. Creepy… those isolated buildings just left with stuff still on the table, etc. It was all so sudden.

[the_literary_jedi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A great twist at the end! Follows a group who are trying to film a documentary about a small mining village abandoned mysteriously in the 1950's when a female body was found murdered and an infant left in an abandoned building.The characters all have something hiding in their past that Sten uses wonderfully to keep the suspense going. The plot is simple enough and with the dual timelines used, the story unfolds side-by-side in a brilliant manner. The end is spectacular.**All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had such high hopes for this book, and in the end, I'm left not knowing quite how I feel about it. On one hand, the book is compulsively readable, and I really enjoyed Sten's prose as well as the structure. On the other hand...there are some serious flaws. As great as the concept in it, there are some cracks in the foundation when it comes to the characters and that concept, with mixed messages coming through in terms of who they are, their preparedness, and the needs/goals being faced. Some of the situations are also fairly contrived, which is made worse with a lack of explanation. I'm also not comfortable with the way mental illness was depicted and treated in the book, which bothered me more and more as I kept going, as did a seeming lack of (story) editing. I suppose, in the end, the book just felt a bit messy in terms of story and character. The prose was lovely, and the concept was great, and the spooky bits were fantastic...but there were a lot of problems, and the more I paused to think about the smaller threads/problems bothering me, the more others became apparent. Especially with the characters being somewhat oblivious and acting/thinking in ways that didn't quite make sense, and some pieces of the plot being fairly contrived, I have to say that I'm not sure I'll pick up another book by the author.

[huntersun9 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The premise is intriguing: Alice, an aspiring filmmaker, recruits four friends to explore a village from which 900 inhabitants vanished 60 years ago. She hopes to gain enough new information to convince backers to finance a documentary about the lost village, Silvertjarn. Recently, I've been fascinated by YouTube videos about abandoned homes and towns so this plot sounded good. Unfortunately, I didn't find and of the characters likeable and the atmosphere was flat and uncompelling. The story is told in Now and Then chapters, with the chapters from the past being slightly more interesting, but still not rich enough to paint a substantial picture of the town and its people. I was just curious enough to continue to find out the great mystery, but the story and its weak subplots, involving badly portrayed mental illness and betrayed friendship, dissolved into a mess of improbable horror that was truly disappointing. And the dialogue was bad. Not my cup of tea.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In August 1959 a couple of policemen arrive at the Swedish village of Silvertjarn only to find the place wrapped in silence and the inhabitants missing. They did find a woman who had been stoned to death in the village square and a living baby in the local schoolhouse, but other than that not a trace of any living person was to be found. Now, in the present, a documentary film team has arrived to explore the ghost town and see if they can put together enough information to make a film possible. There are five members of the team but two of them have close connections to the missing.There are tensions among this five even before they arrive as some of them have a shared and difficult past. The story jumps back and forth between 1959 and the last months of the village, and to the present with the film crew as they experience mysterious and ghostly happenings. The Lost Village reminded me of how I felt when I visited an old ghost town on Vancouver Island and the creepy feeling of being watched by past inhabitants and never really knowing if anyone else is in the town were perfectly transferred to this story. I had chills running up and down my spine and I had to take frequent breaks from the book to recover my breathing. The Lost Village is both deliciously scary and intensely dark, an excellent horror read.

[stahl2ricco · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

“The murder. The baby. The pastor.”The title says it all. In 1959, 900 people from the town of Silvertjärn just disappeared. Sixty years later, a group of people are determined to discover why.The story is told through two different timelines - Now and Then. I didn’t like Alice, the narrator of the Now chapters, at all. And I actually didn't really like anyone in the Now chapters. I could have done with much more of the Then storyline. And in the end, it really wasn't all that much of a mystery. Just really bad investigation efforts by the authorities of the Then timeline.

[purplepaste-311796 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

"Blair Witch Project meets Midsommar" was what brought me. This is probably going to be a movie at some point. A movie which will be better with commercial breaks added in so that you can blame those for missing tension and stare at the village scenery, which will probably be pretty eerie and awesome. To be completely honest, without ruining the plot, one detail turned me against the author and the book-- the discovery that one of the characters takes Abilify is used to demonize and outcast the person as "psychotic". Are you kidding? Then the medical falsehoods keep rolling. This character can't take Advil with Abilify. Missed a dose of Abilify? Welcome to Drooling and Singing Insanity. NOPE. That is not how this works.
Aside from that, the plot was sparse.

[rmarcin-630843 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Lost Village is a documentary project about the mining town of Silvertjärn, Sweden. Alice grew up hearing stories about the village where her grandmother grew up. While her grandmother Margareta moved away, the rest of the village seemingly disappeared in 1959. The only people remaining were a dead woman and a baby. Alice wants to investigate what happened.However, when Alice and her crew, Tone, Emmy, Robert, and Max, arrive in the village, strange and dangerous things begin happening.Altenating between now and then timelines, we hear from Elsa, who is Alice’s great grandmother, and Aina, Margareta’s sister. Elsa tells how things began to change when the mine, the town's main employer, closed, and when Pastor Mattias came to town.Spooky story, strange occurrences, depression, madness are all included in this story.

[veronica.sparrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was very atmospheric from the beginning. I love atmospheric stories with missing people and this one definitely had this in abundance.Alice Lindstedt is doing a documentary on the village of Silvertjärn which is an old mining town where the residents seemingly disappeared. The documentary will be told over six episodes accompanied by a blog. Alice has been obsessed with this town since she was a little girl. In 1959, her grandmother's family disappeared but two people remained. One was a woman who was stoned to death in the town's center, and the other was a newborn baby. Alice hopes to find out what really happened to this remote town long ago.I found the book very creepy and disturbing which is exactly what I want in a horror novel. The story kept me intrigued to the end.

[karenherndon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Another real disappointment.Had good reviews and was well written but rather predictable in my opinion.

[lemeritus-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Given the premise, very disappointing. Too many themes to do any of them justice.

[drapple_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

When you hear that a book is a page-turner, it is really the case, but this one truly is. A young filmmaker is trying to raise funds to make a documentary about a village is rural Sweden where the entire population disappeared. She is the granddaughter of a woman who grew up in the village and had moved away but lost her entire family in the mysterious disappearance. A small crew goes to the village to get some backgrouind footage and photos to try to raise interest in funders for the film. They encounter frightening, and eventually deadly, surprises.

[edgoldberg · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Twenty-nine year old Alice Lindstadt grew up with stories of the remote abandoned mining village, Silvertjarn, (tjarn is Swedish for “lake”) that her grandmother lived in before moving to Stockholm. It was 1959, and the villagers disappeared without a trace. Her grandmother told her stories and kept the letters her younger sister, Aina, sent her. In addition, she did research after the village was abandoned, trying to determine what happened. It is still a mystery. Now Alice, over 60 years after the village was abandoned, has arrived with four friends on her first fact-finding mission to scout the place, take phots and put together a portfolio to entice backers to finance a documentary that she plans to make. The team includes Tone, a photographer, who is Alice’s friend and also a descendant of a villager; Emmy, Alice's long ago friend and production guru with her boyfriend Robert; and Max, an investor. They have rented their equipment for only five days so they need to be quick. As they wander down deserted streets, seeing houses with broken windows, doors falling off hinges, roofs caving in and trees growing through porch floors, there is no sign of habitation. And yet! There are strange noises coming through their walkie talkies. There are shadows where there shouldn't be any. And then.....one of the team disappears as mysteriously as the townspeople, 60 years ago.The Lost Vilage is more suspense than it is mystery. There are no police looking for a perpetrator. And yet, there is mystery in the story and the town. Sten creates tension by using Now and Then chapters. The Now chapters follow Alice and her crew as they walk through deserted streets, enter the silent, dilapidated church and school, search houses seemingly abandoned in haste and react to the isolation (they are cut off from the outside world-no cell phone reception and only one way in and out of town) and the mysterious occurrences that torment them.The Then chapters include letters sent by Aina to her sister in Stockholm painting a rosy picture juxtaposed by narratives by Alice’s grandmother, Elsa, painting an ominous one.I will say that I found the denouement, a mere six pages, a little “underwhelming”, as one reviewer put it, but that didn’t stop me from loving every other part of the book. The Lost Village is different from any other book I’ve recommended to you but it is totally absorbing, and downright creepy at times. As one reviewer said, “A memorably creepy newcomer to the crowded field of Nordic noir that’s worth a miniseries itself.” Another said “Readers will be on the edge of their seats to uncover the truth at the heart of the mining village, and to see if Alice and her team will manage to get out of this town with their lives.”

[amyghilton · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had such high hopes for this book!! A creepy deserted village in the middle of nowhere? Yes, please! It just didn't have that level of creepiness and suspense I was expecting.Most of the action was at the very end, which fell a little flat. I didn't really have a strong connection with any of the characters either. They weren't very likeable.

[tamidale · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Creepy, lonely and mysterious. An old mining town was nicknamed ‘the lost village’ because in 1959 all the residents mysteriously vanished, leaving only two people behind—a newborn baby and a dead woman.Alice, a documentary filmmaker with a history of depression, comes to the village to fulfill her longtime dream of making a documentary about it and also finding the answers to the many questions about what happened. Alice also has family ties to the village. Her grandmother’s family had lived in the village when everyone disappeared.Alice and a small crew arrive in the spring and set up camp for a week’s work on the film. Almost immediately odd things begin to happen. At first they believe one in their group is responsible, but they soon figure out that there must be someone else watching them.I kept having to remind myself that this happened in 1959 because it seemed like it was in a more distant time due to the isolation of the village. I enjoyed the historical sleuthing that went on in the story. Also, there was an aspect of horror lurking about, but this wasn’t the sort of horror that is what I consider full-blown. All in all, I enjoyed the story and readers who like mystery, with a touch of horror should consider this book.Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press Minotaur books for allowing me to read an advance copy and give an honest review.

[samantha71020 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Wow, wow, wow! This was one of my most anticipated reads for 2021 and it definitely didn't disappoint! I absolutely loved this book - it's just that easy to say! All I can think is that if this is the author's debut, then I cannot wait to see what she comes up with next! If you read the above summary, the premise for me was just irresistible. The comparison on the back of the book to The Blair Witch Project was spot on when it came to the atmosphere that was present throughout this book. I just knew that I needed to pick up this book, and see what in the heck was going on. Let me just say that I was not disappointed in the answers that I got! But what made this book absolutely brilliant for me was the creeping dread that the author built up in this book from the very beginning pages. This book was a slow burn in the best of ways. I am HERE for all of the creepy, slow burns like this so please give me all of your recommendations. Simply put: I need more books like this in my life! One of the things that I really enjoyed about this book was the premise. The idea of an entirely abandoned village was just delightfully creepy to think about. I also really enjoyed the fact that this book was told in two parts. One was in current day with Alice and her crew and the second part was told in the past from the viewpoint of a woman named Elsa. I really liked the way that these two storylines tied together. The feeling of dread that just kept building especially towards the end had me reading as fast as I could. And the ending was perfection in my opinion. It's a month later and I'm still thinking about this book. What a way to start off my year of reading in 2021!Bottom Line: A standout way to start off my reading year - I would be very surprised not to see this book on my best reads list at the end of 2021!CW: Murder, abuse, religious elements (hard to explain without spoilers so message me if you need to know more)Disclosure: I received a copy of this book thanks to the publisher. Honest thoughts are my own.

[dedduckie · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received an e-Galley ARC of The Lost Village, authored by Camilla Sten, translated by Alexandra Fleming, from Minotaur Books and NetGalley. Below is my honest review, freely given, I am thankful for the opportunity.I rated this novel 3 stars. The premise is one I find well suited for horror, there are historical examples to look to and draw from, and even now I enjoy learning about real world mysteries such as missing communities or peoples. Silvertjärn was a town of growing secrets, the most pressing we are introduced to in the opening chapter, setting the tone for the book with a delicious chill of horror. The next gives us the present day characters traveling to the town. This almost alternating pattern will continue throughout the book, which I liked. Often the crew would pass a theory around or mention something from a letter, and the following chapter would reveal how close to the truth they were or expand on the moment written about; giving voice to the original townspeople directly added a nice separation of time and culture.The characters were of complex personalities, refreshingly muddled as humans truly are; no brightly shining knights or achingly pure heroines, though Mattias does have a harsher judgement from me (I am not a fan of him). What occurred is slowly built for the reader in the glimpses of the past; in the present nerves are frayed ever thin as an imagined or unknown presence is felt circling the crew. The latter half fell apart for me. Not in that it was unbelievable, but to me there were indications the story could lean into a supernatural aspect or a subtle blend of supernatural and realism; in backing away or refusing to commit, I felt it left some threads dangling.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

3.5. I have long held a fascination for ghost towns, deserted places and haunted hotels. When we took family vacations we would search out these places. One of my favorites was a trip to Jericho, AZ, we stayed at a hotel that was once a sanitarium. It has an interesting history, and though we neither saw nor heard haunted spirits, the place itself had a spooky vibe.Sweden 1959, an entire village goes missing. Receiving an anonymous call, the police arrive to find a dead woman in the town square and a baby crying in a deserted schoolroom. The rest of the village residents had vanished, no other clues ever found.Fast forward to the present, and Alice, a documentary film maker sets out with a small team and limited budget to try to solve the mystery. Her grandmother lost her whole family when those in the town disappeared. Arriving in the town, they soon feel as if they are being watched. Why they find here will tax the imagination and expose them to many revealed secrets and outright horrors.Creepy atmosphere, characters with hidden secrets and an intriguing mystery. The US edition publishes in February but this would make an excellent Halloween read. Reading it in Winters chill wasn't bad either. Just scary enough.ARC from Edelweiss.