The Resting Place

The Publisher Says: A spine-chilling, propulsive psychological suspense from international sensation Camilla Sten.

The medical term is prosopagnosia. The average person calls it face blindness—the inability to recognize a familiar person’s face, even the faces of those closest to you.

When Eleanor walked in on the scene of her capriciously cruel grandmother, Vivianne’s, murder, she came face to face with the killer—a maddening expression that means nothing to someone like her. With each passing day, her anxiety mounts. The dark feelings of having brushed by a killer, yet not know who could do this—or if they’d be back—overtakes both her dreams and her waking moments, thwarting her perception of reality.

Then a lawyer calls. show more Vivianne has left her a house—a looming estate tucked away in the Swedish woods. The place her grandfather died, suddenly. A place that has housed a dark past for over fifty years.

Eleanor. Her steadfast boyfriend, Sebastian. Her reckless aunt, Veronika. The lawyer. All will go to this house of secrets, looking for answers. But as they get closer to bringing the truth to light, they’ll wish they had never come to disturb what rests there.

A heart-thumping, relentless thriller that will shake you to your core, The Resting Place is an unforgettable novel of horror and suspense.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I've known someone with prosopagnosia well, and for a lot longer than I have known the word or the condition existed. It's one of the reasons I was really eager to get this book's DRC and devour it. I was so happy to see this under-represented and misunderstood disability represented at all. I hoped, of course, to see it represented well.

It was. The condition of "face-blindness" was truly well established, in a complex and multivalent way; it was also chillingly effectively woven into a deeply unsettling, even unnerving, plot.

Prosopagnosia, face blindness. It means my brain doesn’t process human faces the same way others’ do. I can’t recognize faces, so have to memorize distinguishing features instead.

What happens, as you've seen in the book description, is a scene of brutal violence that simply can't be forgotten by anyone who's experienced anything remotely close to it. But, in Eleanor's case, it's a scene that lacks a very important resonance. She's seen a murder, and a murderer, and she can't forget it but can't process it, can't help assign guilt to the guilty because she is biomechanically incapable of the necessary function. And then what happens? She inherits the house her grandmother failed to tell her that she owned. Way to lard the stress into the liver of the story...another set of unknown people, faces ever unknown to her and markers to somehow fasten onto their identities.

From that point on, I was so very sold on this read. I could not WAIT to see how this awful psychological double bind would resolve.

The things I liked were, like the things I liked in The Lost Village, the ones that brought the character to life:

...it’s the body that panics first, the brain that follows. If I can just keep my breaths slow and force myself to relax then I can trick my mind into calm.
–and–
“Your fear is valid, but that doesn’t make it real. The fear may be true, but it doesn’t have to be your truth.”

They're present, they're satisfyingly numerous, but in the end the thing that will make or break the read is one's response to the ending. The entire book is a set-up to the set-piece in the last, say, thirtyish pages. It's a big ask from a sophmore novelist. I was rewarded by it because its resolution was so very timely and so personal to me. I can't say more because the Spoiler Stasi will descend on me with malice and fury. This post will clue you in to the direction we're heading if you care to be enlightened.

I thought the use of a big, old, dark manor house in the country was going to be a silly distraction, a gewgaw meant to distract me from something...it wasn't, and it was; the big winter storm, another gothic-storytelling staple, was similarly used. These weren't my favorite moments in the book. I will say they didn't "ruin" my experience of the story as can happen with such inessentials. The nature of the story is so basically well-crafted that Author Sten could've chosen any one of an array of settings and accomplished her task.

I confess that, as I read along and Eleanor kept doing her Eleanor thing, I was half-dreading the need to slap an "ableism" content warning on the review. I was so relieved that I did not feel Author Sten had crossed my own mental threshhold for use of a disability shading into the old, dark "crippled" territory I've still been hit with in the twenty-first century.

I'm going to leave the last words to Eleanor, via Author Sten. I think they say more about what I derived from this read than I can.

She says that wounds can leave scars on our souls just like on our bodies, and that we have to learn to live with them rather than try to rid ourselves of them completely.

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Eleanor approaches the door of her grandmother, Vivienne’s apartment for her weekly Sunday dinner. Vivienne has raised Eleanor from a young age when her mother died of cancer. An adult now, she needs to maintain her distance from domineering, erratic Vivienne and the weekly dinner is a compromise. As she approaches the apartment, Eleanor sees that the door is ajar and as she reaches for it, a figure whose face is obscured by a hat brim, runs out. When Eleanor enters, Vivienne is lying in a pool of blood. She whispers something that Eleanor can’t understand before taking her last breath.
Eleanor has prosopagnosia (pros·o·pag·no·sia) or face blindness. She is unable to recognize faces, so she can’t identify Vivienne’s killer show more and therefore is no help to the police who ultimately decide the murder was a robbery gone wrong.
Several months later Eleanor is contacted by an attorney, Rickard, who tells her that she has inherited her grandmother’s manor house (which she knew nothing about but had apparently been in the family for 50+ years) and they must visit it to value its contents for estate purposes. So, Eleanor and her boyfriend Sebastian drive up to the remote, isolated property to meet Rickard. Surprising Eleanor, her estranged aunt Veronika arrives as well. The party was supposed to be met by the caretaker, Mats, who is mysteriously nowhere to be found.
Things begin to happen soon after arrival. As she and Sebastian walk part of the property, the purportedly fragile Eleanor, who has been undergoing therapy since even before Vivienne’s death, thinks she sees someone lurking near one of the cottages. But it is dark and snowing, and when she looks again, there is no one there. Sebastian believes it’s Eleanor’s mind playing tricks on her.
In the house, she hears an odd phone conversation between Rickard and an unknown party. And this is just the beginning. As night draws in and the blizzard intensifies, people are getting hurt; people go missing. Is someone trying to kill them? Has this anything to do with Vivienne or Evert, her husband who committed suicide at the manor house?
As Eleanor explores the main house, she stumbles across a diary written in the mid-1960s by Anushka, a house maid. Unfortunately, it is in Polish and Eleanor must use google translate to understand it, which makes it slow going. She keeps the diary a secret from the others and wonders whether it will shed some light on the family and the estate and the strange goings on. The Resting Place is told from two time periods: the present through Eleanor’s eyes and the diary entries from the 1960s.
Sten draws a bleak picture in so many ways: the dysfunctional family, primarily Vivenne’s parenting style, one minute nice, the next scathing; the grim surroundings of the estate situated in the middle of nowhere, dark, brooding, snowbound; Eleanor’s seemingly mental fragility; Aunt Veronka’s love/hate relationship with both Eleanor and Vivenne and finally the uncertainty about who Rickard really is. Eleanor constantly imagines what her self-confident grandmother would say after each tragic occurrence.
The tension mounts slowly and steadily reaching a crescendo and unexpected conclusion. I admit that I did guess one aspect of the ending but it didn’t spoil the story at all. Sten has created a new version of the locked room mystery and it satisfies on all accounts.
So far Camilla Sten has scored a perfect record on her two books and I hope more are on the way. show less

The Resting Place by Camilla Sten is the first book I’ve read by this author, but I will be reading more!

While I didn’t get the creep factor that a lot of other readers did (I’ve been watching horror movies since I was around eight, so I might be a bit jaded…) I was blown away by how Sten kept me guessing who the killer was. With such a small list of characters. I knew early on that it had to be someone who knew the main character, Eleanor, (since how else would they know she would not be able to tell who they were if they just kept quiet, since Eleanor has a disease that makes it impossible for her to see faces…)

I thought for sure the killer was one person, but it turned out to be another. I love when that happens. Although show more once the item came into play a thing that kept niggling at Eleanor’s brain that she couldn’t put it into context, I knew who it would turn out to be.

But even solving the mystery as to who the killer was before the end of the book, Sten really did keep me intrigued as to what would happen next since there were lots of twists. Combine all the side stories and entwined stories along with a gothic house in the middle of a blizzard and this book is one that is not to be missed. show less

Review of Uncorrected Digital Galley

Eleanor came face to face with her grandmother’s murderer, but she cannot identify the killer. She has prosopagnosia, a condition that renders her unable to recognize a face, even the face of a friend or a family member. The distress she feels hounds her whether she's asleep or awake, leaving her feeling rather paranoid and uneasy.

Some months after her grandmother's death, a call from a lawyer handling Vivianne’s affairs sends Eleanor and her boyfriend, Sebastian, off to Solhöga, an estate tucked away in the Swedish woods . . . the place where Eleanor's grandfather died. The plan is for them to meet there and inventory the contents of the house.

Although she’d expected her aunt to stay away, show more Veronika is already there when Eleanor and Sebastian arrive; the four of them will do the inventory. But Eleanor cannot shake the feeling that someone is watching them, stalking them. Could it be the missing groundskeeper, Mats Bengtsson?

And when strange things happen and the weather strands them at Solhöga, will they fall victim to the tragedies of the past?

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Past and present come together as the stories of two women, Annika and Eleanor, converge in a haunting Swedish estate. Annika’s story provides the necessary backstory for Eleanor’s story. Annika, whose given name is Anushka, was a housekeeper who lived at Solhöga some fifty years earlier while Eleanor is the granddaughter of the woman who owned the estate.

Well-defined [and, for the most part, thoroughly unlikeable] characters, a strong sense of place, and a captivating plot pull readers into the telling of the tale from the outset. The unfolding narrative, with its surprising revelations, keeps the suspense building and the undercurrent of apprehension adds an eeriness to the narrative.

The plot takes some interesting twists as the story evolves; Eleanor’s face blindness creates an unusual situation and lays the groundwork for a surprising twist late in the telling of the tale. The atmosphere, dark and menacing, keeps the pages turning.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from St. Martin’s Press, Minotaur Books and NetGalley
#TheRestingPlace #NetGalley show less

After witnessing the murder of her grandmother, Eleanor teeters on the edge of panic as a result of the trauma. The killer is still at large, and Eleanor could provide a picture-perfect description—if she didn’t suffer from prosopagnosia, a form of “face blindness.” To compensate for this perplexing disability, she must use other features and senses to identify anyone, even those closest to her. The recipient of her grandmother’s estate, Eleanor reluctantly returns to the remote Swedish woods where the crime occurred. She is joined by her boyfriend, aunt, and the probate lawyer to prepare the house for a quick sale. Immediately upon her return, Eleanor detects a lingering unease that saturates the walls of the creepy mansion. show more She discovers a diary that might help her solve its mysteries, but first, she needs to painstakingly translate it from its original Polish. When some puzzling disappearances occur, Eleanor assumes that her grandmother’s murderer is lurking on the property. Camilla Sten earned popularity with her first novel, The Lost Village, and those who enjoyed her debut will find The Resting Place a suitable second effort. More gothic than gory, Sten’s latest release lags a bit at times, but the convergence of its storylines and rich setting will satisfy most thriller fans. show less

This was not the edge of my seat thriller I was expecting. I liked the premise, atmospheric setting, and alternating perspectives.

But, the time shifts made keeping track of the many characters difficult. And it was very wordy, which made it drag. The twisty end did redeem it…somewhat.

If you are looking for a chilling gothic-esqe thriller, The Resting Place is for you. Eleanor has face blindness, and when she walks in on Vivianne, her grandmother, being murdered, she cannot remember the murderer's face and has no idea who it could be, possibly even someone she knows. While coping with the trauma, Eleanor discovers that her grandmother has a long held secret - an estate deep in the woods unknown to Eleanor until her passing. Eleanor, her boyfriend, Sebastian, her aunt, Veronika, and a lawyer, Rickard, meet at the estate to settle Vivianne's affairs and soon uncover secrets long buried away much like the property itself.

The story swaps between two perspectives: current day with Eleanor, and late 1960s from the show more perspective of Anushka, Vivianne's maid.

One of the book's greatest strengths is its strong sense of place at an unsettling estate in Sweden in the middle of winter. The characters get stuck in a blizzard - increasing the anxiety and disorientation of the story. With the combination of the twisting story and the frigid environment, I felt the chill my bones as I read. Each chapter is relatively short, which made me not want to put it down - I had to find out what was next. There were certain aspects I began to guess prior to their reveal, but others came as a shock. Ultimately, the conclusion was unexpected and it wrapped up everything in a way that I felt satisfied.

I much preferred The Resting Place to The Lost Village from last year, I felt like the story wrapped up much better. I enjoy that Camilla Sten brings mental health into her stories and humanizes them. I found this with both of these titles. Additionally, Eleanor having face blindness made me understand the condition a lot more, and has brought me to research it to further my understanding.

In conclusion - if you are looking for a twisting mystery set in a creepy old estate in the dead of winter, definitely pick up this one!

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for an eARC of this title! show less