The Ormen, a whaling ship from 1901 later outfitted as a research vessel in the 1970's and has since been washed up on the shores of Skumaskot's lonely Icelandic shore. Now, the Ormen is scheduled to be destroyed, hauled out to sea and sunk. Dominique is determined to find the Ormen and document it's last days for social media while living on the vessel and researching it's history. However, Dominique is not alone; Samara, Jens and Leo are explorers who also want to look into the history of the Ormen. Reluctantly, Dom teams up with them. Samara and Leo dig into the Ormen's history as a whaling vessel while Dom and Jen's look into the research period. In 1901, the daughter of the Ormen's owner, Nicky Duthie is attacked and brought aboard the Ormen to serve as collateral and as folklore tells, a selkie wife. Nicky's outrage at the situation knows no bounds and what is happening to her aboard the Ormen is even stranger. In the 1970's Diego Almeyda found himself not in his right mind, cutting his feet in half. When the Ormen washed up on shore, Diego's remains were the only ones found on the Ormen. The rest of the research team has disappeared. With so much mystery and tragedy surrounding the Ormen, Dom soon finds that there may be something sinister aboard the Ormen, something looking for revenge.

A Haunting in the Arctic is an absolutely immersive, atmospheric, historic, gothic mystery. I was hooked from the very beginning with Diego's experience aboard the Ormen. From there, the story focuses on the points of view of Dom, Jens, Leo and Samara exploring the wreck in present day and Nicky's experience aboard the Ormen in 1901 with snippets of the research crew in the 1970's creating suspense not knowing if the events are linked. Nicky's story drew me in with the immense trauma she underwent and how she dealt with her everyday realities of her situation and how she managed her interactions with the crew. In the present, the team is focused on getting to know one another and their separate research challenges, but there is a deeper knowledge of the Ormen between Jens, Leo and Samara. As the team stays with the Ormen longer, strange occurrences happen, dreams, sounds, and sightings that connect to their research. A Haunting in the Arctic is a surprising and haunting tale weaving folklore with the power that trauma holds over us as well as the fact that revenge doesn't always solve our problems or help us forgive and move on.

This book was received for free in return for an honest review. ( )

One of my favourite writers at this moment. Every single book I have read by C.J. Cooke has been phenomenal. She is the absolute queen of creating the most exceptional atmospheres done with painstaking research. Just brilliant to the core, truly.
This time we find ourselves in the Arctic. Freezing cold and terribly eerie. The story goes back and forth between Nicky in the 1900s, and Dominique in 2023. Both of them on board a whaling ship, but for different reasons. Somehow, time and space goes thin here, almost to the point of barriers being broken.
A terrifying and heartbreaking tale, this one kept me well up into the night shivering with anticipation, as well as with Arctic cold. Fantastic! ( )