November, 1967, Iceland. Fourteen-year-old Marsí has a secret penpal – a boy who lives on the other side of the country – but she has been writing to him in her older sister's name. Now she is excited to meet him for the first time.
But when the date arrives, Marsí is prevented from going, and during the night her sister Stína goes missing – her bloodstained anorak later found at the place where Marsí and her penpal had agreed to meet.
November, 1977. Stína's disappearance remains unsolved. Then an unexpected letter arrives for Marsí It's from her penpal, and he's still out there…
Desperate for news of her missing sister, but terrified that he might coming after her next, Marsí returns to her hometown and embarks on an investigation of her own.
But Marsí has always had trouble distinguishing her vivid dreams from reality, and as insomnia threatens her sanity, it seems she can't even trust her own memories.
And her sister's killer is still on the loose…
Home Before Dark by Eva Björg Ægisdottir was published by Orenda Books on 17 July 2025, and is translated by Victoria Cribb. My thanks to the publisher who sent my copy for review as part of this Blog Tour
Eva Björg Ægisdottir is an award winning Icelandic author. Her 'Forbidden Iceland' series has won major awards in different countries. She is a force to be reckoned with, one of the best crime authors currently writing. I was delighted to hear that Orenda would be publishing the English translation of her stand alone thriller Home Before Dark. I have not been disappointed, this is a tense, masterfully written story set over decades with such an immersive sense of place and history too.
This is a dual time line story, with events from November 1967 being narrated by Strína, a teenage girl who goes missing. The story set in November 1977 is told by Strína's younger sister Marsí who has returned to their home town for the anniversary of Strína's disappearance.
Back in 1967 Marsí had a secret pen pal, she'd told nobody about him and had arranged to meet him one evening. She didn't make their meeting but that was the night that Strína vanished, leaving behind only a blood soaked coat. Marsí has kept the secret about her mysterious pen pal for all of these years, and she's just received a letter from him ...
What follows is a intense and chilling story about the distortion of truth and how memories cannot always be relied upon. Marsí is an interesting character, multi layered, with numerous issues and doesn't know as much about Strína's life as she believes. The reader, on the other hand, knows far more about Strína, being privy to her thoughts as she narrates the part of the story that concerns her disappearance.
The translation of this novel is superb. The author's descriptions of landscape is stunning. I was especially intrigued by 'the situation' - events from Icelandic history that are quite shocking yet are perfectly blended into this story line.
Dark, creepy and gripping, Eva is a magnificent writer with brilliant plotting skills.
Her debut, The Creak on the Stairs, was published in 2018, becoming a bestseller in Iceland and going on to win the Blackbird Award and the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year. It was published in English by Orenda Books in 2020, and became a number-one bestseller in ebook, shortlisting for Capital Crime’s Amazon Publishing Awards in two categories, and winning the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger.
Girls Who Lie, Night Shadows, You Can’t See Me and Boys Who Hurt soon followed suit, shortlisting for the CWA Crime in Translation Dagger, the Capital Crime Awards, and the Petrona Award for Best Scandinavian Crime Novel.
You Can’t See Me won the Storytel Award for Best Crime Novel of the Year in Iceland in 2023.
In 2024, Eva won Iceland’s prestigious Crime Fiction Award, the Blood Drop, for Home before Dark and was shortlisted for the coveted Glass Key.
The Forbidden Iceland series has established Eva as one of Iceland’s bestselling and most distinguished crime writers, and her books are published in eighteen languages with more than a million copies sold.
Instagram @evabjorg88
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment