After Les Miserables, I wanted something easier to read – not that that’s a slag on the reading choice I made. I’m going to assume you know what I mean and carry on.
After much humming and hawing and asking other people what they thought I should read, I made my own choice. Because even though I ask people, I’m really looking for the answer that I already have in mind.
The winner was The Hidden Child by Camilla Lackberg. For those of you in the know, this is book number 5 in the Fjallbacka books. Or the Patrik Hedstrom books, depending on how you look at things (it’s the Buckshaw Chronicles vs. the Flavia de Luce books all over again).
This one takes a long time to get going but centers on a retired history teacher being bludgeoned to death in his home and being left there for months (so long that there are crunchy dead bugs all over the floor) and a Nazi war medal wrapped in a baby’s shirt that may or may not have blood on it.
You know, that was a pretty succinct description. Pat on the back for me.
This installment ran about 500 pages which is average for Lackberg but this one felt…slow. And also too fast. I felt like getting any actual clues took a really long time but the book was filled up with family details and dynamics so that the mystery’s solution ended up being a bit rushed. We spent a lot of time working through Erika and Patrik’s relationship now that she was trying to go back to work on her book and he was supposed to be home on paternity leave (key phrase: supposed to). We also examined Erika’s relationship with her mother, her mother-in-law, her sister and her sister’s relationship with her new partner and his kids. Oh and the station chief got a lot of book time embarking on a new relationship. And there were a lot of pregnancies. Like a lot. About 4. Within 500 pages. That’s a lot.
I got through it and there was enough that surprised me to be interesting. But overall I felt that this one was a little more obvious than the rest. Usually Lackberg has one really good twist that she throws in when you least expect it and I felt that that was missing in this one. This one felt very domestic, which if I were reading Maeve Binchy would be just what the doctor ordered. But I was reading Camilla Lackberg and I was looking for depravity.
As a general aside, I would like to direct you all to Jennine’s blog. She writes some awesome book loving posts and wrote a really nice post about my blog that I haven’t had a chance to thank her for because every time I try and comment on her blog it won’t let me. But you should go there and leave a comment on my behalf.
The Paperback Princess 