The Ice Princess by Camilla Lackberg (thoughts)

From the back cover:

"Erica Falck reutrns to her tiny, remote hometown of Fjallbacka, Sweden, after her parents' deaths only to encounter another tragedy: the suicide of her childhood best friend, Alex. It's Erica herself who finds Alex's body-suspended in a bathtub of frozen water, her wrists slashed. Erica is bewildered: Why would a beautiful woman who had it all take her own life?"

My Thoughts:

I was really hoping to like this book more than I did. And after reading that summary I was really looking forward to reading it which may have led to my disappointment. I'll have to admit that I never quite connected with the story though which led to a bit of a disappointing reading experience for me.

Let's start with what I liked about the book. I really, really liked the atmosphere that the author created with this book. The descriptions of the setting, the icy cold, all fit perfectly for me as an ideal setting for a thriller. I could feel the cold while I was reading and I loved how just the atmosphere drew me into the book. The mystery was interesting and I'll admit to never having any clue as to who the killer was. The problem that I had with this book was more with never connecting to the characters. The author wrote the story from multiple viewpoints and I found it hard to transition between the characters. I found the switching viewpoints confusing and would have preferred a little more distinction between each character and their thoughts. And I never fully connected with the characters. I liked Erica and Patrik's characters but although I liked them I felt distant from them and what they were going through. The other characters were never fleshed out enough for me to really care one way or another about them. The storyline was good but it moved slowly for me. There wasn't a whole lot of suspense for me but there was a lot of foreshadowing. And I'm going to be honest and say that my dislikes might have just been me with this book. The book was translated and is written by a Swedish author which also makes me wonder if that is why I had problems connecting to the book. It could have just been that it didn't translate well. Maybe if I had read this book written in its' original language then I would have been able to enjoy it more.

All in all, I found this to just be an okay read for me. Although I had a few problems with it, I would still be open to reading more by this author and continuing on with the series.

Disclosure: I was sent this book for review by the publisher for a Free Press Blog Tour. My thanks!

P.S.- Does anyone know how to make the two little dots over a letter? I really wanted to do that for this author's last name to be correct but haven't the slightest idea how to do it :)