I’ve long been a fan of Scandinavian and Icelandic fiction, sometimes it’s great to slip out of my cosy lane and pick up something truly chilling. Home Before Dark is such a fantastic read. It’s not a book you can read a chapter of and put down – it’s best served in one sitting.
In 1967, Marsi’s sister went missing, the only clue was her blood soaked anorak. 10 years later, Marsi returns to try and uncover what happened the night, unable to move on until she has answers. And of course, it’s not the only secret that is uncovered.
We follow the story across both time periods, and its doesn’t take long to be completely sucked into the story, and it’s one you have to keep reading as you’re never sure what’s real and what isn’t.
Ægisdóttir is a beautiful writer that manages to keep the reader simultaneously engaged and wrong-footed, and it makes for addictive reading. It’s a book that, once I put it down, had me staring into space for a while, and I’m still thinking about it long after I read it. Dark, atmospheric, and completely addictive.
Many thanks to the author, Anne at Random Things Tours and Orenda Books for the gifted eARC for review.
Blurb
Struggling to separate her dreams from reality, a young woman investigates the disappearance of her sister ten years earlier … worried that she might be next. A breathtaking, twisty standalone thriller from the international bestselling author of the Forbidden Iceland series…
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…
About the author
Born in Akranes, Eva Björg Ægisdóttir studied for an MSc in Globalisation in Norway before returning to Iceland and deciding to write a novel.
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.
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