The Ice Princess

4.5*
I really liked this first book. We follow multiple points of view, so in the beginning there are parts where we don't know who is the character that is the point of the view.
There were two things that frustated me. The first one was keeping from us what the Erica and Patrik discovered, one example of this was when Erica redialled a number to discover who the last call was made to. And she is surprised to who the voicemail belongs to, but we don't learn who it is until later in the book.
The second thing, was the “romance”, which I didn't feel like was a romance at all. Erica and Patrik have two dinners and didn't talk for very long and then they have a lot of sex (not explicit) and then suddenly, it is like they feel like they were made to be and they feel perfect for each other. I though it was very rushed and forced, like she wanted to settle then as a couple in the first book.

This is my first foray into Nordic noir. I think I may have tried to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I honestly don't remember. I'm not a big mystery reader-in any setting. So, this one was out of the reading bubble for me and I really liked it. I mean, she dropped 2 major plot points (house and Anna's husband), and it was a little too romance-y for me. Not to mention I learned nothing about Sweden except that one can get UTI's from sitting on cold things or being in cold houses. Good to know! Still, I sound like I didn't like it, and that's not the case. I found myself wishing I didn't have to put it down and was counting the minutes until I could get home and read the last 40 pages.

So! In the future, more Nordic Noir, including the sequel to this one as it will also fill a PopSugar RC 18 challenge: read the next book in a series you started.

Camilla Lackberg's The Ice Princess was hailed to be a good book for fans of Stieg Larsson and while it was a decent story, it was no The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Translated from Swedish, I think there were times when something was lost in translation or something was explained too much due to the translation.

I think it was a little over halfway through the book when one sentence caused the whole thing to click for me and I knew who and why. At that point it made the second half of the book unbearably slow. It just seemed like it took a really long time to wrap up loose ends and even after the killer is revealed and arrested there was still a while before the book finished.

The other thing that bothered me was the unfinished business with Erica's sister and brother-in-law. I kept waiting for that to happen and it never did so I felt like I was left hanging there. Seeing as this is a series I suppose eventually it will get figured out, but it still bugged me. I'll give it one more book and see how I feel then.

I found the story line to be really interesting, but certain features of the author's writing style didn't sit quite right with me.

Was just OK. Pace was very slow. I will be reading the 2nd in the series, so hopefully it improves.