Today I’m taking part in the paperback blog tour for Yule Island. I’m resharing my review, which I originally wrote in December 2023, with thanks to Anne Cater for inviting me on both tours and to Orenda Books for my copy of the book.

Blurb:

Don’t

Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.

Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide?

Trust

As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.

When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman’s tragic death somehow hold the key?

Anyone

Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter…

Review:

My reading mojo has suffered a bit recently but Oh My Actual God is it back with a bang! I read Yule Island in a day because I didn’t want to stop. Johana Gustawsson is an absolutely phenomenal writer who gets better with everything she writes and her words just took me to Sweden and would not let me go.

It’s difficult to say much about the actual story without giving too much away, but it’s narrated from three different perspectives: the perspectives of Karl, Emma and Viktoria. The narratives are obviously all connected but it’s not immediately clear how and I loved reading from all sides of the investigation of the murders on the island as the plot unravelled.

I will admit I am absolutely useless at guessing the endings of books, but I hope I can be forgiven for being way off the mark with this one. I don’t think my jaw could have been any nearer to the floor!

It is my understanding that Yule Island is the beginning of a series. I’m not sure what form the rest of the series will take but I’m definitely impatient for the second instalment already!

Yule Island is available from Amazon.

You can follow the rest of the blog tour here: