I love the kindle store - searching through streams of books and picking out the ones you really think you'll love and having them all their at your fingertips is incredible. However, sometimes the algorithm gets a little fuzzy or maybe I've just read a range of books that have confused it because it recommended The Unseen to me and it's totally out of my comfort zone and also unlike things I've read in recent years.
I don't think I've read any Nordic noir before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from The Unseen. It was dark and gloomy and full of isolation and bleakness. Ingrid Barroy lives on Barroy island, named after her family, which are the sole inhabitants. Her family live a hard life there, working the land and struggling through long, hard winters.
Her father's greatest goal is to build a quay to connect the island to the mainland, but when modern life tries to enter the island, Hans realises that perhaps he doesn't want this connection as much as he thought.
I struggled quite a lot with this book, in part because of how dark it was. It was well written, and I really could envision this misty, gloomy island, but I think I just wasn't quite the right reader for the book. It reminded me a bit of Little House on the Prairie but instead of rolling meadows there were endless bogs.
I gave this three stars because I enjoyed the storyline about this family trying to cope in the isolated setting, but I found myself wanting to push ahead and skip bits to get closer to the end.
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