In the past few years, I’ve read a thriller occassionally. Before I discovered YA, romance etc, this was the genre I’ve read the most. However, I noticed myself drifting away from thrillers a lot because of a genre bore-out. I still read thrillers every now and then, for example the books in the “Forbidden Iceland” series by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir. I really enjoyed the first one, but the second book in this series already fell flat for me. During my holiday, I decided to give this third book, Night Shadows, a go. I’ve listened to the Dutch audiobook whilst chilling by the pool. Was this the tense thriller I was hoping for?

About the book

Night Shadows Series: Forbidden Iceland #3
Published by Orenda Books on November 2, 2020
Pages: 341
ISBN: 9781914585203
Genres: Adult, Mystery, Thriller

The small community of Akranes is devastated when a young man dies in a mysterious house fire, and when Detective Elma and her colleagues from West Iceland CID discover the fire was arson, they become embroiled in an increasingly perplexing case involving multiple suspects. What’s more, the dead man’s final online search raises fears that they could be investigating not one murder, but two.

A few months before the fire, a young Dutch woman takes a job as an au pair in Iceland, desperate to make a new life for herself after the death of her father. But the seemingly perfect family who employs her turns out to have problems of its own and she soon discovers she is running out of people to turn to.

As the police begin to home in on the truth, Elma, already struggling to come to terms with a life-changing event, finds herself in mortal danger as it becomes clear that someone has secrets they’ll do anything to hide…

My thoughts

The murder mystery and the corresponding tension is what drew me into thrillers in the first place. Lately I feel many thrillers are samey-samey and therefore I was pleasantly surprised by the first book in this series. I read lots of Scandinavian trhillers, but never have read a book set in Iceland before. The first installment was a thriller that really stood out to me in a very, very long time. Since I was a little disappointed by its sequel, I was hoping – and expecting – for this third novel to pick up and be incredibly tense. It might be for someone who is relatively new to the genre, but for me it was not that exciting.

We follow a lot of characters, who all get their own POV at some point. This is necessary for the storyline, but this way it’s hard to get to know everyone that well. We know enough for the story, but I feel like most characters are easy to forget. The most important characters (and suspects) are elaborated more than the other characters. Besides the family, friends and aquintances of the victims, Elma’s journey continues. To be honest, It has been so long since I’ve read the previous book that I forgot about a very important detail. However, no character stood out to me in this book and that’s such a pity, because therefore I didn’t feel a lot of tension. However, I suspected someone and it happened to be totally different which is nice.

The story has a timespan of a year. We find out why later in the book, when we learn about the placement of the Dutch au pair Lise. Most of the book takes place in present day and through flashbacks we get to know what happened in the past and what Lise’s involvement has been. This made the book intriguing, because despite being not super tense, I wanted to keep reading to find out what happened then and there. The chapters are quite short, which made it easy to continue reading just one more chapter each time, even though I was not fully invested.

Night Shadows by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir is quite an interesting thriller with quite an intriguing plot. It fell flat to me nevertheless, but I’ve read tons of thrillers in the past and am very experinced in this genre. I need to be challenged some more and just need more tension. Are you relatively new to this genre or do you want to have a “lighter” thriller for a change? Then this book suits your needs perfectly.