sadly this book wasn't for me. I tried so hard to get into it but at 44% I had to call it a day and move on. For this reason I won't post a review on goodreads as I feel it is unfair to review unfinished books.

2020 was a year of lasts for Icelandic crime writer Ragnar Jónasson. The Mist, the third in the Hidden Iceland trilogy, as well as Winterkill, the final Ari Thór novel, were released the midst of the pandemic. Instead of diving straight back with a new series, with The Girl Who Died Ragnar has brought out a standalone. His past successes have set a high bar – can he reach it once again?

Full review here: https://westwordsreviews.wordpress.com/2021/07/13/the-girl-who-died-ragnar-jonasson/

The Girl Who Died by Ragnar Jónasson will be filed under Scandi Noir, a thriller set in a small claustrophobic village in Iceland. However; this novel is slightly different as it is a bit gothic ghost story and also a bit Agatha Christie with its isolated village of 10 people.
To escape Reykjavik Una decides to take up job in a small community where she will teach two young girls. However, with ghostly goings on and a small community that she feels excluded from, it is far from what she envisaged. Of course there was nothing to fear in this little community, was there?
I quickly read this well paced novel which leads to a satisfying conclusion. Highly recommended.

Relatively enjoyable but ultimately flawed and inconsequential gothic mystery about a young teacher form Reykjavik who accepts a post in a remote community and finds that she isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms. The close-knit community, it soon becomes clear, is hiding some sort of secret and they don’t want to share it with Una. Tension is ramped up when a child suddenly and inexplicably dies. My problem with the book was that I didn’t enjoy the supernatural elements, not being a believer in ghosts, and consequently didn’t find the narrative at all creepy or threatening. I’m not even really sure what the author was trying to do here. A psychological thriller? A ghost story? I was also puzzled by the inclusion of another narrative thread relating to a woman unjustly imprisoned some years before for murder – I believe this was a real case, I saw a documentary about it recently – and I couldn’t see what this had to do with Una’s story. All in all an unsatisfactory though fairly enjoyable read, which kept me entertained for a few hours as long as I didn’t think about what I was reading too much.

I loved this book! He writes so well with a clarity and refinement that strangely create atmosphere, almost painting the scene. Very complex story with lots of unexpected twists too, if some were a bit weird!

A chilling, tense, gripping journey. The atmospheric book concludes and the reader understands. Choose this book for your bookshelf.

My thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘The Girl Who Died’ by Ragnar Jónasson in exchange for an honest review. It was originally published in Iceland as ‘Þorpið’ in 2018 and translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb.

This standalone thriller is set in 1985 and focuses upon Una, who is currently scraping by as a supply teacher in Reykjavík. She responds to an advert: ‘Teacher wanted at the edge of the world’ and soon finds herself in the small fishing village of Skálar on the Langanes Peninsula. There are only ten residents remaining in the village including the two young girls that will be Una’s students.

Una is a troubled soul, dealing with her grief over her father’s suicide and drinking too much. She is lodging in the home of one of her students and begins to be aware of the ghostly sound of piano playing and singing. She catches glimpses of a girl dressed in white. She then learns that fifty years ago a young girl died in the house and it is said that her ghost haunts the house. Other events occur, some quite shocking and there are surprises along the way.

The isolated, almost abandoned village of Skálar provides a very atmospheric setting. In his Author’s Note Ragnar Jónasson clarifies that Skálar is borrowed from reality though it was totally abandoned in the 1950s.

I find novels set in Iceland fascinating as there is certainly a strangeness about the landscape as well as a sense that around any corner there might be a troll or one of the hidden people.

Overall, I found this a dark brooding slow burn of a Nordic Noir with a touch of the Gothic and ghostly. I have read a number of Ragnar Jónasson’s novels with others awaiting my attention. All of them, including this one, has proved very good.

Certainly recommended.

Atmospheric, eerie and suspenseful. A teacher wanted at the end of the world. A community of ten who don't welcome an outsider. Una is disilusioned by life in Reykjavik and answers the advert for a teacher wanted in Skalar, a remote outpost. Teaching two girls.

But as rumours of a haunting play on her mind, Una begins to think she's made a mistake. When one of her girls suddenly collapses and dies, and a man goes missing, she is convinced something dark is occurring.

Whilst this was a somewhat enjoyable read, I felt it lacked a cohesive conclusion and it left me wanting more.

Brilliant. I loved this book. From beginning to end I was hooked in. Set in Iceland, a place I have visited, was a bonus for me. This is a dark story, it is a mystery story with a mixture of a ghost tale and a murder plot.. The book leaves the reader wondering which path it will go down, that gives the story an unpredictability, a fascination. I found it an easy read. I know I have enjoyed a book when I keep disappearing into my reading space and dinner becomes fast food, so as I can get back to reading. I must admit that I like my mystery stories at a slower pace and as this book was set in a remote village with only ten inhabitants that worked well.
I will be visiting the book shop soon to get more from this author.

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A well-written suspense thriller. A little slow to start, but enjoyable.

I must confess that overall I was a little disappointed with this new standalone, The Girl Who Died, from one of my favourite authors, Ragnar Jonasson, having been a stalwart reader of both his previous series. There is no question that Jonasson excels at capturing the raw and isolated location of Skálar, at the northern most tip of Iceland, and his vivid description, and depiction of this truly inhospitable outpost is compelling throughout. Indeed, this added so much to the atmosphere and the feel of the book, that it became the driving force in my continuing to read the book. But, and here’s the rub, and as much as it pains me to say it, I did find the central storyline quite humdrum, and the characterisation of both the main character Una, and some of the surrounding characters, a little weak overall. I found myself caring less and less about Una’s plight, the frankly ridiculous haunting of her new abode, and the general ‘Wicker Man meets ‘Hot Fuzz’ characteristics of the shady occupants of the village. I appreciate that once again Jonasson was aiming for a locked room mystery with a condensed number of characters but it didn’t quite work for me. All the stars for location and atmosphere, but less stars for the book as a whole.

Skálar is the perfect setting for his disturbing, psychological suspense invested with supernatural echoes. Una is struggling with her life, low on esteem, money and positivity. She decides to apply for a teaching role at the end of the earth and secures it. She is an unreliable protagonist, still grieving for her dead father, using alcohol as a prop to keep going.

The community she discovers in Skálar is insular, sparse and unfriendly. Lodging with the mother of one of the children she's to teach. She is aware of a ghostly child. Its presence intensifies as Una becomes isolated and wary. Whether she is real or imagination is left to the reader to decide.

This is a compelling and strange story that is increasingly menacing and twisted. The villagers are shadowy characters, and the setting is forbidding, both making this an atmospheric noir.

I received a copy of this book from Penguin UK - Michael Joseph via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

As a teacher, I loved this! TEACHER WANTED AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD - I'd apply for that!

A tense, intense novel that drips with the icelandic setting and cold welcome and haunting chilling atmoshere.

Una was not happy. Her life in Reykjavik is a mess. She has few friends, she is broke, her job is insecure & her relationships seem to go nowhere. When one of her few friends sees an ad for a teacher in a remote fishing village- a job that comes with free accommodation it seems the perfect chance for Una to get out of her rut & also save some money. She sets off for Skalar with a population of ten, which include two girls one of seven & the other aged nine. There is a secondary story element dealing with a murder. Although the woman Una is staying with (& mother of the younger girl) is welcoming she is the only one who is. Una hears a child singing, but it isn't the girl in the house. The village leader makes her feel very uncomfortable & it is no wonder, as the winter draws close, she grows fonder of the red wine! Things go from bad to worse-will she ever get out?

This was extremely atmospheric. I found Una a real pain but in spite of that I hoped things would work out for her. Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read this chilling/chilly(!) book.

Let me start by saying that Ragnar is in a league of his own when it comes to writing intense and chilling Icelandic Noir.

The Girl Who Died is a clever mix of mystery and thriller with a touch of the supernatural and this all works. This is a twisty, claustrophobic and haunting tale set in an isolated part of Iceland.

Brilliantly set-up with fascinating character and location descriptions througout, this is a master of storyingtelling and intrigue.

I'll certainly be reading anything with this name on and shouting until I'm blue in the face!

Thank you to the publishers and Net Galley for another amazing opportunity.

A nice bit of Icelandic ghostliness. A woman moves to a tiny fishing hamlet in a remote part of Iceland to teach two girls, the only children. This is in response to an advert that read: 'Teacher wanted at the end of the world.'

The community, being so small with a population of ten, is very close and strangers are bound to feel like outcasts. Mostly the story is about how the young teacher interacts with them, hears their history and that of the village. A little girl mysteriously died in the house where the teacher lives, sixty years ago, and nobody talks about it. Sometimes a glimpse of her appears, or strange singing...

Told from the perspective of the teacher and interspersed by someone telling a story about a double murder, Jonasson creates a compelling tale. This is a chilling read brought about by the possibility of a ghost and also the gloomy atmosphere of the location. It really does feel as if it is at the end of the world with the constant darkness and lack of connection to the rest of the country. A well-told tale of isolation, belonging and secrets - the perfect psychological mystery in an evocative setting. Spooky, dark and cold. Wonderful.

ajsefton.com/book-reviews

This is the fifth Ragnar Jonasson novel I have read now and he really has become an auto read for me. Still wonderfully Scandi Noir, as you would expect from this author, but with more of a chilly ghost story like feel to this new stand alone novel, I devoured it over a weekend. Wonderfully atmospheric, the lack of daylight and a slightly unreliable narrator made this a wonderfully creepy read.

Set in 1985/6 it follows Una, a thirty year old substitute teacher currently living in Rrykjavik. Unsettled, unsatisfied and with money constantly running tight, she is looking for a change of scene. Still suffering mentally from the suicide of her father and a growing disconnection from her mother, she has little to keep her in the city.

When her friend Sara comes round with a copy of the newspaper, she shows Una an advert for a teaching position in a very remote village called Skalar, in the very north-eastern tip of Iceland. With a population of only 10 people the advert is headed ‘Teacher Wanted At The Edge Of The World’ and persuades Una to apply.

Una gets the position and finds herself lodging in one of the houses in the village with a woman called Salka and her daughter, one of the two children Una will be teaching during the time of her stay. However the house has a strange feel about it and Una learns of an unsettling story of a young girl connected to the house.

With not a lot else to do in the village after her teaching duties have finished, Una tries to connect with the few others living there, but they all seem to be extremely private people and she doesn’t feel that welcomed so starts to have second thoughts about taking up the job. She however, meets Thor. More of her own age to the other villagers she feels a connection between them.

The story that follows is a wonderfully creepy tale, as we see Una become increasingly isolated as the winter darkness sets in, her evening sightings of the ghost of the girl, in the local story and her increasing intake of wine, all add to the unsettling feel of the book, and as the other residents start to turn against her, hiding secrets they clearly don’t want anyone outside the village to learn about, things start to become menacingly tense and the book takes on a claustrophobic quality the this author writes of so well. With a traumatic event happening at the Christmas service, and a stranger knocking at Sulka’s front door, is Una about to get involved in something dangerous? As she learns more of this isolated community the answer may turn out to be a definite YES.

An enthralling thriller read with a touch of the supernatural. Recommended reading.

An atmospheric but slow-paced read. I enjoyed the claustrophobic feeling evoked by the remote Icelandic location and was unsettled by the hostility of the 10 inhabitants of Skalar. What are they hiding and why? Ultimately, however, I found the resolution to be rather flat and the overall effect disappointing. Unfortunately it was just not for me.

Collusion and confusion at the end of the world. Ragnar Jónasson specialised in locked room thrillers in the style of the Golden Age of crime writing, but in The Girl Who Died there are some extra twists. We’ve loved the Dark Iceland and Hidden Iceland series, and this new standalone offering brings us both dark and hidden. Almost all the action takes place in Skálar, which you can find, alone and forsaken on the north eastern tip of Iceland – even though in reality the village was long abandoned by the the 1980s in which this novel is set. Fictional Skálar is rocked when its close-knit community of fewer than ten adults is visited by a short-term newcomer and a ghost from its past.

Actually, there’s more than one ghost, for The Girl Who Died relies strongly on a blurring between reality and the imagination. Some of that blurring may come from the strong alcohol intake of the protagonist, but in a parallel narrative about someone stitched up for murder, Jónasson provides a strong contrast between how one can be gaslit by an isolated and close community and how, through the use of solitary confinement the police can play with your mind such that you are no longer sure of your innocence.

He’s known for his police procedurals but this time Jónasson steers almost completely clear of law enforcers. Everything in the main narrative is seen from the perspective of Una, the thirty-something newcomer who sees a year in Skálar teaching its two young children as the jump-start she needs in her life. It isn’t really clear how she holds it all together with not much more than red wine for company: the welcome she receives in the village is as icy as its surroundings and as time goes on she’s trapped physically, emotionally and intellectually. The villagers don’t get a sympathetic portrayal: only one, perhaps two, of them are welcoming: the others are suspicious and some are openly hostile. There are all-village meetings to which Una isn’t invited and it’s clear that there’s a secret that the community is petrified she’s stumbling towards uncovering. The lack of – Una aside – three-dimensional characters, though, does mean that there is a shortage of moving parts against which the reader can guess the outcomes. But when the villagers say, repeatedly, that they don’t want the police looking through their affairs because they can sort their own problems out, they mean it.

This kind of novel demands careful pacing, which in itself places demands upon the reader: I found the first hundred or so pages fairly slow as the claustrophobic environment is set out for us, and there are about 150 pages before the girl who died, dies. On the other hand I was disappointed later on to see that there were only fifty pages to go. The supernatural twist is just about earned, given the strong other-world dimension and the unreal surroundings (there’s not even any snow in the depths of midwinter). More interesting is the fusion between old mystery and new. Jónasson gives a shout out to his old teacher, Agatha Christie, and he mines her classic plots before providing something quite distinctive. While we’re doing shout-outs, here’s one to Victoria Cribb for a fine translation.

It’s good to see Jónasson try something fairly new: to keep the claustrophobia and psychological drama but with a quite different type of protagonist. It will be interesting to see whether he continues to explore the supernatural dimension in subsequent work. In the meantime, this tale of isolation at Christmas is just the thing for these long June days.

Unfortunately this was not a book I enjoyed and this surprised me as I am a fan of Ragnar Jonasson. It was set in an isolated place with nothing of any great interest and the lead character was quite boring too. Won’t stop me reading more from this author... you can’t please all of the people as they say.