This is such a dark and cleverly twisted tale. Yrsa Sigurdardottir proves she is the Queen of her craft with this brilliantly written story, This story starts out quite chilling and haunting then continues into a seriously well thought out and cleverly plotted crime story. All the elements of the story, which initially seem unrelated, are brilliantly woven together as we get towards the end. All the main characters are really well written, rounded and believable too. And there is even a light touch of humour sprinkled in along the way. Definitely a recommended read.

First time I’ve read this author and I’m glad I did. I enjoyed the story and twists. Will definitely be on the lookout for more by this author. Thanks to publisher and NetGalley for the arc.

This book had it all.

The creepiness, the constant feeling of being watched, the eeriness

So atmospheric and so perfectly executed!

Thanks for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Couldn’t finish.
I loved the blurb for this book, loved the Icelandic setting, but found the translation bad. In places it flowed well, but in others was so stuttering and unnatural it made me give up. I couldn’t get into the plot enough to warrant plotting through the awkward prose. Sorry, author.

This is book five of the Children’s House series and I think it was the best so far I really enjoyed it. So we are back with Huldar and Freyja once more more and it was like catching up with old friends and finding out what they have been up to I just love these two characters.
The book starts with what seems like a series of events that seem to have no connection whatsoever and this is where I feel the book excels it’s so cleverly written weaving a complex story and revealing more and more as the book continues. It’s a dark story as you would expect from Yrsa Sigurdardottir with an element of creepiness at times but it also has some humour especially from Huldar I just love his awkwardness!
All of the characters in the book are well written the plot line was a very thought out one and I loved how things all came together at the end with quite a few surprises that I hadn’t seen coming.
So for me it was a fabulous read and I am really looking forward to reading the next in this brilliant series.
My thanks to NetGalley and Hodder and Stoughton for giving me the chance to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I had never come across this author previously. I chose this novel based on the strapline and expected a supernatural thriller; this did not turn out to be the case. The book is crime fiction and not something I would generally read. That said, I did enjoy it. The descriptions of Iceland were magnificent and set the scene for a well-plotted story with an exciting finale and plenty of twists.

Would I read this author again? Probably not, but if you like this genre of fiction, I suspect it would be well worth giving it a go.

My thanks to the Author publisher's and NetGalley for providing me with a Kindle version of this book to read and honestly review.
This is the fifth outing for child psychologist Freya and Detective Hulder but the book can be read as a standalone novel. Well written atmospheric gripping story with a number of surprising twists at least to me, and they keep coming right to the end. A character driven story engaging and gripping from first to last page set in Iceland. Quality Scandi or is it Nordic noir I am not sure but whichever it's classed as i completely recommend it.

I had never heard of this author before but when I read the synopsis on Netgalley, I couldn't resist requesting it. What I didn't know until I had finished the book, is that The Doll is actually the 5th book in the Freyja and Huldar series. And since I really, really liked this book, you know what that means?! I am going to have to go back to the start of the series and read from book 1! (See my post featuring book 2: The Reckoning)

From the name of the book, you might be a little misguided into thinking this was a horror story about some demonic doll, I know I did, and I hate to tell you that it's not. What it is though is a brilliantly written crime thriller.

There are several different cases happening through the book, which appear unrelated to the great opening stories and you would be forgiven if you wondered how on Earth they were linked, but the wonderful plotting by the author brings them all neatly together with a nice, clear explanation towards the end of the book, complete with a twist that I never would have seen coming!

You know when a book gets you excited about reading more in the series or by that author? This one did exactly that to me, I can't wait to read the rest! I couldn't put The Doll down.

This is my first book by Yrsa Sigurdardottir so I wasn’t sure what to expect. This was book 5 in a series but I read it as a stand alone and wouldn’t have known until I looked on goodread.
I found it a rollercoaster of a ride. I loved the concept of the demonic doll being the cause of everything, however, things are definitely not as they seem. There are a few different plots woven skilfully throughout with a few surprises that keep you guessing.
I found it quite gripping and hard to put down. I like the characters and how the investigation slowly unfolds.
I will definitely be looking out for more of her books
Thank you NetGalley for my advanced copy of this book.

I had not realised that this book was part of a series, but I will certainly look for the other books by this author to catch up on some of the back stories. A cleverly written police procedural book, with interesting, believable characters and several different plots coming together at the end. Much better than I had expected as I thought it may be a horror story about a doll. Very enjoyable.

"It was meant to be a quiet family fishing trip, a chance for mother and daughter to talk. But it changes the course of their lives forever"

This book was a bit of a slow burner, to start with it jumps between different characters and scenes which do not seem to link in any way whatsoever, this left me really confused. I felt that for about half of the book it was just a big information dump from all over the place, nothing linked or made sense. Only after this did the story start to slot together and you could see the story forming and linking and beginning to explain everything.

After this, the story was really well linked, everything slotted in so well and everything clicked into place. I enjoyed how all the characters linked to each other.

I didn't find it particularly creepy or scary. But turned out to be an enjoyable crime read.

A very dark, forbidding thriller that kept up the mantra 'expect the unexpected.' A great read that holds you entranced from page to page.

This was a nice book. I liked it, but I do have a feeling that this is one of those cases in which the book can't be read as a standalone. I was missing many information on the characters and that made me sad because it wasn't a bad thriller and I love nordic books, especially when they're set in Iceland.

I received a free copy by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Wow, first page and Bam!! I am hooked. A creepy beginning with the connections to the Doll found in the sea, had me hook line and sinker, as they say. What a read, the plot is excellent, the book as twists and turns as you go with it.. fast paced , and i read it in two days as i couldn't put it down .... i love Icelandic literature and this is one of the best i have read... Five stars for me

When Disa and her daughter Rósa go on a fishing trip, the most Disa expects to bring home is a couple of fish. Instead, they net a doll, one-eyed and encrusted in barnacles and worms, a hideous, broken thing that Disa wants to throw back, but Rósa insists on keeping. By morning, Disa is dead.

Five years later, the manager of a children’s home is accused of sexual abuse, a drug addict is found dead, and human remains are discovered off the coast of Reykjavík. One witness seems to link all three cases, but that witness is missing. That witness is Rósa.

I made two rookie mistakes when I chose The Doll for review - I made an assumption that it was a horror (hey, creepy doll!), and I forgot to check whether it was part of a series – so when I started reading and realised that it was book five of a crime series, it came as a bit of a surprise. Fortunately, it turned out to be a happy accident, as The Doll happens to be a superior Scandi-noir thriller which works equally as well as a stand-alone novel.

Set against the atmospheric backdrop of the Icelandic capital, The Doll is fast-moving, yet tense and complex. I will definitely be going back to the beginning of the series and reading the first four books.

I received an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

An enjoyable thriller with an unexpected ending.

I didn’t realise until I had started reading the book that this is part of a detective series, however I felt that the author was careful to include enough information for the book to make sense as a stand alone book.

I like how the author added the name pronunciations at the beginning of the book and felt the book was translated well from Icelandic. I love reading books based in other countries, especially when written by a native author as I feel like you get a real peek and what that country is like.

The doll is the link to how the characters of the book all tie together. I felt that the ending of the book was a bit rushed - as rather than experiencing the finale of the story, we are told the events third hand when one character explains the conclusion of the case to another character.

This was a good introduction to this authors work and I would pick up another of her books.

This is my first novel from this writer and I enjoyed it. There is a good amount of tension and creepiness and I cared about the characters.

Despite the impression I got from the cover, this was not a horror story with a demonic doll at the heart of it but instead a detective story where a doll, recovered from a fishing net after a day out at sea, is the key to unlocking a series of mysteries that somebody is determined to keep hidden for as long as possible. Although part of a series, the book also works well as a stand alone novel. The plot is complicated and involves a number of past tragic events and unsolved crimes linked in with more recent mysteries and body parts fished out of the sea. It was well written and mostly compelling though the bringing together of the different threads at the end was a bit clunky, requiring one of the detectives to explain it over dinner to one of the other main characters.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Hodder & Stoughton for an advance copy of The Doll, the fifth novel to feature Detective Huldar of the Reykjavik Police and child psychologist Freyja.

On a family fishing trip the net catches a barnacle encrusted doll. The eleven year old daughter begs to keep it and her mother relents but posts a picture of the doll online to try and identify the owner. The next day the mother is dead and the doll has disappeared. Years later Huldar and his boss, Erla, are investigating bones found on the seabed and not getting very far, so they have time to investigate the murder of an addict they wanted information from. In the meantime Freyja is helping the sex crimes unit with allegations of abuse against minors. Soon they come to realise that all these cases are linked to a teenager called Rósa, but she has disappeared.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Doll, which is a cleverly plotted novel with plenty of twists and turns. It caught my attention from the start with its insinuations of a Chucky type killer doll and then moved on to more mysteries. Each one is interesting in its own right and the author manages to produce some surprising resolutions in all of them. It held my attention throughout with all the plot strands and developments, never a dull moment for the reader as they compute the permutations, although Huldar and Freyja seems to kick their heels at times and yet this isn’t wasted either, allowing thinking and research time.

In anywhere but Iceland I would be moaning about all the coincidences and the convolution involved in linking all these crimes together. The small population and low crime rate make it much more likely so I had no hesitation in accepting the premise. Yes, it is convoluted at the beginning but the solution clears it all up.

It is interesting and unusual that the novel hinges on Rósa, what she knows and what she’s doing, because after demanding the doll the reader never meets her. Her influence is pervasive and hangs over the novel but it’s all hearsay. I liked it.

The Doll is a good read that I can recommend.

"Both in the same boat, so to speak."
A day out on his fishing boat, arranged by a work colleague to please his work colleague, Disa, and Rosa, her eleven years old daughter, was a failure. Disa was cold, seasick and frightened of drowning, and almost nothing was caught apart from a spectacularly ugly doll, one eyed and covered in barnacles and white worm. Rosa wanted it thrown back in the water but Rosa objected, wanted to keep it, promised to clean it up once they were home. So it returned with the mother and daughter, was sat in the bath and left there, unscrubbed. Rosa found her mother's body the next day. But the doll had gone.

If this sounds like the creepy old supernatural horror story starring a malevolent doll, think again. This is a multifaceted detective tale in which several cases are woven together: murder and drugs, fear, greed and accusations of sexual impropriety, loneliness and the desire to uncover the truth. Set in Iceland, with it's small population, it is both sweeping and claustrophobic. Not so much an horror story, but sad. Well written (and translated), from the beginning of the book a tension is built, a desire to understand what is happening, how very disparate crimes can possibly have a connection, as well as a growing empathy with those people trying to uncover the truth with limited resources of information. Their characters are very well drawn, much more living people than printed page cartoons, as so often happens.

My thanks to Netgalley from whom I received a freely gifted complimentary copy of The Doll. This is the first book I have read by Yrsa Sigurdald and, until after I had finished The Doll, I had no idea that it was part of a series with investigators Huldar and Erla and the other main protagonist, child support Freyja. That I had not met these characters previously in no way lessened my enjoyment of the book but has certainly encouraged me to return for others in the series. It is bleak, lonely and sad but had me gripped throughout with even a small unexpected twist near the end. Recommended to all who enjoy Scandi mysteries or any not so straightforward crime