whimsydearest

On a remote Scottish island lives a small community seeking a slower way of living. However, their peaceful existence is threatened by a mysterious water-borne illness. Some claim the illness may be a case of mass hysteria, others say it’s a curse. Whatever the cause, once the ferry service and the phone towers go down, panic ensues and begins to tear the community apart. Dead Water  by C.A. Fletcher is a book I genuinely wanted to love. At first glance, it seemed like a book that would be right up my alley: an atmospheric folk horror about an isolated community. However, I feel that the story was far too long for what it was trying to achieve. It’s 513 pages long, which is something that might work more for a complex fantasy novel with a lot of worldbuilding. Instead we get a lot of quiet character scenes that focuses on the various villagers mundane lives, and the characters themselves (except for maybe Sig) weren’t compelling enough to hold my interest. It takes about 60% of the...

Documentary filmmaker Alice Lindstedt grew up with her grandmother’s tales about “The Lost Village”—an old mining town whose 900 residents vanished without a trace. Its only sole survivor was a newborn found abandoned in the village’s schoolhouse, and among those who disappeared were her grandmother’s own sister and parents.  Determined to get to the bottom of it, Alice brings a small documentary crew made up of her friends to investigate.  However, things start to go awry. They can’t quite shake the feeling that they’re being watched. They keep hearing eerie laughter. Their equipment is mysteriously destroyed. A person goes missing, and panic starts to set in. There is something truly haunting about watching videos of people exploring old, derelict buildings, and The Lost Village by Camilla Sten manages to perfectly capture that. It oozes creepiness and atmosphere with every page.  I have to say though … I was a little surprised about the formatting. Going in, I was a...