Tessa Nilsson's fascination with the disappearance of four women steered her to a career as a popular true-crime podcaster--until her job publicly exploded. These events lay the foundation for Camilla Sten's smartly plotted The Bachelorette Party, which explores obsession, jealousy, and mythologizing.
Tessa was 19 years old when she became deeply invested in the case of the women who vanished from Isle Blind, a small island in the Baltic Sea. The Nacka Four, named after their Swedish hometown, became fodder for Internet sleuths, though it was widely accepted that the foursome died in a drunken boating accident. Their case inspired Tessa's podcast, which built a following over the next decade until Tessa was blamed for a tragedy, causing her to become a recluse. Tessa is pulled out of her solitude when she's invited to a friend's bachelorette party--six women, four days--at Baltic Vinyasa, a new "ultraluxe" yoga retreat, a package touting vegan catering in lieu of wi-fi service, on Isle Blind. The retreat's owner, Irene, is the sister of one of the Nacka Four, so Tessa hopes to reinvigorate her career by sleuthing around the island. Tessa's friends begin to vanish as more clues to the old case surface.
Sten (The Lost Village) gives voice to each of the bachelorette party members and, through well-placed flashbacks, to the Nacka Four. Tessa's obsession fuels The Bachelorette Party, but her single-mindedness can also feel excessive at times. Despite using some clichés, such as the lack of cell phone service, Sten makes the island function as a setting for a shrewd locked-room mystery. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer