The unsolved disappearance of a childhood friend comes back to haunt a single mother in Freyja, the tense debut thriller from Icelandic American author Margrét Ann Thors.
When she was 11, Unnur spent the summer on a farm in the Dark Valley. She and Freyja, the almost otherworldly daughter of farmer Elias, became inseparable. Freyja disappeared around a year later, and Unnur was the last person to see her. Unnur doesn't remember what happened to Freyja, but what she does remember about that night doesn't match other reports.
Twenty-seven years later, Unnur is living in Reykjavík with her seven-year-old daughter, Lilja, when she receives a mysterious note with a stack of childhood photographs. Then an anonymous author releases a novel based on the Freyja case, and Unnur's ex-husband arrives with a new girlfriend who knows entirely too much about Unnur. She even has a daughter named Freyja, and something about the girl and her interactions with Lilja seem not quite right.
Freyja utilizes an unforgiving Icelandic landscape and the folklore and superstition of a sparsely populated countryside to set a tone of eerie menace. Thors strikes a balance that allows readers to sympathize with Unnur's desperate fear for Lilja's safety and also share her uncertainty about whether she may somehow have been responsible for Frejya's disappearance. Unnur's memories from 1991 weave intricately throughout her 2018 search for answers, both arcs twisting toward an end that, in retrospect, plays completely fair. This debut promises more haunting, atmospheric thrillers to come. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library