I chose this book rather randomly at the library one afternoon on my way home, because I needed a new read for my bedtime session of reading before going to sleep. I didn't know of the author in advance.
This novel seemed promising to me in many ways , and in many ways, it did meet my expectations by being very character driven, and by dealing with "ordinary people" and by not being full of gore and gory violence, while still being gifted with a pretty exciting , mystic plot that I wanted to explore and solve. And it was also rather well-written.
I don't know exactly how it fell short (to me) all the same.
Usually, I want as much personal stuff from the chartacters in a mystery novel as possible, and as little action-filmish action as possible .. but I did amazingly sometimes feel a bit bored during this novel while reading the personal parts. I also got a little annoyed about Veronica and her husband and their new pregnancy. I didn't even want this pregnancy to progress. I just thought "Bruh!" (It's not that I'm cold-hearted, as a rule, though).
I can hardly believe that I felt this way, myself. I mean, a bit bored with many of the characters. Maybe it was just that I was not really subconsciously appreciating the main characters, Monica and Claes.. Not really , although they were nice people. I was haPPIEST WHEN READING ABOUT sARA-iDA, Daniel and Louise. They had a kind of literary "X-factor" to them.
Well, as to the story line/plot, it started out well, with a double layered mystery which was yummy in combination with the character drive and the many pages it would last.
But it progressed to become too drawn out. We didn't even get to know the cause of death for our vicitm in the hospital till near the end of the story, and it dulled it out. Of course, it was a good aspect that we got knowledge of the trouble Veronica had to go through when she was suspected of medical malpractice, but is seemed strange that the result of the autopsy was so drawn out, also to her and the public , "in the name of the investigation "and that her husband didn't tell her earlier, in spite of his vow of silence, knowing the hell she went through.
But now, I will get to my main "complaint": We were enriched with an omniscient narrator, which meant that we saw the story from the side of a lot of different people. We were "inside them" and followed their thoughts and feelings. This naturally also applied to Sara-Ida, whom we got to know well through thick and thin. How could it be that, when we saw it all from her point of view, we were never ever told that she was deeply involved in the murder of the patient, so deeply involved that she could not possibly go around suppressing this completely , mentally, in her everyday life ? It seemed strange to me and perhaps it ultimately helped to make the story flat and untrustworthy for me. If one was in the habit of trying to guess who was the culprit, how could Sara-Ida get into consideration, when we knew what she was thinking and feeling all along in the story, but did not get THAT big deed that she was involved in entwined in all her other thoughts and emotions?
Another thing I didn't understand is why the book is called "The Comforter". The name in itself is really good and mystic, but the book was not so much about Daniel, or about Daniel and Sara-Ida's relationship, that it could justified the title. It was not even enough about Sara-Ida's relationship with men, in general, or her relationship with Daniel specifically, so significant that her nickname for him deserved to be the title of the book. Unless , of course, it applied to all men as a title?!
One more thing is, that the girl who gave birth to the lost child, was also an anti-climax in that she was not really belonging to anything /anyone else in the story - and we never knew who the father of the kid was, or the ENTIRE back- story of it all. I get that one of the themes in the book WAS pregnancy/children/parenting/childlessness -- but still, the lost child was an appendix which was pretty useless , all in all, although it did provide one aspect of women's possible situation with unwanted pregnancy.
PS. Good twist that Sara-Ida's ex-"boyfriend" turned out to be someone we knew. In that way, the story line was tied together well.
Sorry for all my criticism. It is otherwise a good book with a lot of potential.