Heim fyrir myrkur

by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir

Hin 14 ára Marsí skrifast á við strák sem býr hinum megin á landinu. En hún gerir það í nafni systur sinnar. Bréfaskiptunum lýkur með því að þau ákveða að hittast. Marsí kemst ekki til að hitta hann en þar sem þau höfðu mælt sér mót finnst blóðug úlpa systur hennar sem er horfin. Tíu árum síðar hefur þessi óþekkti pennavinur samband á ný.

Genres: Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Nordic Noir, Fiction, Mystery Thriller, Audiobook

375 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 2023

About the author

Eva Björg was born and raised in Akranes, the small town featured in her books. The Creak on the Stairs was her debut novel. The book went on to win the Blackbird Award and became an Icelandic bestseller. In 2021 The Creak on the Stairs won the British Crime Writers Association (CWA) New Blood Dagger.

Reviews

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars

I’ve really enjoyed this author’s Nordic noir series set in Iceland and her latest stand-alone novel is just as engaging as the others. The story follows our main character as she investigates the mystery behind her sister’s disappearance ten years ago, spurred by a new letter from an old pen pal. Our narrator has been suffering from guilt these past 10 years, which has resulted in her battling insomnia and hallucinations. Her childhood memories are fragmented and she’s not sure which ones she can trust.

The book weaves in multiple POVs and timelines, which adds depth and layers to the mystery. There were plenty of twists, some I saw coming, others I didn’t. While I was satisfied with the ending, I found the culprit and motive a bit dumb. I also expected the pen pal element to play a larger role than it did. Overall, despite a few issues, I found this to be an entertaining Icelandic noir novel.

[Atlas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ókei, vá. Ég bjóst alveg við að skemmta mér við þennan lestur en ég bjóst ekki við því að sökkva svona djúpt ofan í söguþráðinn. Allt er svo vel útpælt og svo, svo vel skrifað. Ég elskaði að sjá alla þræðina koma saman og atburðarrásina skýrast, auk þess er Marsí rosalega athyglisverð persóna og bæði foreldrar hennar og heimili líka.
Sjónarhorn Stínu kom mér líka á óvart, en ég elska að lesa tvö sjónarhorn þar sem eitt er fyrir einhvern atburð og annað eftir atburðinn, en ég vissi ekki að það kæmi fram í þessari bók. Elska líka gott smábæjardrama og fannst skemmtilegt hvernig Ástandinu var blandað inn í söguna. Einnig var gaman að lesa svona sögulegan íslenskan krimma.

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10. A bit too twisty,drags in parts,and a couple of unanswered questions,but a great ride.

[Benni · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tons of red herrings, boring writing, and a very unsatisfying ending.

[Lee-Anne Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following timelines in 1967 and 1977 this is a tale of two sisters, one fair and beautiful, one dark and difficult. The younger, Marsibil or Marsí for short, starts a pen pal relationship using her older sister Stína's name, and after a year of correspondence with this Bergur they arrange to meet. But Marsí misses the meeting, falling asleep before the due time, but her sister is walking home that night from an evening out and disappears. Her blood stained anorak is found where Marsibil was meant to meet Bergur, but Marsí tells no one as she feels so guilty and responsible.

In 1977 Marsí gets a new letter from Bergur at her home in Reykjavik and then when she is home with her parents for the 10yr anniversary of Stína's disappearance there is another death and another letter for Marsí found with the body - is it time for the truth to come out? Was Bergur - who now calls her by her real name, not her sister's - actually a local? Neighbour and long term pal Gústi offers to help Marsí try to look into things.

Marsi is a somewhat unreliable narrator, with blurring of reality and dreams, drinking too much, and her parents - especially her mum - are also drinkers and troubled keepers of secrets.

Journalist Einar, who Marsí meets in a café/bar in her hometown, wants to get to know her for research to write an article on the disappearance, and says the investigation wasn't thorough, local police refused help from Reykjavík.

About three quarters of the way in the reader is beginning to have the unsettling suspicion that they know what happened to Stína and the reason Marsí's parents keep pressing her not to investigate further.

Slowly, layers start unfolding and more and more detail teases out, shining light on the past and explaining some current behaviours. Characters revolve past the crosshairs of suspicion like an old moving image lantern, first one, then another, another, another, and back to the first.
Then - a startling revelation, which, looking back, had been cunningly seeded in the earlier pages, hiding in plain sight - all is not what you first thought, and with it, coupled with other snippets of information, your suspicions reach a damning conclusion.

The shocking answer...
But then...
There's more...
And more...
AND MORE!

Another belter from Eva Björg, who is such an immense talent in her field, and brings us something strikingly new and different, but always brilliant, every time. She started out as 'One to Watch' a few years back but in no time was catapulted to 'Auto Read' status with the thrilling calibre of her writing. Highly recommended and a well deserved 5 stars.

[Mario · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like this author who always seems to generate plenty of tension in her storytelling along with clever twists and interesting characters.

Having said that this one uses the well worn path of an amateur sleuth solving a cold case the police couldn’t figure out, which gets a bit too familiar.

I was comfortably considering a 4 star rating were it not for the totally underwhelming ending which came from nowhere without evidence, didn’t hold water and left so many unanswered questions it was unrealistic. In the end it just about scraped 3 stars.

5 out of 10

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

9781399195805 Large print
Not one of her better ones especially because the ending seemed to come out of nowhere.
Gudrun killed her sister and the other girl, to stop them getting off with the boy she wanted to be with. Then, at the end when this was all revealed, she tried to kill Marsi, who actually managed to kill her instead. Her father then buried the body.
Surely the police will be onto Marsi as Gudrun’s mother knew they’d gone for a walk together. And wouldn’t there be forensic evidence where the murder occurred?

[Vala Fanney · Rating 4 out of 5]

!! góð - þannig að ég gleymdi því að ég hafði hellt upp á kaffi og nú er bókin búin og kaffið ískalt.

[Hrafnhildur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hörkuspennandi

[Susanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Home Before Dark is a standalone thriller that drew me in immediately. The story unfolds over two timelines set ten years apart. In 1967 Stina disappears while on her way home, leaving behind only a bloodstained anorak. In 1977 her sister Marsi returns home; she’s struggling with insomnia and flashbacks and wants to discover what happened to Stina. But why is Marsi feeling guilty, and why is she so off-balanced?

The people of the town, the parents, the friends, and the boyfriends are so well developed. There’s a haunting, creepy darkness hanging over the town, and within each resident’s backstory the tension builds, and for a time it seems anyone could be guilty. The plotting is multilayered and tightly knit with complex intricacies that always leave you guessing. This truly is a can’t-put-it-down thriller with an absolutely startling ending.

[Halldor Ari · Rating 3 out of 5]

Illa framkvæmdur endir annars alve góð.

3/5

[Viktoria · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75 🌟

[Alisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

And Breathe!!!
What a book. I didn't read it, I inhaled it. And now I want to read all of this author's books. Yes,I want to read every single book Eva Björg has ever written or will write!
'Home Before Dark ' was a twisted, atmospheric, and absolutely addictive read.
All the characters were super weird, the setting super dark,cold and messed up. And there was a big twist at the end !!! So yeah, I had a great time reading it.
Highly recommend it.

[FriðrikaOdduMattaskó · Rating 5 out of 5]

Svaka góð! Vildi ð ég gæti dregið dýnuna mína til Evu Bjargar og fengið hana til að segja mér sögur.😄

[Fictionophile · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read several titles by this author and have come to expect quality writing and engrossing stories from her. In this standalone, she doesn’t disappoint.

Told via dual timelines, we meet two sisters. The elder sister, beautiful Stina, went missing in 1967 while walking home from a friend’s house. Though her body was never found, her bloody anorak was discovered at the side of the road. The younger sister, Marsi, blames herself for what happened to her sister. She had been writing to Bergur, a ‘penpal’, pretending to be older than her fourteen years, and using her older sister’s name. On the night of Stina’s disappearance, Marsi was due to meet up with her penpal for the first time…

Now, 1977, ten years after Stina’s disappearance, Marsi travels from her flat in Reykjavik and returns to her small home town to spend the anniversary of the event with her parents. She does not reveal to them about her penpal back then, nor does she tell them that recently he has made contact again.

Marsi’s parents house was unkempt and foreboding, which added greatly to the atmosphere of the story. Marsi’s parents have never really recovered from losing their eldest daughter and have let the place go. Also, the house has the gruesome reputation of being the site of Marsi’s paternal grandfather’s suicide.how I imagined Marsi's parent's house might look from the author's description. (image created by Lynne LeGrow using Free AI Image Generator and Photoshop Elements)

“There’s something rotten in this house, I thought. Something rotten, thriving and spreading through the walls and under the floorboards. A rot that was contagious, that had infected all of us who lived here.”

The small Icelandic town, like small towns everywhere, was insular and rife with superstition. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and everyone’s business was fair game for gossip. Winter in Iceland added its own bleakness to the narrative.

At first I found Marsi difficult to care for. As a teenager she lived in her sister’s shadow. She felt she was unlovable, and had little in the way of self esteem. Now an adult aged twenty-four, she drinks too much and is riddled with self-contempt. It is clear that her mental health has suffered over the past decade. She seems to have periods where she cannot account for time lapses. Also, she finds it sometimes difficult to distinguish real life from what she has imagined. She does not know if she can trust her own memories. Her unreliable demeanour gives her an aura of vulnerability.

What happened to the beautiful, artistic Stina in 1967? You’ll just have to read this twisty thriller to find out.

If you like to read cleverly plotted novels that haunt you, then “Home Before Dark” might just be for you. A darkly menacing psychological thriller that I can eagerly recommend.

4.5 stars

[Monika Armet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Iceland, 1977. Marsí Karvelsdótti receives a letter from her childhood penpal, Bergur, with whom she hasn’t corresponded for ten years.

When Marsí was thirteen/fourteen years old, she secretly corresponded with Bergur, a boy few years older than her who lived on the other side of the country. However, Marsí has been signing the letters as Stína, her older sister, who was fifteen at the time.

Then, one cold night of November 1967, Marsí agreed to meet Bergur for the very first time. But the very same night, Stína went missing, her bloodied anorak found at the place where Marsí was due to meet Bergur.

Stína hasn’t been seen for the past ten years, and Marsí never mentioned her penpal to anyone, not to her parents and certainly not to the police.

Now, it appears that her penpal is back. This pushes Marsí to find the truth behind her sister’s disappearance.

I loved this standalone book from Eva Björg Ægisdóttir. I am such a huge fan of her books, and this one didn’t disappoint.

I loved the time period of the book: there were limited channels available on the TV and no mobile phones. When people wanted to speak to each other, they had to do it face to face, and they would communicate via letters. It was certainly a simpler time in the sense of no pressures from the digital world, but the young people still faced the same issues as we do today, such as navigating friendships or studying for the exams.

There was a certain animosity between the sisters, something you’d expect as part of growing up and trying to find one’s place in the world. However, in the book, I felt that Marsí thought of herself as inferior to her sister. Stína was the ‘light’: she was bright, funny, popular, and an amazingly talented artist, whereas Marsi was the ‘dark’: moody, unpredictable, and someone her parents were always complaining about.

I was also saddened by the theme of the ‘situation girls’ of Iceland, which the author brings to life in this book. It was a period of Icelandic history that I knew nothing about, and it made me do a bit of my own research. In Home Before Dark, the author portrays the fallout of this scenario and how it affected the lives of the families involved.

Overall, it is such a brilliantly written book that will keep you guessing all the way to the end. I definitely recommend it.

[Audur Eythors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Var mitt á milli þess að gefa 3 & 4 stjörnur. Bókin langdregin til að byrja með en söguþráðurinn vindur uppá sig og kemur með óvæntan endi, fær því 4 stjörnur þar sem ekki var hægt að sjá endinn fyrir

[Justin Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A twisty turny Icelandic mystery perfect for the nights drawing in.
Written from the perspective of two sisters, and told ten years apart, this cleverly imagined tale unfolds and continues to unfold causing you to go down many paths suspecting everyone.
I'm pleased to say this was clever plotting and wasn't predictable so it kept me entertained until the last page.
I'm sure I came up with my own pronunciations of all the Icelandic names, as although the author had put a helpful guide at the front of the book, to keep referring to them would have taken me out of the story.
Give this chilly tale a go, you won't be disappointed.

[Edda Björk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eva does not disappoint!

[Margrét Inga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mjög góð!! 4,5⭐️

[Elsa Ísberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frábær, eins og allt sem ég hef lesið eftir sama höfund

[Bríet Reine Geirsdóttir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lesið þessa bók!

[Eva Ýr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Þessi titill hljómar mjög týpískur og hefði ekki lesið hana nema því ég heyrði meðmæli - spennandi fram á síðustu blaðsíðu 👌🏼

[Laura Andersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good at what it sets out to do—what it sets out to do is fairly dark.

[Bryndís Gunnarsdóttir · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stjörnur. Flott flétta og spennan stigmagnaðist.

[Ásrún Birgisdóttir · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ég er ekki mikið fyrir krimma, en ég gat ekki lagt þessa bók frá mér. Hvernig er netflix ekki búinn að kaupa réttinn ?

[Hólmfríður Árnadóttir · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mjög fín eins og aðrar bækur Evu, þó dálítið öðruvísi en hinar fyrri. En mikil bók og áhugaverð.

[Doreen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read and loved all of the author’s five books in her Forbidden Iceland series, so I was anxious to read her latest standalone offering. I was not disappointed.

The narrative alternates between two timelines and two narrators.

In November 1977, Marsí goes to visit her parents on the tenth anniversary of her sister Stína’s disappearance. While there, Marsí decides to look into Stína’s life around the time she vanished. Marsí has always felt guilty because back in 1967, she corresponded with a penpal, a boy named Bergur, but used her older sister’s name. After a year’s correspondence, they arranged to meet; Marsí missed the meeting but, at the designated spot, Stína’s bloodied jacket was found. After not hearing from Bergur for over a decade, she hears from him once again, and it’s clear he knows her real name.

The other timeline is the year leading up to Stína’s disappearance in November of 1967. The sixteen-year-old describes her life: interests, activities with friends, concerns about her family, secrets, and desires. Her last chapter details her movements on the fateful day and night.

The use of two narrators is an interesting approach. At times the reader knows more than Marsí does about Stína because of the latter’s revelations in her chapters. Stína seems fairly reliable as a narrator, but Marsí is much less so. From the beginning she admits, “I’d always had trouble distinguishing dreams from reality; they had a tendency to blur into one another and become confused. Often, I had the feeling neither could be trusted.” Marsí’s mother tells her, “’You’ve always had a bad memory, Marsí. . . . You become immersed in other worlds, and confuse what really happened with what you wanted to happen.’” A therapist also tells her about the creation of artificial memories. In addition, there’s no doubt that Marsí is troubled; she drinks to excess and suffers from tichotillomania. So can Marsí’s version be trusted?

There’s more than one mystery. What happened to Stína? Was she killed? Her first words in the novel are “I want to disappear” so did she choose to do that? If someone killed her, could Bergur be the murderer? Little is known about Bergur, so who is he really? Could he be a local? Is Marsí now in danger? Then there are some mysterious photos: who is the baby boy in the family album and who is the woman in the 1943 photograph? All these questions certainly create interest and compel the reader to keep turning pages.

And there are any number of suspects who show a special interest in Stína. Could she have been harmed by a former boyfriend who “’when he loves something . . . doesn’t let it go’” or someone jealous that Stína “’always got more attention’” or a friend who “’wanted to own Stína’” or the father of a friend who makes “odd and creepy” comments or the art instructor who takes such a personal interest in her or the father of a classmate who looked at Stína with “hatred in his eyes” or a friend who feels rejected or . . . And why are both of Marsí’s parents so persistent in not wanting her to investigate further?

What also impressed me is the intricate plotting. In the end all the threads come together so well. As I read I would sometimes note things that seemed strange but by the end all those issues are fully explained. I guessed much of what really happened because the author plays fair and gives numerous clues. My thinking I had figured out what happened did not in any way affect my enjoyment of the book. I was even more anxious to keep reading to see if my suspicions were confirmed.

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel and can’t wait to see what Eva Björg Ægisdóttir will write next.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/) or substack (https://doreenyakabuski.substack.com/) for over 1,200 of my book reviews.

[Peter Fleming · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anniversaries stir up memories, but not all of them are good. So it proves for Marsibil (Marsi) on the tenth anniversary of her sister’s disappearance. Naturally she has returned home to support her parents at this difficult time, but she is also hiding a secret of her own, a letter. After a ten year gap her penpal Bergur has written which has unsettled her, it takes a little while for the reader to discover why. Kristin’s (Stina) disappearance has blighted their lives and while her parents seem to have given up hope of resolution, Marsi is determined to get answers this time. So begins a quest to find a sibling that ends up as a journey through a family and country’s dark past, with plenty of shocks and uncomfortable revelations.

The story is structure on a dual timeline of first-person narratives set ten years apart, with the older being that of Stina and the latter Marsi. The story alternates between the two and although the earlier one covers a much longer timescale, they both come to their surprising conclusions simultaneously. It’s a cleverly written narrative that gives nothing away too easily for the reader, which may frustrate those who like to pre guess. The direction of travel is largely clear, but the stops and side roads are unpredictable so sit back and enjoy the ride.

On the fateful night of her disappearance Stina was watching a Hitchcock movie (unnamed but was Suspicion) and this provides a clue to the vibe of this story, a modern take of his spellbinding best.

This is a tale of slow, dawning realisations, where situations are not always what them appear to be. The pacing naturally reflects this, and the author manages to build up the suspense and retain the readers interest much in the manner of the great director. I found it totally absorbing.

The sisters are beautifully imagined, personable with a great mixture of traits both similar and disparate. Stina a supremely talented artist and caring big sister who wants to broaden her horizons. She becomes intrigued by a mystery presented to her, one with a dark origin, barely believable in our modern times but shared across Europe. The relevance of this will become apparent. Marsi is the typical younger sister, looking up to Stina but forever in her shadow, which leads to her seeking out a penpal. Once Stina disappears Marsi is full of guilt and self-recrimination, is given therapy and resorts to self-harm. After going ‘off the rails’ badly she is beginning to get her life together when the anniversary brings it all back. Marsi is a woman who needs closure for her own sanity. These sisters take the reader through the full gamut of emotions but where sisterly love is the strongest and at their core.

Family, friendship and desire are central themes and provide much of the motivation. There are also elements of the paranormal with dreams, their interpretation and the act of sleepwalking threaded through the storyline. This brings a sense of confusion, where repeated dreams distort memories and can replace them, where characters question whether events really happened or were imagined.

Marsi’s father inherited the family chicken farm to which he added a slaughterhouse. This provides a dark, callous or even cruel touch as Marsi hates the place, its squalor and smells as the birds are kept in poor conditions. It also hints at powers struggles where the weaker fall by the wayside but also acts as a metaphor for being trapped in a prison of one’s own making. The family are tied to the birds so will never move, Stina wanted to spread her wings and leave for art college abroad, but in a way that applies to most of the residents of small Icelandic town.

A multilayered suspense thriller.

[Alice · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Home Before Dark, by Eva Björg Ægisdóttir, we follow 24-year-old Marsí from her flat in Reykjavik to her family home just outside the small town of Hvítársíða, around the tenth anniversary of her older sister Stína’s unsolved disappearance.

Marsí has spent the past decade silently struggling with guilt, as she was supposed to meet Bergur, a long-distance penpal she’d been writing to using Stína’s name, on the evening Stína went missing, and she suspects he might been involved. When Bergur re-establishes contact out of the blue, Marsí becomes determined to conduct her own investigation.

Back in Hvítársíða, Marsí sifts through Stína’s possessions and talks to people who knew her sister, despite her parents’ pleas for her to accept that Stína is gone and they may never know what happened to her. All kinds of leads come to light, and when a young woman staying nearby is found dead, Marsí starts to seriously consider the possibility that the explanation for Stína’s disappearance lies closer to home.

Home Before Dark is both a riveting whodunnit and a masterclass in the modern Gothic. A remote setting in winter! A sinister old house that seems to have a mind of its own! Dark secrets from the past just waiting for their moment to surface! A mother and daughter whose mental imbalances manifest in disturbing ways! A family whose unlucky stars align so comprehensively and juicily, you don’t suspend your disbelief so much as offer it up to the author as tribute! Needless to say, I loved it.

Right from the start, I found myself collecting theories about what happened to Stína – as the sisters’ childhood friend Gústi points out, Marsí’s idea that her penpal was behind Stína’s disappearance wasn’t the most likely explanation.

Through Marsí’s narrative in 1977 and Stína’s narrative in 1967, we meet a whole cast of people who might have had ill intentions towards Stína, such as her heartbroken ex-boyfriend; a classmate she had played an indirect part in humiliating; the teacher of her evening art course; and her own father. Even if Bergur isn’t in the frame, his reappearance, and Marsí’s difficulty tracing him, suggest he’s not totally irrelevant.

I really enjoyed piecing things together alongside or just ahead of Marsí, and I didn’t see the string of gasp-inducing revelations and events at the end of the book coming at all!

While she made some bad decisions over the course of the book, I warmed to Marsí as a character, identifying with her experience as an uncharismatic, discontented teenager craving connection, and sympathising with her compulsion to dig deeper into the events of 1967 and frustration when obstructed or discouraged from doing so.

Stína’s narrative, as well as giving us first-hand access to scenes Marsí wasn’t there to witness, balances out other characters’ frozen-in-time impressions of her as all good or all bad, humanising her as someone generally well-intentioned and unmalicious, but sometimes rather self-absorbed and impressionable – a typical teenager, in other words.

There were a couple of elements of the story that particularly sent shivers down my spine. One is old buildings with dark histories. The author describes Marsí’s family home in fantastic detail, not only in terms of its imposing appearance and discomforting aura, but its lore: the sisters’ paternal grandfather shot himself in the cellar before their time, making that part of the house a focal point of fear and awe for them.

Then there’s the Old Doctor’s House, which in its latest incarnation is a school teaching block where Stína attended her evening art classes, but in 1943 was used as a workhouse for teenage girls who’d been caught fraternising with occupying British and American soldiers. Stína’s teacher gives her a box of keepsakes he claims to have found there, tasking her with tracking down its owner.

That brings us to the other haunting element – photographs – as the box contains a photo with some pertinent writing on the back. What’s more, ten years on, Marsí discovers a mysterious photo tucked behind one of Stína in a family album. She also develops an unfinished film of Stína’s, which includes a photo of a boy she can’t identify because his head is out of shot, who may or may not be relevant to her investigation.

Home Before Dark is addictive, twisty, and irresistibly dark and haunting.