CW: attempted sexual assault, discrimination, slavery, torture and violence in general

CW: parental death, severe accidents and injuries, rape and [spoilers removed]

At any hour of the day, I can watch seals on the shore. I can watch birds wafting across the sky. I can watch a bank of clouds looming in the west like a new continent in the process of forming. The occasional airplane—glinting silver in the distance, an emissary from the civilized world—strikes an incongruous note.

This story takes place on rocky South Farallon Island, which lies about thirty miles off the San Francisco coast and is the largest and also the only inhabitat island of the Farallon archipelago. The only people living there are biologists studying the birds, whales, sharks and seals who all come to the island in their respective cycles to feed, mate and raise their young. The nature is equally beautiful and breathtaking as it is brutal and dangerous, sometimes the weather conditions are so poor, the ferry - besides an emergency radio the only connection to the mainland - can't reach the island for weeks.
Miranda, a nature photographer who has travelled the world and is familiar with difficult external circumstances, wanted to go to Farallon Island for a while before she is finally approved to join the six resident biologists for a year. Through letters she writes to her deceased mother you learn, what she experiences during her time on the island.

This is the type of calm, somber, introspective books with a strong sense of place I love. I can't tell you how captivating Abby Geni's writing is. It doesn't matter if she describes the island's beauty with all its harshness and violence of animal and human behaviour or the intimacy of photography when Miranda looks through one of her camera lenses.
I have to say though, at times it's quite a difficult read. Personally I didn't have any problems reading about nature's bleak relentlessness, but everything regarding the rape I mentioned at the beginning of my review and its aftermath I found dazing.

Why The Lightkeepers is categorized as a thriller, I don't know and although it definitely has suspenseful elements to it, I wouldn't call it a straight-up mystery either. If you go into this book thinking it's going to be a plot-driven survival story, you will be disappointed quickly.
I'm not even sure, if this a character-driven story or a character study per se, because the biologists mantra of "Observe and record, but do not interfere" takes over every aspect of it. That's my first point of critique: I had a hard time understanding some of the detached human behaviour towards each other, the way they acted or rather didn't.
In a story told through letters it's also easy to put weight on certain things and leave others out entirely, to lie or hide feelings and emotions. In this case you only learn what Miranda is able to admit to herself and furthermore is willing to tell her mother and it's not always the whole picture. That's my second point of critique: The biologists seemed a bit one-dimensional and bland, so much so I just couldn't keep the men apart. I think that comes from the fact we see them only through Miranda's lense.

There are some other minor things (for example the ghost story aspect) I didn't quite understand but the positives definitely overweigh the negatives. I especially liked how Abby Geni portrayed grief, isolation, loneliness and trauma and overall this is a truly remarkable debut - I will definitely read more by this author in the future.

CW: abuse and assault towards little girls and women in particular, incest, gruesome, gory murders, medical experiments and seal hunting

"We've been forgotten. Everything has been forgotten."
"Not quite. After all, I'm writing about it now."
"But not because of us girls �� am I right? Because of the murdered men. Everything relating to us has been misplaced or lost, so you won't find any evidence."

What drew me to this book initially was its stunning bleak and bloody cover - I just couldn't scroll past it. The synopsis sounded like a mystery I would enjoy reading as well and on top of that it is set in Greenland, a somewhat exotic place when it comes to storytelling? At least I have never read anything set on the world's largest island.. but unfortunately an interesting (and well written) setting isn't everything.

We follow Matthew Cave [spoilers removed], a journalist who just moved to Nuuk> after a fatal car crash. When a mummified body believed to be from the Viking age is found in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by ice and snow, Matthew is sent out to report on the finding. The next day, when the Viking is nowhere to be found, but the police guard protecting the surroundings is found brutally murdered in its place, Matthew suddenly stumbles into an unsolved cold case from forty years ago, that intertwines with the present day. With the help of Tupaarnaq, a young Inuit woman, who was just released from jail after fourteen years, he delves deeper and deeper into the darkest secrets the town has kept for decades.

Even now, while summarizing the story, I still like its idea but I can't look past a couple of issues I had with its execution. This is also - once again - a book, I put down feeling like I kind of liked it, but now, after a while, I'm not so sure anymore.

My main point of criticism is that there is so much going on: Murders back then and now, politics, financial fraud, social commentary on Greenland's horrifying rape statistics, child abuse, medical experiments, the murder case of Tupaarnaq's family and Matthew's personal quest of finding out what happenend to his father. I honestly had a hard time keeping track, especially towards the end where connections are brought up seemingly out of nowhere and things just get explained. The only aspect of the murders I was able to figure out myself was who was responsible for the murders in the 1970s, everything else was just so muddled.

Character wise I was most intrigued by Tupaarnaq, even though the tattoos and her tough, man loathing characterization reminded me a lot of Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander. [spoilers removed] I even told a friend, I was just glad, she was a lawyer and not also a hacker.. until she opened up her laptop and accessed the goverment's and news paper's servers