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Damn, I so badly wanted to like this better*. The atmosphere of Lapland and it’s cold winter was perfect and truly freezing, but for a ‘thriller/mystery� novel, there was just too little plot and suspense to make Wolf Winter worth reading.

This story takes place in 1717 on Blackåsen Mountain in the north of Sweden, Lapland. Midwife Maija and her family just moved from Finland to a house at the foot of the mountain, when her two young daughters stumbled upon the body of a dead man. The other settlers of the mountain blame a wolf, but the wounds are too clean for that. Despite the suspicion it raises, and the harsh winter to deal with, Maija sets out to investigate the death.

The author is a master at painting a world of snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Everything gets under your skin: the threat of getting snowed-in, the awful effects of frostbite, and the endless days waiting for sunlight and the start of spring. You can really feel that Ekbäck is drawing from personal experience here.

Sadly, the pacing is glacial (excuse the pun) and since there isn’t much of a plot, apart from the mystery of “who killed Eriksson?�, the story soon becomes a drag to read. There were just too many confusing plotlines: Are those wolves real? How is Antti always suddenly there? Why are these people on a remote mountain so concerned with the Swedish King?!
Halfway the book I just started skim-reading because the events didn’t held my attention anymore.

I also didn’t connect with any of the characters, main or side. Maija is supposed to be this smart, level-headed woman, and yet she is so stupid to immediately start investigating a murder just four days after she arrived in a new place.
Many times through the story people warn her “Stop this, you’re raising distrust, you’re endangering your family� but she doesn’t care about that. Her youngest daughter even ends up with frostbite due to her investigations; Maija is not a good mother here!

Her husband is also absent for the biggest part of the story (he apparently is cursed, but that never is explained well), and neither are the paranormal powers of Maija’s oldest daughter. The Priest showed the most potential, but just like the Sami people or ‘Laplanders�, he doesn't get the attention they deserve.

Towards the end the murder is solved, but since I never really got to know the side-characters, I didn’t care about who did it. Eriksson is an asshole anyway, so no loss there.
I’m surprised authors like Lee Child and Hillary Mantel gave such praise to this book, because I think it’s undeserved: "Wolf Winter" is not as great a chilling mystery as it could have been.

*= Sorry Amalia: I’m very glad for your recommendation, but I just didn’t love this book as much as you did.

Travel TBR-2018: Sweden/Lapland