When the tenant of a house that university professor Nina owns with her doctor husband goes missing after an uncomfortable visit, Nina starts her own investigation … with deeply disturbing results. The long-awaited new thriller from the bestselling author of The Bird Tribunal
University professor Nina is at a turning point. Her work seems increasingly irrelevant, her doctor husband is never home, relations with her difficult daughter are strained, and their beautiful house is scheduled for demolition.
When her daughter decides to move into another house they own, things take a very dark turn. The young woman living there disappears, leaving her son behind, the day after Nina and her daughter pay her a visit.
With few clues, the police enquiry soon grinds to a halt, but Nina has an inexplicable sense of guilt. Unable to rest, she begins her own investigation, but as she pulls on the threads of the case, it seems her discoveries may have very grave consequences for her and her family.
Another great Orenda Books 2020 release was The Seven Doors by Agnes Ravatn, a Nordic translated psychological thriller from a completely new author to me. I read this one and Agnes’ previous book The Bird Tribunal, both superbly translated by Rosie Hedger from Norwegian to English. The Seven Doors was published in e-book format on the 17th of July this year, with the paperback being published last month! You can grab your own copy here.
The Seven Doors is a novel that is 236 pages long, but there’s no lulling about, you’re straight in amongst the story’s current almost immediately. The intense tension from the first chapter is captivating and cleverly tied together. The novel is written from Nina’s point of view, when her and her daughter visit the tenant in another home she owns with her barely present doctor husband. The first person dialogue creates a number of layers within the storyline, not only do we get an idea of the sort of person that Nina is, but we also become pseudo – detective along with her as she begins to rummage into the life of the young missing woman when the police investigation begins to slow down. With her belief that being a literature scholars are able to further analyse clues pointing to the events that occurred, Nina gets herself entangled within the life the woman has left behind while trying to trace her steps.
With the use a tension filled snappy chapters, written in quite a lyrical way, creates for a superbly written psychological thriller with a mixture of darkness and an unsettling atmosphere that will have you clinging on to your seat, gripped within this suspenseful novel. The Seven Doors kept me anticipating where the storyline was going to go, dropping in pieces of the puzzle that keeps you wanting more, incorporating perfect levels of mystery, drama and suspense while also allowing the reader to sympathise with the woman that has gone missing, while also questioning Nina’s emotional state of mind as you feel her becoming more obsessed with uncovering the truth regarding the disappearance! If you haven’t read The Seven Doors yet, I recommend that you do, tightly wound and really well written, you’ll love it!
Have you read any of Agnes’ books yet? Share your thoughts with us this Orentober, whether it’s on Instagram or Twitter, we would love to read them, just use #Orentober!
Until tomorrow,
Happy reading!
The Reading Closet 