Lars Kepler | STALKER Blog Tour

Plot (via Goodreads):

The Swedish National Crime Unit receives a video of a young woman in her home, clearly unaware that she's being watched. Soon after the tape is received, the woman's body is found horrifically mutilated. With the arrival of the next, similar video, the police understand that the killer is toying with them, warning of a new victim, knowing there's nothing they can do. Detective Margot Silverman is put in charge of the investigation, and soon asks Detective Joona Linna for help. Linna, in turn, recruits Erik Maria Bark, the hypnotist and expert in trauma, with whom Linna's worked before. Bark is leery of forcing people to give up their secrets. But this time, Bark is the one hiding things.
Years before, he had put a man away for an eerily similar crime, and now he's beginning to think that an innocent man may be behind bars--and a serial killer still on the loose. . . 

Review:

Last year, I participated in The Sandman Blog Tour with Alfred Knopf and basically, my life hasn't been the same since. I was completely obsessed with this title and read it in one single day. That was when everything changed and I was introduced to the husband and wife writing duo known as Lars Kepler. So, naturally I did what any obsessive reader would do and I went back from the beginning and just completely fell in love with both Lars Kepler and Joona Linna equally. Their writing is hypnotic and mesmerizing, the characters dazzling and pragmatic, and each novel is stronger and more terrifying than the last. Well, if you read The Sandman, you know it doesn't get much scarier than that...or does it? 

Having this book in my hands was like waking up on New Years Day without a hangover - magical. I went from loving to being obsessed with this series and when I got this one in my hands I was so eager to read it. I've never looked forward to a book this much in my life and it was finally here. Like any bookworm, I planned out the day I wanted to read this one (a Saturday when I was snowed in with an abundance of cozy blankets and too much caffeine) and began reading. I took my first mental break around 30 pages. Why? Because this novel is eerie, atmospheric, and sexually intense. During the first stalking scene, I took a break because it was that scary. Don't get me wrong, I love being scared, but Lars Kepler always kicks it up a notch (or one-hundred, but who's counting?) and really brought out an abundance of feelings for me with this one. First of all, I already knew I loved it and second, my biggest fears and some of the dumb things I am afraid of are quickly unraveling on the pages right in front of me. We all have our moments of paranoia when our biggest fear is taunting us. For me, it's always been having someone break into my house or watching me from the outside...or both. Lars Kepler feeds off the little things that we all make a habit of and portrays them feasibly on page. You know when you watched a scary movie or read a scary book and everything seems a little different when your heart is racing faster than usual? You can see shadows in the dark as your eyes are struggling to adjust, you think that creak that you always here might sound a little differently this time as if it's under someones foot, you notice how scary it is to see your reflection in a dark window realizing that someone could be standing right outside of it watching you and you'd never notice. You know all of those things? They are here, they are real, and they are ever so present in this complex thriller about a stalker serial killer terrorizing Sweden. And that's only the beginning. 

While I think that it's beneficial to every crime fiction lover out there to start this series from the beginning, I would say that each can be read as a standalone. However, I do thing certain characters and things mentioned in this novel are more enjoyable and easier to grasp if you've read The Sandman before this one...plus it's amazing so just trust me on this one. I absolutely loved how it doesn't necessarily begin right after the events of The Sandman, but enough time has passed for people to kind of move on in terms of what happened after previous novels events. Stalker is an entertaining blend of police procedural combined with a psychological (and terrifying) thriller and is perfectly paced. I loved how we got so many scenes of the stalker and the victims in between the police procedural scenes and the contrast was done brilliantly. I would say this novel is a really good comparison to the movie Se7en as in typical Lars Kepler fashion, the novel begins and just as it progresses, the reader is taken on a dark and twisted journey all the way down to the shocking and jaw-dropping finale. When the reveal for the stalker came up, I was not only shocked and appalled, but kept thinking "wow, they are darker than I thought!" and I loved every bloody minute of it. Naturally, the epilogue to this one not only moves on from the story of the stalker but is an earth-shattering ending that is making me already anxious and counting down the moments until the next Joona Linna novel is released. Here's hoping the time goes by quickly. 

Special thanks to Alfred Knopf for this novel in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 5/5