Yrsa Sigurdardottir | THE LEGACY

Plot (via Goodreads):

The only person who might have the answers to a baffling murder case is the victim’s seven-year-old daughter, found hiding in the room where her mother died. And she’s not talking.

Newly-promoted, out of his depth, detective Huldar turns to Freyja for her expertise with traumatized young people. Freyja, who distrusts the police in general and Huldar in particular, isn’t best pleased. But she’s determined to keep little Margret safe.

It may prove tricky. The killer is leaving them strange clues, but can they crack the code? And if they do, will they be next?

Review:

What an opening! After the violence and the chilling beginning to this novel, I was immediately invested and terrified to continue this read...but my curiosity got the best of me and I devoured it in one day. I rather enjoyed this police procedural and psychological thriller, but found myself kind of desiring the plot to take a suspenseful turn.

The plot to this one is interesting and kept me invested the entire time, but I found the pacing to be rather slow at times. With such an eye-opening first chapter, I was waiting for more scenes like that and instead, I found myself waist deep in a more character driven police procedural novel that I was feeling kind of burnt out on. While I was looking for a change in this type of story, I did feel that the author did a fantastic job of taking her time revealing all of the nooks and crannies of this type of read. I especially loved the relationship between Huldar and Freyja. I found the love/hate relationship between them to be entertaining and something that counterbalanced the slower pacing rather well. I will say, from an atmospheric perspective, Yrsa does build some really creepy scenes that were extremely eerie and made my heart beat a little faster than normal.

I liked this read. I really did like it overall. By the time I was at the conclusion, I was eager to get to the bottom of this one and I absolutely loved the reveal. The last 100 pages were really fast paced and the ending was executed perfectly. So while there were some slower moments in the middle, overall I found this to be a great read and I think the pacing was necessary to kind of build that relationship between not only Huldar and Freyja, but to include the reader in their relationship as well. I'm still shocked by the ending and don't think I'll forget it anytime soon as the author effectively kept me invested in a story until a finale that was so chilling, it left me eager for book two.

Special thanks to Minotaur Books for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 4/5