Summary: "From the author of the international and New York Times bestseller Let the Right One In (Let Me In) comes this stunning and terrifying book which begins when a man's six-year-old daughter vanishes. One ordinary winter afternoon on a snowy island, Anders and Cecilia take their six-year-old daughter Maja across the ice to visit the lighthouse in the middle of the frozen channel. While the couple explore the lighthouse, Maja disappears -- either into thin air or under thin ice -- leaving not even a footprint in the snow. Two years later, alone and more or less permanently drunk, Anders returns to the island to regroup. He slowly realises that people are not telling him all they know; even his own mother, it seems, is keeping secrets. What is happening in Domaro, and what power does the sea have over the town's inhabitants? As he did with Let the Right One In and Handling the Undead, John Ajvide Lindqvist serves up a blockbuster cocktail of suspense in a narrative that barely pauses for breath"-- Provided by publisher.
Booklist Reviews
This eerie, atmospheric tale of desperation and strange bargains with incomprehensible forces begins with the disappearance of seven-year-old Maja. Two years later, her father, Anders, is back on the island, scene of her vanishing, intent on reassembling his life. He spent the interval drunk; his wife, Celia, left him; and he's obsessed with how perfect life with Maja was. His grandmother, Anna-Greta, knows something she's not telling. In fact, most of Domaro's year-round residents know at least something about the town's relationship with the surrounding sea. Anna-Greta's lover Simon, a former stage magician, has his own secrets but slowly discovers the island's secrets as his own becomes harder to keep. Living in the Shack, where he'd lived with Celia and Maja, Anders becomes increasingly convinced that Maja isn't dead and that he must rescue her. He'll go to any length, and eventually, the history of the island becomes clear. The book's long, complex buildup to a particularly satisfying conclusion is shot through with the very best kind of horror—subtle, persistent, finally front-and-center. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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