Camille Lackberg's latest, The Lost Boy, and Yrsa Sigurdardottir's I Remember You have almost identical covers: that of a boy in a hoodie standing in front of the water. Perhaps it's appropriate as both stories revolve around a pair of 'lost' boys--one in the past, the other in the present.
Sigurdardottir's story involves a group of friends who are dropped off at a remote island to renovate an old house. Gardar and Katrin are a couple who are already on the outs with each other and their high maintenance friend, Lif. (This is the main problem right here: not one of the characters is sympathetic.) They are haunted by a bullied boy who got stranded on the island to die. It's obvious from the start they're going to be picked off one by one. And the thing is, the reader doesn't care. The only one we care about is Putti the dog.
Lackberg's Lost Boy picks up where the last book left off, with Erica and her sister Anna trying to recuperate from their car crash. A friend, Nathalie, has fled an abusive marriage to take refuge on a remote island with her son. (This thread seems all too familiar as Erica's sister also suffered through an abusive relationship which lasted the course of several installments.) Naturally there are ghosts on the island, among them that of a woman and her son who has also suffered through an abusive relationship. Throw in several other storylines--including yet another woman fleeing an abusive relationship, a drug ring and a couple of conmen and it all becomes a bit too much.
But what really killed the books for me was the element of the supernatural, which even the excellent Asa Larsson failed to pull off in Until Thy Wrath be Past. A mystery already has that element of the unknown; to add a vengeful ghost only makes it cheesy. A reader wants Agatha Christie, not Friday the 13th. But maybe that's me.
