CABIN FEVER

SYNOPSIS

Alone and isolated in a vast Scandinavian forest, a therapist begins to read her client's novel manuscript, only to discover the main character is terrifyingly familiar...

You are her therapist.

Kristina is a successful therapist in central Oslo. She spends her days helping clients navigate their lives with a cool professionalism that has got her to the top.

She is your client.

But when her client Leah, a successful novelist, arrives at her office clearly distressed, begging Kristina to come to her remote cabin in the woods, she feels the balance begin to slip.

But out here in the woods.

When Leah fails to turn up to her next two sessions, Kristina reluctantly heads out into the wilderness to find her.

Nothing is as it seems.

Alone and isolated, Kristina finds Leah's unfinished manuscript, and as she reads she realises the main character is terrifyingly familiar...

Title: Cabin fever

Author: Alex Dahl

Publisher: Head of Zeus

Publication date: July 8, 2021

REVIEW

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐💫

This week we’re having temperatures up to 40ºC so I was hoping to cool down a little bit reading Cabin fever, a Nordic noir in a snowy setting, but it left me tepid.

Kristina is a successful psychotherapist married to Eirick, the man set to be the next Norwegian prime minister. When Leah, one of her clients, shows up to a session with a bruised face and rambling on she tells Kristina that she will only explain what happened to her if she goes to a remote cabin she owns. Kristina thinks that would be crossing the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship but when Leah misses her next appointments Kristina suspects something has happened so she’s compelled to go looking for her in her cabin but, is Leah the only thing she’s finding there?

If you’re thinking you’re gonna find a fast paced plot I’m sorry to say you’ll have to look elsewhere. This is SLOW! One of my issues was that the first half was really drawn out. Things don’t really start moving along until Kristina goes to the cabin and that doesn’t happen until the 50% mark. While it serves to present the characters, I feel a bit of a trim in this first half would have helped a lot to the rhythm. The characters weren’t really sympathetic and fairly unreliable, hiding some secrets all of them.

Once the action moves to the cabin things got better. Truths began to unveil and, as usual in novels in the genre, the claustrophobic feel was present in every page (nothing like being snowed in in a remote cabin in the middle of nowhere to feel a touch of claustrophobia!).

There were some twists that although not really surprising led to an overall satisfying conclusion.

Thanks to NetGalley and Head of Zeus for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.