The Bachelorette Party

April 15, 2025
Sten's first English-language thriller, following two novels translated from Swedish, takes a bride and her wedding attendants on a yoga-themed trip to a deserted island. Guess what happens. Isle Blind, a scrap of land accessible only by boat, is home to Baltic Vinyasa, whose owner, Irene Sperling, is happy to welcome family therapist Anneliese and five of her buddies to the new mini-resort before it opens to the public. It would be the perfect venue if only four women hadn't gone missing from the island 10 years ago under mysterious circumstances during their own annual get-together--and if Carl von Thurn, the husband of one of them, hadn't vanished himself eight years later, leaving behind what sounds a lot like a suicide note. But there's a silver lining to every cloud. Tessa Nilsson, one of Anneliese's guests, hopes against hope that she can revive her career as a true-crime podcaster, which was tanked when an interview concerning another cold case ended up having a devastating impact by digging up more information about the earlier disappearance and taking it public. Her preliminary inquiries of Adam, Baltic Vinyasa's chef, lead only to his warning not to bring the subject up to Irene, whose sister, Matilda, was one of the four women who vanished back in 2012. It's only a matter of hours before the string of disappearances extends to the present, this time with an unmistakably violent edge. The events that follow are just as harrowing as in Sten's two Swedish novels but a lot faster-paced. A fairy tale for grown-ups that's wildly implausible at every stage, and just plain wild.

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April 11, 2025

Sten once again creates a foreboding atmosphere (after The Resting Place), this time on a remote island off the coast of Sweden. Tessa Nilsson, a disgraced true crime podcaster, agrees to go with her sister Lena and four friends to a yoga-themed retreat on Blind Isle to celebrate their friend's upcoming wedding. Her real reason for going, however, is to try and uncover what happened to four women 10 years earlier who vanished after going to a small Swedish island for a girls' weekend. If she can find out if this is the same island, Tessa could salvage her career. When she discovers that the owner of the retreat is the younger sister of one of the women who disappeared, she wants to get to the bottom of what really happened all those years ago. After one of their group goes missing, with no visible means of escape, what should be a relaxing vacation turns into a tension-filled nightmare. The remaining friends start to question how well they really know one another. VERDICT Sten effectively uses flashbacks in this page-turner to keep up the suspense. Recommended for fans of Ruth Ware and Lucy Foley.--Jean King

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Starred review from June 1, 2025
Sten's latest (after The Resting Place, 2022) is another dark, violent, nightmarish, explosive tale that's utterly riveting. In 2012, four young women went to Isle Blind, a remote island in the Swedish archipelago, for one last drunken celebration before settling into adulthood. The women disappeared without a trace. While the reader gets a horrific glimpse of what happened, the women's families and friends never know their fate. Fast forward to 2022. Bride-to-be Annaliese wants to throw a bachelorette party on Isle Blind. Annaliese's best friend, Tessa Nilsson, is still recovering from a disaster involving her now-defunct podcast, and the other women, while appearing carefree and ready to party, are hiding their own secrets. At first, the get-together is fun, but things soon turn dark. When one of the women goes missing, and Tessa is the first to discover her gruesome fate, Tessa is convinced there's a link to the 2012 disappearances, that a deadly killer is loose on the island, and that she and the remaining women will be the next victims unless they band together. With heart-palpitating action, pulse-pounding suspense, and grisly violence, this Scandi noir is one that will cement Sten's place in the thriller-writing firmament.

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