review: the ice princess by camilla läckberg

I fell in love with The Ice Princess right away. The story of a woman seeking the truth about the death of a childhood friend absolutely captivated. Erica’s characterization was one of the elements I particularly enjoyed. Instead of saying flat out that Erica’s concerned about her weight, Camilla Läckberg writes, “With a flourish, she plopped twelve Weight Watchers points onto a plate in the form of two cinnamon buns.” Little touches like that always heighten my interest in a novel.

While there are many positives to The Ice Princess such as an intricately woven plot that held my interest every step of the way, I did find a few faults. Some might be chalked up to the fact that this a translation, but others likely come down to the author. Many of the minor characters (the police superintendent who is fat, sexist, etc.) are overly clichéd. Fortunately this didn’t detract from my overall enjoyment of the mystery, the romance, and the scandal. And speaking of scandal, at one point while telling what happened to his daughter years ago, Karl-Erik thinks, “How could anyone have imagined something so awful?” Except the story he told was exactly what I thought as soon as the results from Alex’s autopsy were revealed. A further annoyance here was that the autopsy and Karl-Erik’s story were among the few times the reader was actually let in on a revelation. Too many times someone (usually Erica or her cop love interest Patrik) would discover a lead, but that clue was kept secret. The one benefit to not being clued in to any of this was that the killer was a shocker when finally revealed.
4/5
Review copy provided by the publisher, Free Press.