The Night Guest by Hildur Knútsdóttir

⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 (September 3, 2024)

This nightmare of a book will keep you awake all night.

I love an unreliable narrator. Iðunn is having the worst sleep of her life; she keeps waking up with unexplained bruises, dirt under her fingernails and more tired than before she fell asleep.

This story is a slow unraveling as Iðunn starts to investigate what happens to her when she falls asleep. From missing neighbourhood cats, to unexplainable text messages from friends, I started to feel like I was going crazy right alongside our main character.

I've never been to Reykjavík, Iceland but I feel like I've done a mini-tour with this book. Our main character spends a lot of time walking around the city and at the waterfront. I love when settings feel like a secondary character. It really shone through and now I want to visit Reykjavík but definitely avoid our main character.

I love the pacing, the creeping dread, the insular feeing of not being able to escape your own body. The ending is perfection and fits the story perfectly.

Mary Robinette Kowal does an amazing job with the narration. This is a translated book, so a lot of the street and character names are in Icelandic, and Mary does an amazing job of flipping between the English translation and the original names with ease.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for the advanced listener copy.

This book is best read while doing shots of Red Bull, trust me, you will want to stay awake for this one.