I read this book at the height of my Scandinavian thriller period, several years ago, and while I liked all book in the series, this one was always my favourite.

When a young girl is found murdered, the investigation only leads to more suspects and motives as time goes by...

But I tried to re-imagine just what made this one better than the others, and honestly, I can't be sure. The story is decent, as are most of the others, and there's the mixture between suspense and domestic story that is just right. It is a delightfully quick read, and especially to this novel I look back with very warm feelings.

Note: I read a Dutch translation of this book

After The Ice Princess, this is the second book in the series about Patrick Hedström. An old case and a new one seem to be connected and it is up to Patrick to solve the case, all the while Erica is very pregnant.

One of the things that always come back in these books is the switching between past and present, something that becomes very clear in this book. While I'm not usually a fan of this tactic, I quite like it in this series, just like the very domestic story lines that are interwoven with the murder plot.

Even though it is not my favourite in the series, I enjoyed reading it a lot and Camilla Läckberg is one of my immediate-buy authors.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was my introduction to Camilla Läckberg, who at that time was starting to become really popular in the Netherlands. For some reason, and I'm guilty myself as well as I really liked them, Scandinavia thrillers were very popular a few years ago in the Netherlands. As in, really, really popular. Now, the Dutch have always been great fans of thrillers, and often books are earlier available in Dutch translation than in their original language. It is a shame that I've never learned to like the thrillers written by Dutch authors though. However, I'm getting lost from The Ice Princess.

I liked it, I really did. It is a very nice start of a series and even though I normally can't stand the amateur sleuth doing police work, for some reason in these books it works most of the time. The stories are usually quite slow and filled with things that don't add a lot to the plot (I think at least half of the book is about the main characters' lives), however, in these books I enjoyed it.

After this book I've read another four books in the series with a year. I think that says it all.

I apologize in advance, I'm still bringing over some of my old reviews and it also involves the entire series. So brace yourself, although I will be spreading the reviews.

The Scent of Almonds is a collection of short stories that surrounds the Patrick Hedström series. I have to admit that although I like the series a lot, I wasn't really impressed with the short stories. I might have to do with the fact that when I read them, I still had to learn to like short stories. As always though, it seemed liked the stories could have been better had there been some more detail (and thus more length) to it.

Part of what I like about the series is that there are large parts where nothing really happens, and it is just the characters eating cinnamon buns (as apparently every Swedish person does constantly) and taking care of the children. I know it sounds weird, but I really like it for a change. Needless to say, this was missing from this book and I did miss it.