Harbour - John Ajvide Lindquist

I have The First Tuesday Book Club Show on ABC to thank for my latest reading success. The host of the show, Jennifer Byrne, mentioned the book on the final show for the year stating it was one of the books she was looking forward to reading over the Christmas holidays and the way she described it made it sound intriguing.

Harbour is set in a small Swedish Island community called Domaro. The book starts with a day trip across the snow to the lighthouse at Gavasten by Anders, his wife Cecilia and their 6 year old daughter, Maja. While the family is visiting the lighthouse Maja disappears completely - one moment she is there and the next there is absolutely no sign on her.

The rest of the book focuses on Anders search for Maja and in the process the unravelling and discovery of the secrets of Domaro and the people who live there.

It is difficult to place this book in one hard and fast genre - there are certainly elements of mystery within it, it is dramatic and contains many scenes highlighting the impact of relationships on our lives and yet there is also a sense of the paranormal about it as well.

I was hooked by this story - it is not a book I would normally choose to read but I loved it and became completely absorbed in it, so much so that even when events occurred that would normally require me to suspend my beliefs about certain things I was able to run with it easily.

At times I did feel that the author was trying to possibly tell too many stories and introduce too many different characters but to his credit he did seem to bring them all together by the end.

I loved this one so much I am now going to start on the author's earlier book, Let The Right One In, although I have heard it is a lot scarier...