Girl In Ice Review

Author: Erica Ferencik

Genre: Suspense Thriller

Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press

Release Date: March 22, 2022

Order Link: Amazon

5 Frozen Hearts

Special thanks to Gallery/Scout Press for an arc of this book.

From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, as a brilliant linguist struggling to understand the apparent suicide of her twin brother ventures hundreds of miles north to try to communicate with a young girl who has thawed from the ice alive.

Review:

Girl In Ice is a heart stopping, can't put it down, highly atmospheric thriller from cover to cover.  Everything about this story reeks of danger - the killer setting, the complex plot line, the unreliable characters, the dark ill-boding tone.  The only thing clear is that one or more people will die before the story ends.

Val Chesterfield gets a call from Wyatt, a friend of her deceased twin brother Andy, begging her to come to a remote island off Greenland to help him determine what language a young girl discovered frozen in ice is speaking.  Wyatt, a climate scientist, claims the girl thawed out alive.  Val, a linguist excelling in dead Nordic languages, is curious yet hesitant to travel to the locale of her brother's suicide.  She has her doubts as to what happened to her brother and ultimately, the need to know is what drives her out of her comfort zone to Greenland. What she finds upon arrival is a bitterly cold, harsh landscape where death comes quickly to those who dare venture outside without adequate protection.  And yet she's supposed to believe that her scientist brother walked outside in only boxers, laid down and froze to death.  Val is determined to learn the truth of her brother's death, the young girl's heritage and what's really going on with Wyatt and his assistant in this God forsaken frozen world.

To say Girl In Ice is highly atmospheric is an understatement.  The climate and landscape controls the story, dictating much of what happens while driving the maddening pace forward.  I imagine it's much like speeding downhill in a bobsled or on skis at breakneck speeds as it's hard to catch a breath reading this story.  I frantically turned pages looking for answers - afraid to stop, afraid to read on.  I don't recall the last time I read a book and felt so utterly immersed in a story that I had literally had chills and a growing sense of dread.  The sinister tone is ever increasing and the sense of danger is almost overwhelming.  Ferencik does a brilliant job of drawing readers into the story and holding them hostage along with the characters who are cut off from the rest of the world by the life threatening weather.  The story unfolds through Val's point of view as she struggles to survive one blow and one crisis after another.  Her work with the young mysterious girl is heart touching and yet even there, there's a sense of the clock ticking toward some disastrous event.  I'm not saying more about the plot line because readers need to travel this treacherous journey without prior knowledge other than what's known in the blurb to fully experience it. 

Girl In Ice is an intensely explosive, raw, gut-wrenching thriller that had me on the edge of my seat until I read the final page.  It's a story I won't forget anytime soon.  The escalating danger from surrounding sources, the unknown of what's really happening and the knowledge that there's no escape for these characters drives a fervent pace through unforeseen twists and turns to the epic ending.  I challenge any fan of suspense thrillers to put this one down before finishing once they get into it.  Girl In Ice left my heart a little raw with my emotions all over the place.  It's definitely a favorite of 2022 for me.  What a movie this one would make!  Highly recommended to fans of mysteries, suspense, and highly atmospheric thrillers.

Synopsis:

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North and meet this girl, try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.