Books set in Norway – The Boy at the Door, Alex Dahl

Submitted: 22nd December 2018

The Boy at the Door is a thriller set in Sandefjord, Norway

This is a psychological thriller by Alex Dahl, an author who lives in Sandefjord where she sets her novel, and part time in London. The book is about how your perfect life can come crashing down around you. Cecilia Wilborg has that perfect life. A lovely family life in a large house in the picture-postcard town of Sandefjord. Out of all the books set in Norway – The Boy at the Door, Alex Dahl has a very interesting premise.

But then 8 year old Tobias enters her life. Someone has forgotten to pick him up from the swimming baths. Cecilia is there collecting her children. She is asked to drive him home. Except his home is empty, he is alone. Something is very wrong.

Cecilia has no choice but to take him home to her house, and her children. Tobias however is silent. He can’t or won’t talk. Well, that’s a good premise if ever I heard one!

BookTrail Travel To Sandefjord Norway

Bookreview

The premise of this is really interesting – woman who has it all, and likes everyone to know it, has her world turned upside down. She goes to pick up her two children from the swimming baths and since she’s the last parent there, she’s asked to give a boy a lift whose parents have seemingly left him behind.

Well that’s just the start of it, and the water gets a lot darker from this moment on. The boy seems not to speak, not know who he is or where he’s from. There’s an investigation, Cecelia reluctantly lets him stay with her family. Even though the child is not even on the cover (well not on the proof) you sense a fringe, dark staring eyes and a grimace (or is that just me)

Cecelia is the narrator and tells a compelling story…but sitting in that gilded castle of hers, is the view all it appears to be?

Who is this child and why has he been abandoned? What has Cecelia got her and her family into?

A gripping thriller which really showcased a town of two sides, a facade of a woman, an image and an ideal when stripped away was a very dark picture indeed.