I was quite shocked by the ending. I did not see it coming at all.

Let's hear it for the unlikable female protagonist! Ella's mother was killed by her father when she was a child, and that unremembered event has colored her life for that point forward. She drinks too much, smokes too much, fucks too much, she is too much. She's a mother on welfare struggling to take care of her son, Alex, and they collect cans to help make ends meet. Alex spends time with a foster family with "good intentions" and the foster mother reports Ella to social services trying to gain...

Broken lives, broken people. Ella has been under state care since the age of seven when her father killed her mother. She was there, but remembers nothing of that time, and little from the time before. Her body though, does remember and she has severe PTSD, panic attacks that are crippling. She has a son now, a son she loves but is unable to handle a job, so, she receives money from the social services available. She drinks too much and is under the supervision of a social worker. When a severe

Predictable, but okay read. An unlikeable young woman with an eleven year old son who delves into her mother's murder while drinking herself through PTSD seizure type attacks. Not great, but I finished it and had a small surprise in the solving of the murder.

An interesting novel. Not a scandinavian noir, this book solves a crime of long ago and showes the consequences of it on one of the victims. I knew about halfway who did it, but the why and how kept me interested till the end. The consequences this crime had on one of the victims, made this novel also gripping and sad. Above all it raised my awareness that poverty and a sad life can happen to all of us if we are dealt a wrong card.

What My Body Remembers stands out by having one of the most unattractive main characters I have ever come across in fiction. Of course, there was Donleavy’s Sebastian Dangerfield, but he was down right loveable compared to Ella the heroine of this Danish pot boiler. She is foul mouthed, sexually promiscuous, a junkie, an alcoholic, a free loader on society and just plain nasty. Some of the more memorable scenes are of her throwing up. Scenes. The plot revolves around the murder of her mother tol...

Ella Nygaard lives with her son, but cannot work because of her medical condition. She is estranged from her family as her father went to prison for the killing of her mother. Following a minor altercation, Ella grabs her son from a relation and heads out of the city to her grandmother's abandoned home on the coast, where they try to establish new lives. The book goes back and forth between the present and the events leading up to her mother's death until we understand what actually occurred. I

The night her father kills her mother, Ella is only seven years old and becomes part of the system. She acts out and becomes unexpectedly pregnant at a young age. Her post traumatic amnesia leads to severe panic attacks, leaving her in question with the state regarding her ability to take care of not only herself, but her son as well. When it becomes apparent that the state wants to take her son away, she takes matters into her own hands and runs away with him. Heading back to her grandmother's

Thanks to SoHo Crime publishers and Edelweiss-AboveTheTreeline for What My Body Remembers by Agnete Friis. I received an ARC Kindle e-book edition at no cost.There are people in our world who have never experienced nightmares that come to life. Post-Traumatic Stress has become a buzz-phrase in society, that makes it seem a fad rather than a disease or ailment. Only recently people outside of War experience were diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disease. Unlike a broken bone or paralysis, PT...

The story was disorienting at first, with its switches from present to past and back. The character, Ella, was a little girl at times and at others, a very disturbed young adult. I worried about her being alone and raising a son while dealing with the trauma of her childhood. I despaired of the social services workers understanding her trauma and perhaps offering her some help. The very few friends she had were all very damaged people, also. I found the essential mystery engaging and complex. We...

Find my full review on Crime by the Book: http://crimebythebook.com/blog/2017/4...This is book totally defied my expectations for it - but I wholly enjoyed it. It's nothing like your standard Nordic Noir: it doesn't have a police investigation at the center of it, and it's hardly a violent story. Instead, it's a slow-burning, atmospheric exploration of a young woman's past - and how she is still defined by the traumas from her youth. It's tense, emotional, and a truly unique little book!

I like that this book is different, in that the protagonist is not particularly likeable or easy to understand. The bleak situation and setting mirror her mental state and her inner turmoil is completely understandable once you know the circumstances of her childhood. The story has some interesting plot twists and tension builds more quickly in the second half of the novel. Very well-crafted!

Why do I never learn... audiobooks with Danish or Scandi names in general tend to have pretty butchered name pronunciations. And it gets on my nerves, in every single book where it happens. Which fortunately isn’t all of them, but still. Nygaard was butchered to sound “Nugar” (as it would be written back in e.g. Swedish based on the sound). Nugar?! Äna (or it’d be Æna since Danish ä), Helgi...The story line was interesting and fresh, making you want to find out what happened and how it all binds...

The opening to this book was a little different to what I was expecting.  Usually you are given an explosive event or shocking revelation, but this opens with a very simple and frank conversation between two neighbours.  Two females.  It is muted, matter of fact and so completely puts you straight into the tone of the book it is very clever.So, what is the tone of the book?  Well, to be honest, it is pretty bleak.  Written in first person narrative by protagonist Ella, the reader quickly ascerta...

Ella Nygaard is 27 years old and has spent virtually all of her life as a ward of the state. When she was 7 years old, her father murdered her mother. Though Ella doesn't remember that night or anything about her life preceding the murder, she now suffers horrendous panic attacks that can last for days, has dissociative disorder and a horrible case of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The most meaningful aspect of Ella's life is her son Alex, about ten years old.Ella was not always a compliant fos...

I didn’t really enjoy this book. I don’t know if perhaps the translation did the author a disservice, but I doubt it. The characters felt somehow half-formed and generally weren’t very sympathy-inducing, mostly because they were all so one-dimensional. I felt like the plot twist was totally predictable too, but I guess that’s par for the course with thrillers these days.

I so wanted to love this book, The Boy in the Suitcase is a book I loved to bits, I liked it because it was a different kind of mystery, one where I was guessing all the time, where I really liked the characters and where I really connected with the story. With this one though, I've just become really tired of it, I feel like I'm reading a puzzle with a bunch of missing pieces, but with so many missing pieces I can't even get the edges done, let alone fill in the middle bits. At times the pace i...

I was not quite sure what to expect from this novel about single mother Ella who struggles with keeping the custody of her young son Alex, while also dealing with traumatic events from her own childhood. The main character Ella is extremely complex. She is fascinating while also annoying and frustrating, but most importantly a very real and honest character. The story slowly unfolds, revealing more and more details about Ella's childhood and the night her father killed her mother. I love the ble...

Ella Nygaard has suffered from PSTD since childhood when her mother was murdered and her father sent off to prison. At 27, she has a son, Alex, age 11, but they live on government handouts because Ella suffers from sudden and debilitating panic attacks which leave her unable to function for hours at a time. During the latest attack, Ella is hospitalized and upon her release she learns that Alex has been sent to live with foster parents. Desperate, Ella kidnaps Alex and runs to her Grandmother’s