Publication Date: March 1, 2022
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
Pages: 304
Genre: Horror
Trigger Warnings: suicide, suicidal ideation, death of children, mentions of animal death
Rating: 4.5/5
This book follows Val, a renowned linguist who suffers from anxiety and who recently lost her twin brother, Andy, to suicide. Andy was a scientist who was working in a remote part of Greenland when he seemingly took his life. One day, Val receives a call from Andy’s mentor, Wyatt, who was working with him in Greenland and tells her that he and his assistant just found a girl frozen in ice and he managed to thaw her out and she is astoundingly, alive. But she speaks a language he doesn’t know and he asks her to come and help figure out the puzzle of the girl. Val travels there with a married couple who are working on a separate research project. They only have a few weeks to get what they need done because sunlight is fading fast as the temperature gets colder and colder.
Girl in Ice is marketed as a thriller which does this book a big disservice since it reads much more horror than thriller. There are no reveals or twists that would make this a compelling thriller and it’s not a mystery since our protagonist, Val, isn’t really trying to solve anything. Sure, she is trying to figure out where the girl comes from and why she can’t figure out what language she is speaking. But that isn’t the driving force of this novel. Instead this book delivers on the creepy atmosphere, the unsettling vibes and the mounting horror of the situation the six of them face.
Beyond the unnerving vibes as the story unravels, I really enjoyed the climate aspect of this book. I don’t want to go too much into the meat of the story since it would take away the joy of discovering it for yourself. But I thought it was brilliant the way Ferencik weaved the brutal reality of what is happening to our climate with the story.
The ending was brilliantly built up and as it was evolving I could see all the clues that Ferencik sprinkled in the story. There was one odd thing that happened at the end that was never explained and took this from being a five star read to a 4.5 star. Overall, this story had so much heart for such a chilling story and is one that I know I will reread in the future.
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