Review: Girl In Ice

Girl In Ice by Erica Ferencik
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was send a physical ARC of this book by the publisher, however I opted to listen to the final publication version of the audiobook.

The premise of this book was really quite interesting. This is a bit of a sci-fi thriller. This follows Val, a successful linguist who is grieving the loss of her twin brother. She gets a call from the team lead, Wyatt, from the Artic expedition her brother was on when he unexpectedly comitted suicide. Wyatt has a job for Val that she can't turn down. A girl was found frozen in the ice, and she has thawed, alive, and no one can understand what she is saying. Val happens be be an expert in the esoteric dialects of the region and Wyatt hopes she can help understand where the girl came from and how she survived being frozen alive. Val suffers from anxiety and doesn't wholly trust Wyatt and the circumstances around her brother's death, but she is curious about the girl and takes on the task of trying to unravel the mystery of who she is and where she came from.

This thriller has a bit of a sense of an unreliable narrator to it. You aren't really sure if Val is letting her personal fears and anxiety get to her as the story progresses or if there is something more sinister going on and she has cause to be paranoid of her surroundings. As she works on connecting with the little girl from the ice, she knows that she has to protect her and that she wants to learn about her origins. You also get a bit of a madness feeling from the research team, as if they've been left alone in the cold too long and have gone a bit mad from being isolated, you aren't sure if there is something to that or not for much of the story. As for the girl, she tries to communicate, but the grown ups can't fathom her survival in the ice. It is too far fetched and the science doesn't back it up. I thought the conclusion and reveals were clever and unique.

I thought the world building was well done. I felt like was with Val in the ice an the cold of the island. I thought the author did a good job describing the landscape and the harrowing conditions. I felt the fear and the madness that the characters were experiencing come through on the page.

Overall this was an interesting story with a unique plot.

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