YULE ISLAND by Johana Gustawsson (2023)

0 ★’s - this review’s ALL spoilers but since I don’t recommend you read it, know it fts graphic child abuse & ends up victim-blaming the children & excusing the behavior of the adult/parent abusers…

Jan 24, 2025

∙ Paid

“Oh, how we all complain about the sleepless nights when our kids are little. But when the monsters under the bed turn out to be real, we’re the ones who have nightmares.”

title: Yule Island

author: Johana Gustawsson

published: 2023 (orig. French)

publisher: Orenda Books (English)

genre: crime thriller

setting: Storholmen & Djurholms—suburbs on the Stora Värtan north of Stockholm, Sweden

main themes/subjects: child abuse, murder mystery, art dealer/historian MC?, cop MC, Sweden, winter, isolated island community, historic manor house with secrets, rich people vs local island people, traumatized children, family secrets, neighbors who do nothing /don’t care /turn a blind eye to abuse, how adults abuse & fail children & then blame the children… oh & a weird misrepresentation of “pagan” “religion” /rituals /mythology etc. It kind of sounded like Gustawsson read one fringe blog post on it & it was her main resource for the entire Norse-magic plot point. So dumb.

representation: problematic queer representation; there was a drag queen character who seemed fine, maybe a bit stereotypical but, I was no longer trusting this author so that rep made no impact on me…

tropes: dual timelines—which was actually clever how the author did that but, yeah, not even close to making up for all the other shit that went on in this travesty of a novel…

The synopsis & blurbs made this book sound SO good too, I just feel so baited—

synopsis: “Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artifacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen… Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl” (the cop 🙄) “to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past—Viking rites and tainted love—and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter…”

blurbs: “wonderfully dark & intricately woven” “vivd and so cleverly told” “wonderfully creepy, unsettling read, with a superb twist in its tail” “bewitching and wonderfully gothic” “ethereal, romantic and as cold as death, this nerve shattering and powerful novel immerses us in a cruel and thrilling Nordic tale” “stunning and beautifully written [hardly!!!] gothic thriller.” (all from the back cover) I just… Did I read a different book than literally everyone else?!

Oh my GOD also when I sat down to actually officially write this review I discovered that this was actually BASED ON A TRUE STORY??!!!! I want to throw up. Like I actually do think I’m going to be sick rn.

“‘We always think that monsters come from beneath,’ Jens goes on as if we hadn’t been interrupted. ‘From under the bed, or under the ground. In the beginning, I thought they came through the mirror in Harriet’s room. Harriet, she’s my great-great-grandmother. That’s why I blocked the way. Then, when I saw them coming out from under the ground, I wondered if they had to come through the garden and into the basement before they came through the mirror.’”

my thoughts:

Well, kiddos, I really hate to do this but it looks like my 2025 reading year has started out with an absolute disaster of a book. & let’s get something clear: I *hate* giving bad reviews. I will literally find *any*—**ANY**—reason to give a book ★ ★ ★ ★ to ★ ★ ★ ★ ★. If I didn’t like the book, but there was nothing overtly problematic about it, that’s a ★ ★ ★-star rating from me. I didn’t give out any ★-star’s last year & only one ★ ★ due to it being fairly problematic.

This book, however. THIS! book! This book is getting my first ever zero-star rating.

& LEMME tell y’all why.

I was so. triggered. by this book that when I finished it I was literally shaking & doing that like deranged kind of laugh because a) I never could have predicted just how fucked up this book was going to be, & b) in addition to it being insidiously transphobic, misogynistic, & ableist (from the beginning) the big twist featured a representation of child abuse & abusive parenting that was so disgusting it made me literally, physically nauseated because the implicit resolution of the book sincerely defended & engaged in apologism for the abusive behavior of the adults, victim-blamed the children, & held up as a hero the cop main-character who did something SO fucked up that I’m still speechless about that. I have never been this angry after reading a book in. my. lifeee.

—OK SPOILERS ABOUND BELOW BEWARE…

…but also like you should probably read it & skip this book because WHEW whew whew wheweeeeEEEE whew.—

So let’s start with my main issue & that was the child abuse. It wasn’t even that the child abuse was graphic or just upsetting for no reason—which it also really fucking was tbh—it was infuriating & unforgivable mostly because the author’s implicit resolution resulted in the parents’ behavior being excused & the children being victim-blamed for their behavior which was not only a direct result of their trauma, but done in self-defense from their abusers.

There were red flags right from the beginning though that included quite a bit of implicit transphobia, misogyny, ableism, & very problematic queer representation, but I kept with it because a) I had been completely deceived by the synopsis & blurbs for the book & was genuinely hoping it would somehow turn around, & b) ALL of the reviews online have only good things to say about this book which 🤯 are y’all okay??? Like I’m seriously SERIOUSLY concerned about y’all right now. & while I am, personally, prepared to deal with things like transphobia, misogyny, & ableism because I have been engaged with learning how to handle that sort of thing, what I am not yet prepared to handle apparently is victim-blaming abused children & a vast cast of adult characters who excuse & mourn the abusive parents by saying cheap things like “they did their best” & “sometimes love isn’t enough” & all kinds of noxious bullshit like that. Probably that is because I am not myself a parent nor am I a child-bearing person but shit. SHIT.

…

ShittttttTTt.

I… I am telling you even now I am shaking as I think about this book. In a world where children’s lives are already cheap as hell, where they are so easily sacrificed to the agendas of politicians & gun lobbies, when they can be murdered en masse by hyper-militarized, unhinged fascist & apartheid states, starved, exploited, disrespected, assaulted, & abused with often NO repercussions WHATSOEVER brought to the feet of the adults who are truly responsible, there is NO reason for a book like this—this piece of crime genre fiction trash that perpetuates the kind of mindset & ideologies & sociocultural constructs that facilitate this insidiously pervasive anti-child attitude—to exist.

*deep breath*

Also the villains turn out to be two of the three queer women characters (the two abused girls grown up) & the “good guy” hero is the fucking cis-hetero male cop (who straight up bullies a child during an official police interrogation & imprisons his wife in their basement & pretended that she had drowned in the fjord), one of the children’s abuse consisted of her mother trying to force her to change genders (with all the wonderful problematic elements that kind of plot device includes 🙄), the mother of the other child MC basically let her (what sounded like a green-card marriage) husband sexually assault her daughter & pretend like she didn’t know what was going on or at the very least didn’t bother to idk ask her daughter what was going on? she certainly didn’t make her daughter feel like she could talk to her mother about it obviously & when the man came to the mother’s work to ask for money he sexually assaulted her & her only reaction was: “I … wonder, not for the first time, why I tolerate this man’s presence in my life.” Like. what?? no shit!!??

But the worst, worst scene was when that mother character’s daughter finally stood up to her mother & the things her mother said & did to her while she was trying to defend herself was so horribly sinister I can’t even like talk about it & what made it somehow even 1000 times worse was that the whole time the mother was painted as the victim & every event between that scene & the ending was only about getting justice for the mother/s & the other two girls (who were unalived as a result of the trauma caused by those women’s abuse of their daughters & the stigma against & lack of care & compassion for those with mental illness in their culture), with absolutely none of their behavior coming to light or being condemned beyond literally “they did their best.” I’m—

I’m just shocked & saddened to see a book like this garner so much praise & attention (I mean, it’s won fucking awards) on a global level with literally no one calling out any of the problems I’ve mentioned above. It’s just… it’s very, very sick this culture of basically zero respect for the personhood of children. I have literally no other words beyond that (though I do expand upon & cite all of the evidence for my reaction, interpretation, & conclusions in my notes & annotations below).

i would not recommend this book.

“‘Lulu and I sewed them all,’ she says. ‘They’re the crowns of midsummer festival flowers I never got to weave into Sofia’s hair.’”

final note: If Gustawsson is indeed the “Queen of French Noir” you can be sure that I will not be reading any more French Noir, nor, honestly, probably Noir of any kind written by white people ever again. I feel that I have learned my lesson when it comes to this genre.

final final note: Also I thought this book wasn’t even well-written & I couldn’t figure out if it was just a translation problem or what was going on but the dialogue was so off, there were pacing problems, very poor characterization to the point where I could literally not differentiate between so many of the characters, & there was such a disconnect between what was happening & how the characters were reacting & their interior monologues never seemed to gel with their external actions & speech so it was also very confusing & off-putting on that front & yeah, idk. There was just nothing redeeming about this book at all.

CW // transphobia, sexual assault, child abuse, pedophilia, ableism, & SO so SO many others, honestly please just don’t bother with this book it’s like awful awful…

spice level: 🌶️🌶️

season: midwinter

music pairing: Myrkur

Quotes & Annotations…

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YULE ISLAND by Johana Gustawsson (2023)

0 ★’s - this review’s ALL spoilers but since I don’t recommend you read it, know it fts graphic child abuse & ends up victim-blaming the children & excusing the behavior of the adult/parent abusers…

“Oh, how we all complain about the sleepless nights when our kids are little. But when the monsters under the bed turn out to be real, we’re the ones who have nightmares.”

title: Yule Island

genre: crime thriller

The synopsis & blurbs made this book sound SO good too, I just feel so baited—

my thoughts:

—OK SPOILERS ABOUND BELOW BEWARE…

…but also like you should probably read it & skip this book because WHEW whew whew wheweeeeEEEE whew.—

“‘Lulu and I sewed them all,’ she says. ‘They’re the crowns of midsummer festival flowers I never got to weave into Sofia’s hair.’”

further reading:

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Quotes & Annotations…

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