Review: Scherbenseele by Erik Axl Sund

Review: Scherbenseelen by Erik Axl Sund

*spoiler free summary*

This is a psychological thriller about a suicide wave that hits Sweden. A bunch of teens take their life and they all have something in common; they listen the music of an anonymous singer called Hunger. No one really knows much about him only that his song lyrics are encouraging people to take their own lives. At the same time weathly and important men get murdered and those two tragedies are somehow linked together.

*this part will contain spoilers* 

The first teenager that kills herself is Maria Vanja's best friend. From there on we follow a bunch of other teenagers that kill themselves after they listen music from a dark metal artist called Hunger. The young adults sent text to him and he on the other hand makes trakes out of them and sends the songs on old cassette tapes back to them. Their length is accordingly to their birthday. For example if their birthday is on the 12.12 the track ist 12 mins and 12 sec long and after it is over they kill themselves.
At the same time Fabian Modin, a famous and wealthy man, gets murdered.
Throughout the story we learn that Vanja is adopted and suffers from depression and is curious about her parents. Her adoptive parents keep lying to her that they don't know who her real parents are. When in fact it is a good friend of them and Vanja knew him since she was a little girl. Vanja's real parents gave her free for adoption after her bigger brother tried to kill her and it turns out that this brother in fact is Hunger. The singer who writes suicide tracks. He tried to kill her when he was younger and Vanja was a baby. Their parents let him think that he killed Vanja and gave her to adoption to safe her.
From this moment on we as readers realize that the suicides and murders are connected and everything is a family drama. Because Hunger and Vanja have another brother. He is also a part of creating the songs that lead up to suicides and this other brother is also responsible for the other murders. Which he committed because all those men were in the same religious sect as his parents and at a young age he watched them rape his mother in a religious ritual. The suicides on the other hand were ignited because they got traumatized by their own mother's suicide. She tried to kill herself and Hunger by sitting on the rail tracks but the young Hunger escaped and had to watch how is mother got squished by the train. It is unclear wheter she tried to kill herself because she got raped or beacuse her son tried to kill his little baby sister. I don't want to give away too much even if this is a spoiler-y part. So I am not telling who the third sibling is.

Now to my review:
I try not to be biased and give it a too high rating but it is pretty hard because this book was capable of pulling out of my slump and I am a sucker for a psychological thriller. 

Writing:
I read the book in German so that needs to be taken into consideration as well. The writing is nothing spectacular but it isn't bad either. It is was you expect of a thriller written for a broader group of people. The sentences were simple and easy to understand. Nearly no words you don't understand and those you don't understand were immediately explained.
Special about this book is that it is written by two authors but while reading I could not detect who wrote which part and I also was unable to spot the switches.
The novel gets pretty graphic especially describing the deaths. But this aspect didn't make me sick as much as the descriptions of the death metal concerts. Those were shocking and disgusting. In a good way though. This is declared as a thriller so I expect to get chills and thrilled.
Writing receives 2.5 out of 5 stars since it is not bad but nothing memorable as well. Perfect average.

Plot:
I was very intrigued by the description in the back of the back. I have read a good handful of psychological thriller and even more common thrillers and I never came across a similar plot. Of course you have a bunch of "oh this looks like a suicide but it isn't" kind of plot lines so I was very impressed that it were actually suicides and not only staged by a psycho-killer.

*spoiler part*
I liked the plot over all but some parts just were a bit odd and in my opinion not something that would happen in reality. For example Vanja's biological parents gave her off for adoption because her older brother tried to kill her. Looking at only this aspect doesn't make sense. I as a parent would look for help for my son rather than giving my daughter to adoption. Then the second thing I don't get is why do the parents' friends adopt Vanja if they want to let Hunger think that he killed her. This is not really clear. My theory is that Hunger and Vanja's father distanced himself of the his own family and that's why Hunger never realized he hadn't killed his younger sister. But you see there is too much room for interpretation and I don't think that this room was intended. 

Now you may ask yourself but why did all those teenies kill himself? Well, that  was something I asked myself as well. The authors didn't fail do deliver an explanation, though. They tried to shed light to the events by saying that suicides were contagious. I was not satisfied by this reveal. Not at all. I would have suspected a much bigger reason and that somehow the Teenagers were all connected. Maybe that they had something to do with the murders on the wealthy men and now they got blackmailed or something like that. But this was just too normal. 

There were three major plottwists in this story. The first of course that Hunger is Vanja's brother. The second that they suspected someone else at first. And last but not least that there was a third sibling involved.
The two brother's did all those things out of revenge and of an unstable mental health. 

I know this summary of the plot sounds really harsh but it wasn't that bad I promise in fact I really enjoyd the book. I got gripped from the first page and wanted to know where the story goes. There were some plot-lines that are still to be continued and built since it is the first book in a series.

For the plot I am giving 3 stars out of five. It was entertaining  but it wasn't a master piece. I gave it more stars on goodreads since there I am only rating a book by subjective criteria. But here I am trying to be more objective so you can decide whether you want to read the book or not. 

I am giving this book a total of 2.75 stars out of five. A bit more than average.