WARNING THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT BOTH SNARE AND TRAP, BOOKS NUMBER 1 AND 2 IN THE REYKJAVIK NOIR TRILOGY BY LILJA SIGURDARDOTTIR!!!
I know a lot of us use book reviews to work out whether we want to read a book or not, yet often I read a book and I just need to talk to someone about it. Did they gasp out loud at that part too? How on earth could she decide to leave him? Why did he answer the door? Wasn't that bit heartbreaking?
To celebrate our Sigurdardottir double bill weekend I therefore thought I would write a third post and instead of providing an overall summary of both books I have included my top five points that I most wanted to talk about when reading both Snare and Trap.
The below contains spoilers for both books so if you haven't read both and don't want to spoil the epic twists and turns then please wait until you have read both before continuing. If you are undecided about what to read and are looking for a generic overview of the books you can find my review of Snare here and my review of Trap here. Comments as to what you think of the below, whether you agree/disagree or need to talk about another point that I haven't included are most welcome
Have I made it clear spoilers are below? Alrighty well then I will begin:
1) Bragi and Sonja's cat and mouse
The book club loved the initial cat and mouse between Sonja and Bragi in Snare with at least one member being disappointed when it came to the twist concerning Bragi as it meant an immediate close down of this part of the story. I genuinely didn't know who I was routing for during these chapters and I loved the part where Bragi leafed through the woman's magazine and made the link to Sonja.
No one saw Bragi's defection to the dark side coming despite his devotion to his wife and his obvious discomfort about her being in a care home. It provided another side to the argument of 'is it ever OK to commit a crime?' that Sigurdardottir raises so expertly time and time again in both books. It also opened up a new dimension to Trap when the two were working together to get the drugs off the plane. The tension was still present yet the different take prevented the reader from feeling like they were just re-reading Snare.
2) Adam - what a nasty piece of work!
Initially it was easy to believe that Adam, walking in on his wife in bed with another woman (and not only that but a work colleague) was the innocent, injured party and although he was being pretty shitty to Sonja when it came to Tomas it was understandable. I guessed Adam wasn't the entire picture of innocence when he came out to see Sonja in the car after she had been beaten up and remember thinking 'Ooh this is interesting!' Suddenly the tables were turned and Sonja could be a victim. Brilliant move by Sigurdardottir.
3) Why I will never look at a sponge the same way again
Across the two books there were so many gasp out loud moments you could easily be forgiven for thinking a reader was having an asthma attack. Another one of these moments was when Tomas pointed out he knew Sponge (and therefore Tomas' disappearance was faked by Adam). Using his own son to snare Sonja was positively evil and prompted one hell of a ride for the reader. There were moments of awful violence in both books (there was a human eating Tiger for heavens sake) but for me the reveal as to why Rikhardur was called Sponge, the name used so innocently by Tomas, was pretty grim and again illustrated why Adam who was happy for Sponge to associate with his son had to be stopped.
4) Agla and Maria cat and mouse.
In case you missed it Agla was my favourite character across both books and I so didn't want Maria to catch her. I don't know why this is as out of the three (Sonja, Agla and Bragi) she had less reason to commit a crime and was motivated purely by greed yet more than anyone I want Agla to be OK. Maybe because she didn't have that complete love that Sonja had with Tomas and Bragi had with his wife? I really wanted Agla to nail Adam and was disappointed in a way that his comeuppance wasn't more complete (perhaps more to come in next book?)
5) What will happen next?
Bragi's knees were featured far too heavily in Trap to not play a part in Cage as did his retirement. Surely something will suck Sonja back into Iceland's underworld and when it does how will she cope without Bragi to hand? Are we really to believe Adam is done and dusted with Sonja and Agla? No, Agla isn't in the clear yet especially when Adam realises she is spending time with Tomas. I don't think we can write off Maria yet either and it really will take some clever writing to extrapolate Agla and give her a happy ending. And that's not even mentioning Sonja's best friend Nati! (Loved the girl power twist there by the way) Have we really seen the end of the tiger munching it's way through various frozen body parts?
So many twists and turns must yet await! Snare and Trap have been totally unpredictable and I'm willing to put money on Cage (book number three) ramping it up another level. Can't wait.
I know a lot of us use book reviews to work out whether we want to read a book or not, yet often I read a book and I just need to talk to someone about it. Did they gasp out loud at that part too? How on earth could she decide to leave him? Why did he answer the door? Wasn't that bit heartbreaking?
To celebrate our Sigurdardottir double bill weekend I therefore thought I would write a third post and instead of providing an overall summary of both books I have included my top five points that I most wanted to talk about when reading both Snare and Trap.
The below contains spoilers for both books so if you haven't read both and don't want to spoil the epic twists and turns then please wait until you have read both before continuing. If you are undecided about what to read and are looking for a generic overview of the books you can find my review of Snare here and my review of Trap here. Comments as to what you think of the below, whether you agree/disagree or need to talk about another point that I haven't included are most welcome
Have I made it clear spoilers are below? Alrighty well then I will begin:
1) Bragi and Sonja's cat and mouse
The book club loved the initial cat and mouse between Sonja and Bragi in Snare with at least one member being disappointed when it came to the twist concerning Bragi as it meant an immediate close down of this part of the story. I genuinely didn't know who I was routing for during these chapters and I loved the part where Bragi leafed through the woman's magazine and made the link to Sonja.
No one saw Bragi's defection to the dark side coming despite his devotion to his wife and his obvious discomfort about her being in a care home. It provided another side to the argument of 'is it ever OK to commit a crime?' that Sigurdardottir raises so expertly time and time again in both books. It also opened up a new dimension to Trap when the two were working together to get the drugs off the plane. The tension was still present yet the different take prevented the reader from feeling like they were just re-reading Snare.
2) Adam - what a nasty piece of work!
Initially it was easy to believe that Adam, walking in on his wife in bed with another woman (and not only that but a work colleague) was the innocent, injured party and although he was being pretty shitty to Sonja when it came to Tomas it was understandable. I guessed Adam wasn't the entire picture of innocence when he came out to see Sonja in the car after she had been beaten up and remember thinking 'Ooh this is interesting!' Suddenly the tables were turned and Sonja could be a victim. Brilliant move by Sigurdardottir.
3) Why I will never look at a sponge the same way again
Across the two books there were so many gasp out loud moments you could easily be forgiven for thinking a reader was having an asthma attack. Another one of these moments was when Tomas pointed out he knew Sponge (and therefore Tomas' disappearance was faked by Adam). Using his own son to snare Sonja was positively evil and prompted one hell of a ride for the reader. There were moments of awful violence in both books (there was a human eating Tiger for heavens sake) but for me the reveal as to why Rikhardur was called Sponge, the name used so innocently by Tomas, was pretty grim and again illustrated why Adam who was happy for Sponge to associate with his son had to be stopped.
4) Agla and Maria cat and mouse.
In case you missed it Agla was my favourite character across both books and I so didn't want Maria to catch her. I don't know why this is as out of the three (Sonja, Agla and Bragi) she had less reason to commit a crime and was motivated purely by greed yet more than anyone I want Agla to be OK. Maybe because she didn't have that complete love that Sonja had with Tomas and Bragi had with his wife? I really wanted Agla to nail Adam and was disappointed in a way that his comeuppance wasn't more complete (perhaps more to come in next book?)
5) What will happen next?
Bragi's knees were featured far too heavily in Trap to not play a part in Cage as did his retirement. Surely something will suck Sonja back into Iceland's underworld and when it does how will she cope without Bragi to hand? Are we really to believe Adam is done and dusted with Sonja and Agla? No, Agla isn't in the clear yet especially when Adam realises she is spending time with Tomas. I don't think we can write off Maria yet either and it really will take some clever writing to extrapolate Agla and give her a happy ending. And that's not even mentioning Sonja's best friend Nati! (Loved the girl power twist there by the way) Have we really seen the end of the tiger munching it's way through various frozen body parts?
So many twists and turns must yet await! Snare and Trap have been totally unpredictable and I'm willing to put money on Cage (book number three) ramping it up another level. Can't wait.
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