Review: The Boy at the Door by Alex Dahl

Title: The Boy at the Door by Alex Dahl
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 336 pages
Book Rating: C+

Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley

Summary:

Set against a stunning Scandinavian backdrop, a gritty novel of psychological suspense that asks the question how far would you go to hold onto what you have?

Cecilia Wilborg has it all–a loving husband, two beautiful daughters and a gorgeous home in the affluent Norwegian town of Sandefjord. And she works hard to keep it all together. Too hard. Because one mistake from her past could bring it all crashing down around her.

Annika Lucasson lives a dark life with her abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend. She’s lost everything one too many times and now she’s got one last chance to save herself, thanks to Cecilia. Annika knows her secret–and just how much she’s willing to do to make it all go away…

When someone forgets to pick up their little boy at the local pool, Cecilia agrees to take him home, only to find an abandoned, empty house. It’s the first step in the unraveling of her meticulously crafted life, as her and Annika’s worlds collide…

Review:

The Boy at the Door by Alex Dahl is a dark, twisty-turny Scandinavian mystery.

On the surface, Cecilia Wilborg appears to have it all.  Her husband, Johan, is a wealthy banker, and they have two daughters, Nicoline and Hermine. Cecilia works part time as an interior designer and she has a cadre of friends whom she meets with on a regular basis. However, Cecilia’s perfect life is only surface deep and she is harboring quite a few secrets.  She relies on a cocktail of prescription and illegal drugs and alcohol to make it through the day and she is desperately afraid of allowing anyone to see the cracks beneath her perfect facade. Cecilia is the novel’s primary narrator and her inner thoughts reveal the depths of her self-absorption, manipulative behavior and narcissistic (or perhaps sociopathic) tendencies. Her world begins to crumble when young Tobias enters her life and the shaky foundation of her lies, deceit and secrets inch closer and closer to completely collapsing. After Cecilia’s attempts to reunite Tobias with his mother are unsuccessful, the Wilborg family becomes his temporary foster family. The local police search for his mother culminates in a shocking discovery but their investigation soon comes to a standstill.

The chapters from Tobias’ perspective are particularly heartrending and his life with drug addicted Annika “Anni” Lucasso and Krysz Mazur is a blur of substance abuse, frequent moves and violence. Anni’s back-story is revealed through a series of diary entries which detail her life-long battle with addiction, prostitution and an unhealthy relationship with Krysz. Since her life is so very different from Cecilia’s, there is quite a bit of suspense surrounding how their lives intersect. As Cecilia’s carefully fabricated deception regarding her past begins to converge on her life in the present, she is on a downward spiral that is virtually unstoppable. A stunning revelation provides a certain amount of clarity but the  truth is not fully exposed until the novel’s conclusion.

Although the premise of The Boy at the Door is intriguing and quite clever, the pacing of the novel is excruciatingly slow until about the halfway point.  Cecilia is a particularly unpleasant protagonist and it is nearly impossible to feel much empathy for her plight. Anni is moderately more sympathetic than Cecilia but readers will have a difficult time understanding her choices. Tobias is a wonderful little boy whose life is completely at the whim of those around him. Alex Dahl does a fantastic job keeping readers guessing exactly how everything will work out for Cecilia, Tobias and her family until the novel’s unexpectedly satisfying and surprising conclusion.