Thank you Simon Audio for the gifted audiobook!
This is not the fast paced thriller the cover promises, and that's exactly why I liked it.
A widow retraces her husband’s final walk on the Camino and discovers the man she married never existed.
The Camino by Anya Niewierra is billed as a literary thriller, and it is and it isn’t. It reads more like a domestic drama braided with historical fiction, with a character study at its heart. So a fair warning from your librarian: if you go in expecting a page turner with a twist every chapter, you might be disappointed. But if you love to settle into a layered story and let it unfold at its own pace, your patience will be rewarded.
Lotte Bonnet is a Dutch chocolatier whose husband Emil, a refugee from Bosnia, died by suicide while walking the Camino de Santiago through central France. One year later, Lotte follows his exact route, stop for stop, hoping to understand what happened. Along the way she learns that Emil had been living a lie for their entire marriage. And she starts to realize someone does not want her to finish the walk.
The second timeline comes through a letter written to Lotte, describing life in Bosnia before the war and the hardships and horrors once it began. I’m old enough to remember watching the Bosnian War unfold on the news, and it’s clear Niewierra did serious research here. This is a time and place that doesn’t get much shelf space in historical fiction, and it deserves it.
I liked Lotte. I found the story unique and intriguing. There's a subplot I thought pulled focus from the main story, but overall it's an engrossing read. A quick note that this book was a phenomenon in the Netherlands, selling over 800,000 copies and winning multiple awards, and it's finally available in English for the first time.
On audio, Carlotta Brentan and Vas Eli are excellent. Their performances perfectly match Niewierra’s lyrical prose, and having two narrators for the two timelines really elevated the listening experience.
This is a good choice for historical fiction lovers who want a setting and events off the beaten path, and literary thriller readers who like to get lost in a story that takes its time. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Out now.
Grab a copy at Bookshop.org and help an indie bookstore while you're at it.
If you enjoyed this review, you might be interested in my review of Heather. It's a literary thriller by Caitlin Muller.
About the Author
Anya Niewierra is the number one bestselling author of the Netherlands, dubbed by the press as the new queen of Dutch literature. She has written six books, all of them immense bestsellers. Her breakthrough book The Camino has sold well over 800,000 copies in the Netherlands, won both the NS Reader’s Award and the Hebban Crime Award, and was the bestselling and most borrowed book of the year in the Netherlands in 2024, spending over 170 weeks on the bestseller list. It’s currently being made into an international television series and has been published in multiple languages. Follow Anya on Instagram and visit her website for more news and information about her books.
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