Silver Tears by Camilla Läckberg

EXCERPT: The studio lights were blinding. Faye had lost track of time. She had no idea how long the interview had been going on for, or how long was left. The audience was seated in rows of banked seating – a hungry, amorphous mass, on the alert for every word, every shift in her facial expression.

Usually she thrived in these situations. There was a little diva inside her who liked sitting in front of an audience, feeling the nerves of recording for TV. But today she felt strained and anxious.

Thinking about the shares being bought had kept her awake most of the night, tossing and turning. She had gone over the conversation in advance – conversations with women she would need to persuade to keep their shares without revealing in any way what was happening. No easy task – it would take both tact and finesse.

A slightly too long silence wrenched her away from her thoughts. She had been asked a question and was expected to answer.

‘The plan is to expand to the USA,’ she heard herself say. ‘I ‘m here in Stockholm for a month or so to meet potential investors and put together the final details. And I want to personally oversee the issue of new stock.’

It was horribly warm. A trickle of sweat ran down the small of her back.

Fredrik Skavlan, the Norwegian talk show host, sat up straight.

‘But this hunger . . . What is it that drives you? You’re already a billionaire. A feminist icon.’

Faye strung out the silence. The other guests were an American Hollywood actor, a female professor of linguistics who had just published a non-fiction bestseller, and a woman who had climbed Mount Everest with prosthetic legs. The Hollywood star had been flirting ceaselessly with Faye ever since she arrived at the studio.

‘Before my best friend Chris died, I promised her I would live life for both of us. I want to see how far I can get, what I can build. My biggest fear is dying without achieving my full potential.’

‘And Julienne, your daughter who was murdered by your ex-husband. What does her memory mean to you?’

Fredrik Skavlan leaned forward and the tension in the studio increased.

She didn’t answer right away, letting the temperature rise even further. Reach boiling point. The answer was learned by heart, but it was important it sounded natural.

‘She’s with me in everything I do. When the longing and pain get too much I bury myself in my work. I’m running Revenge, trying to make it grow, so that I don’t lie down and die myself. So that I don’t end up as just another woman silenced in the shadows of a man’s actions. So that he – the man I once loved, but who killed our daughter – doesn’t succeed in killing me too.’

ABOUT ‘SILVER TEARS’: Faye Adelheim has had to fight hard her whole life. But now, she is rich, her business has become a global brand, and she is hidden safely away in Italy with her daughter, where her violent ex-husband, Jack, can no longer harm them.

But Faye’s world is turned upside down when she discovers Jack is no longer behind bars, and she is forced to return to Sweden.

Just as Faye is in the fight of her life to keep her family safe, the dark truth about her childhood, which she has kept buried for years, is dramatically uncovered. And Faye is about to discover that even the best kept secrets have the power to destroy everything…

MY THOUGHTS: I loved Camilla Läckberg’s Patrik Hedström series. This series is completely different.

I should have felt sympathetic towards Faye. I didn’t. I found her cold and calculating, yet also strangely vulnerable. But I didn’t like her. At times I rooted for her. But I didn’t like her.

Another thing I didn’t like was the very graphic and superfluous sex scenes that pepper the book. They add little to nothing to the story and I felt that the majority of them were entirely unnecessary.

Was I bored by the story? No, definitely not. But neither did I love it. I didn’t skim anything other than some sex scenes, and I never considered not finishing it, but I didn’t love it. I liked it, but not a whole lot. It has all the ingredients that should make me love it: secrets, love, betrayal and revenge.

If I had been given this book with no indication of who had written it, I never would have picked Camilla Läckberg. I read the first book in this series after I was declined it on Netgalley, and while I didn’t love it either, I liked The Golden Cage more than Silver Tears. The ending of Silver Tears makes it apparent that there is another book to come. It is one that I won’t be putting my hand up for.

⭐⭐.6

#SilverTears #NetGalley

I: @lackberg @harpercollinsaustralia

T: @camillalackberg

#contemporaryfiction #crime #thriller

THE AUTHOR: Before she became one of Sweden’s most popular crime writers, Camilla Läckberg (b. 1974) worked as a marketing director and product manager for several years.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Harper Collins Australia for providing a digital ARC of Silver Tears by Camilla Läckberg for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

For an explanation of my rating system please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com

This review and others are also published on Twitter, Amazon, and Goodreads.com