This is the first of a series of novels featuring Freyja, who works with children and young people and Huldar, a detective who in this novel is newly promoted and well out of his comfort zone. But it's not the first I've read about these two, which is lucky, because I doubt if I'd have read more if it had been. It's clever, intricately plotted and the characters are well fleshed-out. But the more I read, the less I believed. Coincidence piled upon coincidence and the murders were committed in increasingly nasty ways. Having read one other in the series, I was eager to read another, but it'll be a while before I have the stomach to do so. ( )

Quite a frustrating book in many ways.

It felt unnecessarily violent at times, which almost made me put the book down.

The main characters, Huldar the police officer and Freyja the child psychologist are not particularly endearing, they weren't fleshed out enough to seem anything more than 2-dimensional, despite various aspects of their lives being drawn out in some rather long and boring passages. They just failed to come to life for me and the reveal at the end seemed pretty weak and rushed, making me think I should have skipped to the end a lot earlier. ( )

Well plotted and well written. ( )

Enjoyed. Shows how police or all of us should not make assumptions and need to ask follow up questions. ( )

The Legacy is the first book in the Children's House series and it's the first book I've read by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. I've actually read a couple of more books by Sigurðardóttir since I finished this book and I find her books really good. One thing I loved about this book (and the rest I've read by the author) is that its setting is on Iceland. Another thing I liked is the main characters psychologist Freyja and police officer Huldar who have to work together solving a murder case where a child is the only witness. The murder was quite brutal and little Margret could also be in danger. To make matter worse, Freyja and Huldar have a “kind of” past and they are not pleased that they have to work together, especially not Freyja. But, for the sake of the child and to solve the case must they try to work together to find out why someone would want to kill the woman.

I found the Legacy to be a very interesting book, especially that the answers were in the past. I thought it was a great change that for once read about a child psychologist and Freyja's frosty relationship with Huldar was amusing, which was needed in an otherwise very dark book. I especially liked the last part of the book when I started to realize the truth and when everything started to get a bit more dangerous for Huldar. The Legacy is a great crime novel and I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

Thanks HarperCollins Nordic for the review copy! ( )