I won this book as a First-Reads Giveaway.I say I'm not much of a fan of paranormal books, but I was presently surprised.

What starts out as a seemingly innocuous trip across the ice to the local lighthouse, ends with the vanishing of six-year-old Maja. Seemingly in the blink of her parent's eyes, she was there and now she's not. Despite extensive searches she's vanished. No footprints in the snow, no sound, no sight, no sign. Anders, her father, falls apart. His marriage fractures, his life stops. And two years later, he returns to the island to attempt to confront the despair, to drag himself out of spiralling downward trend of alcohol and hopelessness that his life has become. He returns to an island seemingly unchanged, to his grandmother and her partner, to a small, sheltered, enclosed community with secrets.

The paranormal aspects of HARBOUR surface fairly quickly after Anders returns to the island.It is amazing the suspense that Lindqvist builds into the story that he's telling. The wonderful ability to simply tell a story. This book weaves the tales of Maja, Anders, his grandmother and her magician partner into the story of the island community seamlessly. There is also a breathtaking sense of raw and honest human emotion, mixed up into the paranormal. The pace of the story builds as does the pace of Anders' discoveries, understanding, and ultimately acceptance that his daughter may not have been all that he chose to see, but she remains exactly who he chooses to love.

It is really that overwhelming sense of a story being told that works so well in HARBOUR, supported by raw, glorious emotion. Regardless of how much of the paranormal you are comfortable with, HARBOUR is a stark, beautiful, moving, confronting, sad, lyrical and emotional book.