72. Girl in Ice by Erica Ferencik

listened on Libby - borrowed from Library

2022
304pgs.
Contemporary Adult Mystery (scifi?)
Finished 11/29/2022 - took ages to finish
Goodreads rating: 3.70
My rating: 3.5
Setting: contemporary cold, cold, cold Greenland

My comments: Set in Greenland at a tiny science research station in October as the days are getting very short and 24-hour darkness is almost upon them.  Although Val has crippling anxiety, she drowns herself in pills and booze to embark on the journey there when she is asked, as an expert in languages, to come to try to figure out what an 8-year old girl is trying to say. This girl has been thawed from the ice....and speaks a language that has never been heard before. Of course, there are a lot of mysterious, unacceptable things going on, and that will include, but the end of the story, many deaths.  It was interesting to listen to the story unfold, to consider the possibilities that were suggested, and to commiserate with the protagonist's anxiety issues.  Could there really be some sort of enzyme in an eanimal (eels in this case) that could actually prologn/reactivate/regenerate life?  I would have rated this a 4, but it was very draggy in places, which made me shave off half a point.

Goodreads synopsis:  From the author of The River at Night and Into the Jungle comes a harrowing new thriller set in the unforgiving landscape of the Arctic Circle, as a brilliant linguist struggling to understand the apparent suicide of her twin brother ventures hundreds of miles north to try to communicate with a young girl who has been thawed from the ice alive.

Valerie “Val” Chesterfield is a linguist trained in the most esoteric of disciplines: dead Nordic languages. Despite her successful career, she leads a sheltered life and languishes in the shadow of her twin brother, Andy, an accomplished climate scientist stationed on a remote island off Greenland’s barren coast. But Andy is gone: a victim of suicide, having willfully ventured unprotected into 50 degree below zero weather. Val is inconsolable—and disbelieving. She suspects foul play.

When Wyatt, Andy’s fellow researcher in the Arctic, discovers a scientific impossibility­—a young girl frozen in the ice who thaws out alive, speaking a language no one understands—Val is his first call. Will she travel to the frozen North to meet this girl, and try to comprehend what she is so passionately trying to communicate? Under the auspices of helping Wyatt interpret the girl’s speech, Val musters every ounce of her courage and journeys to the Artic to solve the mystery of her brother’s death.

The moment she steps off the plane, her fear threatens to overwhelm her. The landscape is fierce, and Wyatt, brilliant but difficult, is an enigma. But the girl is special, and Val’s connection with her is profound. Only something is terribly wrong; the child is sick, maybe dying, and the key to saving her lies in discovering the truth about Wyatt’s research. Can his data be trusted? And does it have anything to do with how and why Val’s brother died? With time running out, Val embarks on an incredible frozen odyssey—led by the unlikeliest of guides—to rescue the new family she has found in the most unexpected of places.

133. Polar Vortex by Matthew Mather

My final book of 2019
listened on eAudio
narrated  by Tom Taylorson
Unabridged audio (10:18)
2019
368 pgs.
Adult Thriller
Finished 12/31/2019
Goodreads rating: 4.15 - 2843 ratings
My rating:  4.5
Setting: Contemporary October in the Arctic Circle

First line/s: " 'Is this heaven?' Lilly held out one tiny hand."

My comments:  Well, this one was quite a ride!  Beautifully read and easy to listen to, I was on the edge of my seat through the whole thing.  A huge airplane on a 16-hour filight from Hong Kong across the North Pole to New York City crash lands somewhere near the Arctic on the ice.  While the survivors do everything they can no to freeze or starve to death, they also try to figure out what has happened and how to get out of this predicament, because no one seems to be rescuing them.  Most of the story is told from the point of view of a man who is doing everything he can to save his five-year-old daughter, who is with him.  Very suspenseful, with lots of terrific characters. 

Goodreads synopsis:  Arctic meets Da Vinci Code in the new thriller from Matthew Mather, worldwide bestseller with over MILLION COPIES SOLD, translations in 24 languages and film development by 20th Century Fox.
          A flight disappears over the North Pole. No distress calls. Vanished into thin air.
          Mitch Matthews is a writer struggling to make ends meet when his wife's brother Josh offers them a first-class seat on a flight from Hong Kong to New York. When his wife needs to stay behind, it becomes an opportunity for some quality daddy-daughter time with his five-year-old Lilly.
          At check-in, they run into a strange Norwegian arguing with a huge Russian. A mysterious redhead is guarding a package in the business lounge. But everything is fine, until...
          Within hours of Allied Airlines 695 disappearing, a massive international search is launched. Aircraft and ships are dispatched from Russia, China, America, Canada, and Norway.
          In an area overflown by dozens of satellites from as many nations, ringed by radar and missile installations dating from the Cold War...How can a modern airliner simply vanish in one of the most heavily monitored places on Earth?