Sacrifice is S.J. Bolton’s debut novel, a mystery based on British folklore...about trolls. Though that premise seems a little “...wait, what?” the story isn’t as silly as it sounds. It starts off with a woman named Tora uncovering a body buried in her property. Tora takes a closer look at the body and finds that the heart has been cut out, and that cryptic symbols have been carved into the back. Right off the bat there is the impression of some cult-like behavior happening on the Shetland Islands, and with Tora feeling like an outsider in the small community on top of her marriage being on the rocks, she attaches herself to the case and acts as an amateur detective. Along the way she teams up with an actual detective that is also an outsider to the community, and they believe they are uncovering some much larger conspiracy that may or may not involve modern trolls. It hurts me to type it, but again, it’s not as silly as it sounds...for the most part.

Tora is an obstetrician, owner of 2 horses, and a sailor, and I thought that Bolton wrote about these activities strongly in her amount of detail, which I imagine is hard to do. I can’t decide what I thought of Tora as a character; she is aware of the fact that she’s not a warm person to be around, and it affects her job in assisting expectant mothers, which I thought was funny. I didn’t like the weird relationship she has with her boss; every other minute he’s got his hand on her shoulder and she describes falling under his trance, and the rest of the time she hates him and can imagine him as a murderer. Even in a book with trolls, Tora’s relationship with her boss was the least believable aspect for me. There’s no way with her boss constantly hitting on her, and doing so shamelessly in front of her husband, that on a small island they’re not going to have an affair. I suppose I might have more of a problem with his character than with Tora.

Overall, the book kept me interested, because as a reader I’m also an outsider with Tora, wanting to figure out what this little community is hiding and if there are ritualistic murders taking place. And of course, you have to find out if the trolls are real! The inclusion of the folklore was cool to learn about, so I feel like I even got a little culture out of the book. I’m not sure if I would agree with the back of the book that it’s “bone-chilling,” but it definitely had some good twists.