Girl in Ice

By: Erica Ferencik

Narrated by: Vivienne Leheny

Length: 9 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times Editors’ Choice * Los Angeles Times Best Crime Novels of Winter 2022 * Reader’s Digest Best Fiction Books of 2022

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.

©2022 Erica Renée Ferencik. All rights reserved. (P)2022 Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

Girl In Ice made me feel Warm

Fascinating and beautiful story. The performance was excellent. Generally I am not a fan of sci fi but I actually believed that this story if not happening now, will happen one day soon.

Fantastic!

Very well written, and the performance was one of the best I have ever heard.

Girl in Ice -interesting and overwrought

The protagonist of Girl in Ice is a neurotic mess, even though she finally pulls it together after 400+ pages. The narrator portrays this with very fast, anxious delivery — from start to finish, with no variation. I had to slow down the reading to .8 to make it listenable. Otherwise the storyline is interesting and provides what seems to be a fairly accurate portrayal of the isolated lives of scientists in the Arctic.

Dark and depressing

Certainly there were insightful moments - but the author so successfully created an ominous and duplicitous environment that was inescapable - she took the reader down with the characters. That may be exactly what some reader’s are looking for - but that wasn’t what I anticipated when I read the description. The narrator was quite good in the role.

Ice girl

Kept my interest. I could relate the characters. It was a quick read. Gave me some thing to think about.

Not the Best

The story and the main character were weak; frustratingly so, at times. Was hoping it would be more exciting. Loose ends regarding other characters.

Good Story!

The Plot was unique and kept you in suspense. The characters wete well developed and certainly relatable.

Excellent!! Suspenseful!

great read, very exciting,and very suspenseful! Kept me wanting more you have to read it!

Good plot, weak characters

I hate reading what sounds like a really good book only to find superficial writing, one dimensional characters, and a hurried ending. This book supplied all three. I wanted to like the protagonist, but the author uses her neurosis as part of her character in a way that isn’t believable. People who suffer from those kind of problems can’t just force themselves to do the things that terrify them. It was frustrating.

Easy listen and quick

I liked it. Quick listen and I enjoyed the scientific possibilities that could be. Great listen while driving