Review: As White As Snow by Salla Simukka

Publication Date: 3rd March 2015
Publisher: Skyscape
Length: 224 pages

Huge thanks to Netgalley for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review

The heat of the summer sun bakes the streets of Prague, but Lumikki’s heart is frozen solid.
Looking to escape the notoriety caused by the part she played in taking down Polar Bear’s crime ring, seventeen-year-old Lumikki Andersson escapes to Prague, where she hopes to find a few weeks of peace among the hordes of tourists. But not long after arriving, she’s cornered by a skittish and strange young woman who claims to be her long-lost sister. The woman, Lenka, is obviously terrified, and even though Lumikki doesn’t believe her story—although parts of it ring true—she can’t just walk away.
Lumikki quickly gets caught up in Lenka’s sad and mysterious world, uncovering pieces of a mystery that take her from the belly of a poisonous cult to the highest echelons of corporate power. On the run for her life again, Lumikki must use all her wits to survive, but in the end, she just may discover she can’t do it all alone.

After the tense and fast paced ride of the first book in the trilogy ‘As Red As Blood’ I was very eager to get straight back into Lumikki’s world and this time to explore Prague with her. Unfortunately this book didn’t grab me in the same way as the first.

The story wasn’t as engaging this time, it took much longer to really get into the story and by that point we were reaching the climax and there wasn’t enough time to properly invest. I’m not really sure what it was about it that didn’t work. A combination of pacing, slow plot and characters. It followed the same formula as the first, with characters being introduced slowly, first with no names, and then later with names and motives. But instead of building the suspense like it did in the first book it dragged it out and left the plot barely moving for most of the book.

This instalment also suffered from problems in translation. The writing is very clunky and awkward, much more so than in the first book, which was frustrating as it felt as though that was not how it would have read originally. It’s almost enough to make me want to learn Finnish so I can read it as it was intended!

However, these frustrations aside this was still a very good book. I loved Lumikki, I loved finding out tiny pieces about her life and her history and I loved that we learnt more about the relationship she had the previous year. Also a huge amount of love for the person she was in love with being transgender and going through gender reassignment. It was an unexpected yet wonderful twist, and I loved seeing pieces of their relationship. I’m hoping that we will actually meet him in the final instalment in the trilogy now that the build-up has reached this this point.

So whilst this book didn’t appeal to me in the same way as the first one, and suffered from several issues with pacing that left me feeling frustrated for the first part as I waited for the story to start pulling together and to draw me in, this is still a very good book. Not quite up to the standard of the first book but still a good bridge before the third one, which I am very anxious to read.