Last year, a coworker recommended Hildur Knútsdóttir’s The Night Guest, and I devoured it in a single sitting. I loved the tightly wound suspense, even if the ambiguous ending left me with more questions than answers. Despite some unevenness, the novel intrigued me enough that I knew I’d give Knútsdóttir another shot. That opportunity came with her newest release, Dead Weight, kindly provided to me by the publisher.
Unnur has built a life that is, on the surface, perfectly comfortable. She throws herself into her work in pursuit of a promotion and spends her free time traveling with her boyfriend, who also happens to be married. It’s unconventional and undeniably lonely, but it’s a life she’s convinced herself is enough.
That fragile routine begins to unravel when she discovers a black cat sitting on her couch.
At first, Unnur brushes it off as a strange inconvenience, shooing the cat from her apartment. But when it returns the next day, she tracks down its owner, a troubled young woman named Ásta, who asks Unnur to care for the cat temporarily while she gets her life together.
What follows is the beginning of an uneasy and increasingly complicated friendship. Ásta’s situation proves far more dangerous than Unnur initially realizes, and like the black cat that wandered into her home, darker omens begin to follow close behind. Before long, Unnur finds herself caught between Ásta and her abusive boyfriend, forced to confront just how far she’s willing to go to protect someone else and herself.
With Dead Weight, Hildur Knútsdóttir delivers another quick, twisted little tale that quietly lulls readers into a false sense of security before pulling the rug out from under them. At first, the story feels almost deceptively ordinary, and I found myself wondering where exactly it was headed. Then suddenly, the darkness I’d come to expect from Knútsdóttir’s writing crashes into the narrative with full force.
Content warnings for domestic violence and abuse are absolutely warranted, and some moments are genuinely unsettling. Even so, I was glued to the story, unable to stop turning pages as the tension escalated.
And yet, once again, I found myself conflicted by the ending. The climax itself is dark and unsettling, but there’s very little aftermath to the events that unfold. Instead, the story seems to simply stop, cutting away just as I wanted to sit with the consequences of everything that had happened. There’s a brief epilogue that offers a little more context, but if anything, it only raises additional questions. Ultimately, that ambiguity left me feeling torn. I admire Knútsdóttir’s ability to create atmosphere and unease in such a compact space, but I can’t help wishing the novel had given just a bit more resolution to match the intensity of the journey getting there.
For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
(2026, 42)
