The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
You won’t want to leave… until you can’t.
Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel. An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no reason not to accept.
Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge-there’s something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover Laure is missing, Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her. With the storm closing off all access to the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic. Elin is under pressure to find Laure, but no one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they are all in…
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This thriller had me on the edge from start till ALMOST the end. This was a bookclub pick for my in-person book club and I’m slightly jealous that I wasn’t the one to suggest this one. It was such a good read! I miss reading thrillers that aren’t slow psychological burns, just good old fashioned murder and mystery. The fact that it takes place in isolated mountains in an old Sanitorium turned hotel is AMAZING and one of the best plots for a thriller I’ve heard in a long time. I really enjoyed it, I listened through audiobook so there were times while I was commuting that my mouth dropped open in horror and I had to stay parked long after getting to a destination just to finish a chapter. Highly recommend for a good fall/winter read.
Elin is our main character and we follow from her point of view throughout the entire book. Like typical thrillers, she’s dealing with her own dark mysterious past and the events of the novel bring up a lot of un-dealt-with issues from her childhood between her and her brother. Being a detective on leave, she has even more skeletons in her closet. But what I liked about this is, even though she was a stereotypical jaded former cop as a lead in a thriller, she was also real with her trauma. The author wrote about panic attacks and anxiety and self-doubt and it made this character so much more real. As the story goes along and Elin ends up being the only person in these remote mountains that could possibly take up the case, she has to deal with her past in order to move forward with the case so it was an interesting journey to self-realization.
The book had a lot of twists and turns. None were especially shocking but I was surprised at the gruesome/horror-esque feel to a lot of the scenes. I think that’s what took me by surprise the most, so if you’re sensitive to violence or gore this might not be the novel for you. My only hold-back on absolutely loving it was that it was such a long read. Like it was exciting and dramatic but dragged on longer than it needed to. As the plot escalated I was ready for a big reveal at the height of the climax but we didn’t resolve until after coming down at the end which was a bit of a disappointment, however, it did end on an ambiguous note so that brought a little bit of interest back into it for me (I hope there’s a sequel). The main character, as much as I loved her growth, was very annoying and I didn’t relate to her very well. I think that’s a good testament though as to how good the character development was, because a lot of times it’s hard to see that development when you don’t like the character. I, however, both enjoyed her plot and growth while also still finding fault in her.
This was a great read for a fast-paced thriller and it had a lot more scary parts than what I was expecting which I, personally, really enjoyed because it fit in with the spooky month of October. I can’t wait to discuss it with my book club! 4 stars.