The Sanatorium - Kirjakasa

Hardcover, 400 pages

English language

Published Feb. 2, 2021 by Pamela Dorman Books.

ISBN:: 978-0-593-29667-7

(1 review)

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 …

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...

8 editions

GnomeKing@bookwyrm.social reviewed Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

Review of 'Sanatorium' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I have mixed feelings about this book, it has it’s good moments but there is a lot of weak writing and I can’t decide whether I liked it or not. The setting in the Swiss Alps was a fantastic idea, you can tell the author knows this landscape well, the descriptions are stunning and you could almost be there yourself. The plot itself is interesting enough to have kept me reading to the end, the idea behind the Sanatorium’s history was quite chilling.

The characters though are rubbish, nobody is developed enough to get you interested in them, Elin has a lot of baggage from an event in her past and it is dragged out for two thirds of the book, maybe if it was dealt with quicker she would have become the strong character that this book needed. The rest of the characters left you thinking they could be …

I have mixed feelings about this book, it has it’s good moments but there is a lot of weak writing and I can’t decide whether I liked it or not. The setting in the Swiss Alps was a fantastic idea, you can tell the author knows this landscape well, the descriptions are stunning and you could almost be there yourself. The plot itself is interesting enough to have kept me reading to the end, the idea behind the Sanatorium’s history was quite chilling.

The characters though are rubbish, nobody is developed enough to get you interested in them, Elin has a lot of baggage from an event in her past and it is dragged out for two thirds of the book, maybe if it was dealt with quicker she would have become the strong character that this book needed. The rest of the characters left you thinking they could be the killer and also not the killer at the same time, they were tough to get a read on, rather wishy-washy. A lot of the issues could be down to the very short chapters, the tension will start to build and then the chapter ends and you are left to start again, so many of the chapter breaks seemed unnecessary to me.

So it all came down to the ending would it be strong enough to make me want to recommend it to others…it wasn’t half bad, the reasoning behind the murders was very good, the final scene was very intense….and I have to admit I can’t remember if it was spread across loads of chapters or not, the flow was kept up well and I got caught up in the moment.

I think the book was ok in the end, it is a debut after all. There is a sequel, I’m hoping that Elin’s past has now been dealt with and that the readers can now get to see her in her element and start to solve some interesting cases. I think if you are a big reader of crime novels then you’ll like this one, I’m just a fussy old git.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2022/01/04/the-sanatorium-by-sarah-pearse/