THE SANATORIUM

SYNOPSIS

EVERYONE'S IN DANGER. ANYONE COULD BE NEXT.

An imposing, isolated hotel, high up in the Swiss Alps, is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But she's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when she receives an invitation out of the blue to celebrate her estranged brother's recent engagement, she has no choice but to accept.

Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge. Though it's beautiful, something about the hotel, recently converted from an abandoned sanatorium, makes her nervous - as does her brother, Isaac.

And when they wake the following morning to discover his fiancée Laure has vanished without a trace, Elin's unease grows. With the storm cutting off access to and from the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.

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're all in.

Title: The Sanatorium

Author: Sarah Pearse

Publisher: Bantam Press

Publication date: February 18, 2021

REVIEW

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Sanatorium has my name written all over it. Another one of my most anticipated reads of the years, another 5 ⭐️ ! Do I have a good eye or what? It combines all my favorite ingredients: remote location (the Swiss Alps), characters with some kind of past trauma, a blizzard that isolates them and several mysterious (and pretty disturbing) deaths. What's not to like?

It was such an exciting read. After finishing the prologue I knew I was in for a treat. Those first few pages managed to give me goosebumps, and that mask image is gonna be on my brain for a really long time. So creepy!

Elin is a detective on a leave of absence suffering PTSD after some traumatic events at work and also dragging some family issues. At first it took me some time to warm to her. Her obsession trying to get some answers about her family tragedy 20 years after the fact was a bit hard to understand. Why so long? But as the story progressed I got to really root for her. She needed to get to the truth of the murders just to prove herself that the old Elin was still alive inside her.

The sanatorium turned into a luxury hotel was another character itself, and even a scarier one than the villain. I'm all for minimalism (much to my boyfriend's regret), but that hotel still gave  really unsettling hospital vibes! Let's take a dip in those pools...Eehhh, no, thank you!

There were several twists that, as it happened to Elin, threw my theories away several times, and when all was revealed, the thing that really gave me chills was learning about the building's previous history.

With a really claustrophobic and sinister atmosphere, The Sanatorium is a truly stunning debut. Today I learnt from the author that the sequel will come out March 2022 and I'm already counting the days.