This wasn’t what I was expecting from the blurb. It’s not a ghost story, more a psychological thriller. The idea of the story was very good, but I couldn’t get to grips with Elin. Kept thinking that policing wasn’t really the role for her, she was too damaged. Unfortunately if I don’t take to a character it tends to be a chore to read the book. The back story of the death of Sam was a big part of the story, and her relationship with Isaac was difficult to say the least. Did I miss why Isaac had lied about his job, other than he couldn’t face going home for his mother’s funeral? The Swiss police seemed to disappear from the story before the end, and I thought the big reveal confusing. The fact that she was going back to work once she returned home was surprising considering the amount of bodies and wrong tracks she racked up during her “investigations “! The descriptions of the weather and the hotel were great, built up the atmosphere well., and it was certainly tense in parts. It appears from the ending that this might be the start of a series of books about Elin. Good luck with the next book.

For some reason this book wasn’t quite as scary as I imagined it might be. I’m not really sure why I didn’t find it more thrilling as there were some quite gruesome kidnappings under very disturbing circumstances and yet at times I did feel the plot was a little slow.

On saying that it would be a very clever reader who could guess who might have done what and why. Told from the Protagonist Elin’s point of view most of the time, the plot is kept very close to the writers chest, she gives away very few clues along the way.

I think perhaps the main reason why I wasn’t as excited with this book as I thought I might be is Elin herself. The detective, on compassionate leave and on holiday at this luxurious hotel in the Swiss Alps with her boyfriend. Invited by her estranged brother to celebrate his engagement, Elin hoped it might be a chance to build some bridges with him and their shared past, and to decide whether she wanted to continue in the police force. Unfortunately Elin and her ‘problems’ is the main reason why I didn’t particularly enjoy certain aspects of the book, it was her constant anxiety and self doubt that to be honest just got on my nerves. I found her irritating and for a detective always seemed to be stating the blatantly obvious. To be fair though, the ending explains Elin’s anxiety issues so perhaps I was a little harsh.

So to the final chapters and the dénouement. Well, this is where the plot really picked up for me. When everything came together, a very tense part to the book with revelations falling over each other. I loved this bit and my interest really picked up. This is where everything is brought together and there are lots of aha moments. Plus the very end! Wow, not too sure whether I was supposed to know or whether there is potential for a book 2, either way – eeek!! Well worth the slow bits.

3 1/2 stars rounded up to 4.
Review to be posted to my blog nearer to publication date.

I very much get the feeling that The Sanatorium could be the start of a detective series starring Elin, a Devon and Cornwall detective. Elin has been having a really bad time at home and is taking some time off of work. She goes on a holiday to the Alps to meet up with her brother and her oldest friend to celebrate their engagement. This is an atmospheric thriller and the tension really builds. The minimalist hotel, which was a former TB hospital, gets cut off due to bad weather and then bodies start appearing - you get the idea?
I liked the main character and her back story. She was believable and you really want her to find some peace and closure (after she has discovered who the murder is of course!)
I would recommend this book. It was different and held my attention.right to the end.
Thank you to @NetGalley, the publishers and the author Sarah Pearse for the opportunity to read and review #TheSanatorium

The blurb of The Sanatorium suggested that the ghosts of those who were ‘treated’ at the Sanatorium were going to be involved in the disappearance of the women in the hotel...this wasn’t the case.

The book took a whole different turn; not in any way a bad turn but there was a lot going on. Lots of potential killers in quick succession; some family drama and bad weather all mixed together to create a bit of a mish-mash.

I didn’t understand the epilogue, so will have to go back and read that bit again to see what I missed.

Overall the setting was such a good place to create the Sanatorium but the plot didn’t live up to my expectations. That said, there are a lot of 4 and 5 star reviews for this book; so don’t take my word for it! Have a read and see what you think!

Where do I start!? Spine tingling, chilling - this psychological thriller has it all. Add in the grim idea of what happened years past in the hotel when it was a sanatorium, the eerie atmosphere of snowstorms and avalanches and you’ve got the ingredients to keep you up late into the night. That could be because you can’t put the book down or because you’re too scared to put out the light!
This story is just so good and the reveal, when it comes, is complex and unexpected. Even the Epilogue holds a teaser. Can’t wait for this author’s next book.

When you start this book, you want to know how it ends! Elin Warner, a woman with a disturbed family background, is on leave while she considers her future as a detective in a British police force. During her leave of absence, her estranged brother invites her to his engagement party at a hotel in the Swiss alps. The hotel was a sanitorium once upon a time, converted to a hotel amidst anger from local people. The aura of its past hangs all over the story as the engagement party never takes off. The story has many twists and turns and many moments when you think you know the answer but are then proved wrong. Elin is the only detective available as murders take place in weather that keeps the local police away. It is an opportunity for her to settle her issues and consider her future. It is well written with intriguing story lines. The end is unexpected as even more hidden secrets are revealed. I recommend it.

A spooky psychological thriller that will leave shivers down your spine. What dark secrets does the hotel keep and why are people turning up dead. The desolate setting adds to the atmosphere that compels the reader to come out from behind the covers and keep reading. Perfect Halloween reading on a dark night. Suspenseful, intriguing and intricately written you will be blown away by the book.

A minimalistic hotel hidden away within the isolated Swiss Alps sets the scene for this tense, atmospheric thriller from Sarah Pearse. ‘The Sanitorium’ follows Elin Warner as she reunites with her estranged brother upon news of his recent engagement but the celebrations are short lived as his fiancee goes missing.
I liked the character of Elin as an ambitious young woman who carries scars from her childhood and recent past as a police detective. She questions everything around her and isn’t blind to the eerie atmosphere within the hotel setting where they haven’t quite lost its troubling past. The almost clinical setting is used well in this modern thriller, almost as though the looming architecture is a character itself, revealing its secrets which are entwined with the disappearances.
Overall a good thriller although I found the pace a little slow in parts but I liked the dark premise and back story to this release. I think it is a brilliant claustrophobic mystery that is made for a wintery, cosy read and cannot wait for this debut’s follow up.

I would like to thank the author, the publisher and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an ARC of this book. I really enjoyed it it was very atmospheric and the characters were well drawn. I hadn’t anticipated the end but I do hope there will be further books featuring this detective.

Very slow and found it difficult to to interested.
Eli Warner a London detective suffering from PTSD, visits her estranged brother in a posh Swiss hotel high in the alps converted from an old sanatorium to celebrate his engagement.
They get snowed in and murders begin with no purpose to them.
Eli try`s to solve the murders, How she became a detective I don`t know as she has no idea what to do.I found all the characters weak and unbelievable.
I hated the beginning of each chapters with one letter of the word on a separate line very confusing.
Was very disappointed as the cover and description sounded grea.t

The blurb had me intrigued for this book and in many ways it lived up to expectation with a mystery, a cop with background issues forcing her to contemplate her future on the force, bodies piling up and a great atmospheric description of the hotel and its surrounding.
However there were many threads that were brought together for the final reveal that I didn't feel were alluded to enough earlier on in the book so it became a bit disjointed for me toward the last third of the story.
Overall a great premise and good characters but perhaps a little more detail earlier on would have made the reveal more of an "aha" than an "oh, right"

Weather. A sanatorium. Murder. Fear. Undercurrent of something bigger than the detective. What’s not to love ! I love books like this and really really enjoyed it. It was one of those books that reminded me of old fashioned fiction in the sense that it held my attention. I didn’t want to put it down. I felt it was such a good book I made my SciFi reading husband beer out of his genre for a little while. We talked about it and he read through it and pulled characters apart and discussed the looming mountains. Brilliant.

Let me first preface this by saying that, for some reason, I thought this was going to be a ghost story. It's not. It's an atmospheric thriller. Well it certainly is atmospheric. A good one for winter weather.
The story is set in a brand new, flagship, hotel high on the top of a snow capped mountain. Is this a "run of the mill" hotel? Nope. Firstly, it is a converted sanatorium, used many years ago for the rehabilitation of "chest" patients. Secondly, there are only very few ways in or out- when it snows heavily, the whole place is cut off.
So, yes, you guessed it...our hero (an "on leave" cop with PSTD) and her lacklustre boyfriend (an architect who is keen to check out the new place), visit for the hotel debut. And yes, the whole place gets cut off and people start to go missing. Although I enjoyed the book to some extent, (the descriptions of the snow and the sparse interiors of the hotel had me feeling it!), it was a little slow paced with a disappointing "reveal".

Thanks to Sarah Pearse, Random House and NetGalley for the ARC of THE SANATORIUM.
I loved the cover of this novel which promised a creepy, almost gothic type novel, and the pitch promised a suspenseful psychological suspense. As much as I thought the premise was really good I must confess in my opinion the story and the writing did not live up to the promises. For a detective with presumably some experience behind her, Elin was neurotic with just about everything that came her way. I began to get very annoyed with her constant claims of being unable to face anything and blaming it on the death of her brother many years before where she was convinced her other brother had killed him. He didn't. Then she tried to take over as a police officer when the first death was discovered in Switzerland which was not her jurisdiction. I could not champion her and in a book of this type I need to have someone to root for. Hands up I read about 30 odd percent then read the reviews then the ending which lacked drama and was an anti-climax. On screen this may have worked, but not as a piece of writing.

The ending of this book was a little disappointing to me . I enjoyed the story itself but found one or two of the characters a bit unnecessary as well. Don't let that put you off though. Its a great story.

Quite a dark psychological thriller! Elin and her boyfriend Will are welcomed to a minimalist architectural hotel high in the Swiss alps called Le Sommet; the now-luxurious hotel however has a darker past: it used to be a sanatorium and this is somehow still alluded to in the sleek clinical lines and sterile feeling of the hotel, at least for Elin, who finds it oppressive. Architect Will, giddy with excitement, can’t understand her unease. Elin is a police officer from the UK on holiday and is immediately uncomfortable at Le Sommet, but she’s carrying a dark past of her own which has left her with panic attacks and fears at new surroundings and situations. Then a woman goes missing and it soon becomes clear she wasn’t the first... top it off with a storm which renders the hotel inaccessible and the inhabitants stuck... Elin must step in to investigate despite being way out of her comfort zone and jurisdiction.

The atmosphere and suspense was terrific, and there were some fascinating character stories to unravel - the protagonist Elin is struggling through some pretty hard realisations and the arc of her development from start to finish was very well done; she is an imperfect heroine. There were quite a few twists and turns and we soon realise that not everything was as it seemed originally.

My thanks to #NetGalley and Bantam Press for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

#bookstagram #bookreviews #booklove #thesanatorium #Sarahpearse #Psychologicalthriller #mysterynovel #crimefiction #spookyoctoberreads

The Sanatorium is an absolutely splendid Gothic thriller - gracious in its nods to the classic locked-room mystery, yet bold enough to burst out of that room through the window. Pearse writes prose fresh and crisp as Swiss Alp powder, and her characters fascinate even as their numbers dwindle.,

Hugest and warmest of thanks to Bantam Press for approving me via Netgalley to read 'The Sanatorium', which is out in February 2021! You will need at least 2 hot water bottles, 3 blankets and an optional spaniel to sit on you to stay warm whilst reading this Swiss set thriller.

The ghosts of the past cast hideously long shadows as, despite protests and disruption from the locals, Lucas and Cecile try to turn a local resort for those trying to recover from tuberculosis in the early part of the twentieth century, into a chic, minimalist hotel/spa resort.

It would not be my personal idea of heaven to spend a holiday in a place decorated like a memorial to minimalism, glass cases displaying vintage 'spitoons' and hospital-esque decor sounds a bit too much like a busman's holiday for this nurse. It doesn't appear to be Elin and finacee Will's idea of a much needed break either, as Elin is on extended sabbatical from her role as a detective after a case went hideously wrong.

What could be better than visiting your estranged brother,Isaac, and best friend,Laure, who are getting married, in a remote Swiss hotel?

Well let me tell you what is worse...the discovery of a body in a pool, the thawed remains of another and the prospect of an approaching storm which leaves the remaining visitors, staff and owners trapped. And then someone attempts to drown Elin. As the only police contact within the hotel, the Swiss police ask her to be their eyes and ears on  the ground until they can get there.

Suddenly, Elin's hand is forced and the decision about whether to return to work is taken out of her control, much to the consternation of Will. As she investigates , the shared history that she and her brother have,rears it's ugly head and the surrounding mountains, far from being a landscape of possibility and remoteness, suddenly seem weaponised against the trapped inhabitants of the hotel.

Elin has to turn inwards, evaluating her and Isaac's childhood trauma in order to work out just what is going on here, but is she so determined to find out the truth that she doesn't fully appreciate that the consequences could be life changing?

There is an underlying psychological cat and mouse came played between author and reader, that mirrors the narrative between Elin and the killer, as the plot escalates with surgical precision-the editing and storytelling is so on point that this is absolutely not a book to start with the promise of reading to the end of page xyz before lights out. Oh to hell with it, when did I ever take my own advice?!

But please take my advice on not researching masks used in days gone by,as that is just plain terrifying.

That this is a debut novel was shocking to me, the pacing of the chapters and the compulsive narrative swept me away and it's no exaggeration to say that it gave me chills. Overshadowed by the ghosts of the past, the secluded location provides a claustrophobic atmosphere in which all the events and feelings expereinced by the main characters are magnified. It is a race against time to prevent more deaths, escape an oncoming avalanche and restore an equilibrium to damaged relationships. That's a really tall order for damaged detective, Elin. The reason I included 'The Sanatorium' as #Spooktober read is because it is both haunting and haunted. It is like the Marsten House, or The Overlook where these buildings exist as conduits to evil, they are the background, the stage, if you will, for the characters to play their parts out on.

There are some places in the world that just give you the creeps without even being able to tangibly realise where that sensation is coming from-Le Sommet is exactly one of those places. The misery and pain that was carried out in the name of science and research into a deadly disease echoes terribly the situation in which we find ourselves in. So check in at your peril, sometimes the disease is better than the cure...

I really wanted to like this book. The idea sounded great, the setting is amazing and the basic plot line is good. The heroine, however, is so neurotic that she is intensely irritating. This could have been so much more enjoyable if she wasn't so overwritten. This was so nearly a good book.

Creepy, chilling and with a Hunting Party feel to it.

I had seen this book everywhere, but as a hardcore romance reader I wasn’t going to touch it. Eventually I was too intrigued and requested it!

This had elements of a police procedural in that the main character is a police officer on leave, but this was so much more creepy and I was often left feeling like I was being watched as Elin does. The snowy landscape and the blindness it brings to the story was really oppressive and made this book for me, reminding me a lot of Lucy Foley’s ‘The Hunting Party’, which I also really enjoyed.

I can’t go much further without revealing any spoilers, but I will say that as soon as you think you know what’s happening, the story flips on its head and you’re thrown back in to that panic of not knowing who or where the killer is.

A top-notch and original thriller that scared the hell out of me.