The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
Elin Warner, a police detective on leave, is traveling to a new hotel to celebrate the engagement of her brother. However, things don’t go quite as planned, and Elin finds herself investigating a crime. What is going on at this hotel? Can Elin get answers to what happened to her in the past?
First of all, there have been a tremendous amount of negative reviews on this book. To be clear, I completely understand where they are coming from. The method that I used to read this book is called immersion reading. It is a technique where you listen to the audiobook, but I also follow along in a physical copy. I would pause the book, highlight, and I also took notes of who most of the characters were. There are A LOT of characters in this book, and it bops from one set of characters to the next at times so I can definitely see how this book would be a royal mess if I was just trying to listen to this book while driving to work for 20 minutes and then 5 minutes as I pop into the grocery store.
However, for me, I loved this book! It was extremely page turning. It has a lot of suspense. The chapters were short but they always seemed to leave me wanting more. I also really liked the ending. There were a few portions of the book that didn’t make sense like why wouldn’t Elin take her boyfriend and her brother as back up when she is investigating?
Overall, I thought that The Sanatorium was really well done and very enjoyable. However, I would not suggest just listening to the audiobook alone (unless you are in a position to take some notes and/or stop and rewind (is that still a thing?) at leisure).