A review by emmjay
The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse

mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

I mean, I read it. Had this not been for a book club I tremendously enjoy I probably would have given up around the 20% mark. I just didn’t care for any of the characters. The mystery wasn’t holding my attention, because until the halfway mark there was very little mystery. And I found the writing mediocre. I suppose the writer may have backed herself into a corner on this one, there are only so many ways to describe snow, after all. However, that is no excuse for the phrase “ his/her hair was scraped away from his/her face” being used upwards of 5 times. We also got several people looking at their own reflections and describing their physical appearance to themselves in classic literary cliche. 

Took about halfway for what felt like the “real” mystery plot to kick in. The majority before it feels like a lot of subplot that gets relatively little payout.

After the halfway mark each chapter follows the same pattern: the main character suspects someone of hiding something, she confronts them, there is expository dialog, the character thinks to herself— by stating each time she is thinking to herself— can it be true? What are they hiding? I need to know more. I have a hunch but am I right? I don’t know enough yet. She’ll start to have a thought, it will be described as her having a thought, but then “the fragments” will “drift away.” Every. Single. Time. No clues given to the reader. Then the chapter ends with her seeing something shocking that won’t be revealed until the start of the next chapter. Rinse and repeat until the end. If you’ve read this paragraph, you’ve now read a huge chunk of the book.

Handily the culprit does do an extremely long explanatory monologue at the very end that lays out every (often quite flimsy) motivation AND tries to shoehorn in a message not present in the rest of the book, AND our cop protagonist just stands there and listens to them, so there’s that. 
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