This is Kelsey Patterson with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I’m recommending Sarah Pearse’s debut novel, The Sanatorium. An instant New York Times bestseller, this book was also a recent Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick. 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 for tuberculosis patients has since been renovated into a 5-star minimalist hotel.
An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. Elin’s taken time off from her job as a detective after a particularly traumatizing case, so when her estranged brother Isaac and his fiancée Laure (Lor) invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, she really has no reason not to accept. Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge—there's just something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover that 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 overwhelming 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...
This book has an unnerving cast of characters, so many incredibly creepy moments, and twists you truly won’t see coming. People magazine must love this type of book too! In reviewing The Sanatorium, they said, “It’s The Shining but with a full house.”
Check out The Sanatorium and other intricately plotted edge-of-your-seat thrillers like it at the Sioux City Public Library.
Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Avery Brothers.
