The Sanatorium
by Sarah Pearse
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 has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel.. An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin's taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no reason not to accept.. Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge--there's something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover 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 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...
The review
This one took me a little bit to warm up to, and then it had me.
Once I hit that page-forty-to-fifty stretch, The Sanatorium really locked in. The premise is instantly intriguing, but what sold me was the atmosphere. Pearse makes the former sanatorium setting feel icy, elegant, and slightly wrong in a way that keeps the whole book tense.
Elin is carrying so much personal baggage into the investigation that the mystery never feels detached from the emotional stakes. Between her fractured family history, the missing fiancee, and the hotel's grim past, there is always something pressing in on her from every angle.
What I enjoyed most here was the mood. Even reading it in spring, I could feel how perfect this would be as an apres-ski thriller. It is one of those books where the location does a huge amount of the work.
My main hesitation is the motive. I liked the journey more than the explanation, and that kept me from rating it even higher. Still, if you want a chilly, atmospheric thriller with a strong sense of place, this is an easy recommendation.
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