A sanatorium in the Swiss Alps is remodeled into a luxury five-star hotel. The place is beautiful, austere, and stark. It also feels "wrong" according to Elin Warner, who is invited there along with her boyfriend Will to celebrate her brother Isaac's engagement. We find out soon that there is something very wrong when employees go missing and bodies are discovered on and near the property.
Elin is a police officer in the UK who is on leave after a particularly distressing case. However, when a severe winter storm and avalanche cut off the hotel from any rescue personnel, it's up to Elin to manage the remaining panicked staff and guests amidst the pressure of investigating the deaths on her own.
Elin and Isaac share the trauma surrounding their brother's drowning when they were kids, complicating their relationship with each other and Elin's relationship with Will. The creepy, atmospheric tone of the setting, along with Elin's past and the terrible history of the sanatorium, come together to create a wonderful and moody mystery. Red herrings make for timely twists and turns.
Sarah Pearse creates well-developed characters and deftly describes the setting based on places and events that could be real. At the culmination of the novel, when Elin is contemplating the murderous events of her stay at the hotel, she has the thought that a power balance was tipped back the other way through "revenge in its most brutal form". This reader never saw the details of the ending coming. I give Sarah Pearse's The Sanatorium four stars out of five. https://youtube.com/shorts/R6Mj3NlsguE?si=KCSO1g_igwpOgmDl
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