My honest review is that I am not able to finish this book. I’ve tried. I did not give up easily. I pushed myself through 151 pages of it. Then I set it aside, hoping that it was a matter of mood and that time would make it more bearable. Upon picking it up again, I’ve taken three days to slug through another 19 pages. It seems that I am not the right reader for it and finishing the book won’t lead to a positive rating. Although the premise is incredibly intriguing, I cannot get into the story and dislike the detached writing style.

This book is more literary fiction than thriller, despite how it is being promoted. I’ve no issue with slow burns but I am not intrigued enough to push through to the end. If it’s on your TBR, keep it there, but go in with the right expectations. I hope your reading experience is better than mine.

This literary page-turner is brimming with psychological suspense and kept me guessing all the way to the surprising (and satisfying) conclusion. There are no saints here, only flawed humans struggling to come to grips with the past. Saint X refers to an island in the Caribbean. From the first pages, I fell into the flow of the story, wherein little sis Claire is barely 8 when her teenaged sister, Alison, disappears from a holiday resort. The author braids exquisite descriptions of setting and states-of-mind to deepen the narrative, which spans decades. Part omniscient narration and part first-person gives readers access to vulnerable and flawed Claire (who changes her name to Emily). Eventually, living in NYC, Claire/Emily is desperate to excavate the truth of what happened to her sister decades earlier. One day she encounters an islander, Clive, who has his own secret history to grapple with. But truth is complicated, blurred by secrets and capricious memory. For fans of twisty thrillers and unreliable narrators.

On the island of Saint X, families and couples relax and enjoy tropical vacations. Until one day when 18-year-old Alison goes missing and is found dead. Her sister, Claire, is only 7 at the time and has so many questions. Years later she encounters one of the men who was suspected of murdering her sister but was released. Was he involved in the murder? Claire needs to find out what happened to Alison, but as she pieces things together she discovers lot about Alison.

Claire is an interesting character with a lot of depth. The writing in this book is so well done and the locations come to life. You can imagine the island and see yourself in the setting where Alison went missing. I have seen so many rave reviews for this book and now I know why!

<b>Emotionally-charged, descriptive & powerful!</b>

SAINT X by ALEXIS SCHAITKIN is a slow burn psychological tale that often meanders. It has quite the interesting and fascinating premise though but didn’t always possess my full attention. I think this is my very first book that I found myself wanting to skim as I was getting a little impatient at getting to the climax of the novel. The pacing was extremely slow at times and I definitely got a little bit annoyed with all the extremely wordy and long passages. The writing in itself though was quite lyrical and beautiful but it wasn’t quite enough to make this a thrilling or exciting book for me to read. I was interested and engaged enough though that I needed to know how the story ended.

ALEXIS SCHAITKIN delivers quite the interesting character study, thought-provoking, powerful and well-written story here that had extremely long chapters, was a little bit overly descriptive and dense to make this a fully enjoyable novel for me. I think the author totally excelled with how exceptionally well-developed and portrayed these mostly unlikeable characters were though. I also thoroughly enjoyed the true crime atmosphere to the storyline and loved how we got an inside look into how all the pertinent characters were affected by this tragedy at the end of each chapter.

Expected on sale date: February 18, 2020

Norma’s Stats:
Cover: Love this beautiful cover!
Title: Intriguing, effective, and a fitting representation to storyline.
Writing/Prose: Well-written, lyrical, beautiful, wordy, and overly descriptive.
Plot: Interesting, thought-provoking, emotional, powerful, meandering, and a little monotonous at times.
Ending: Hmmmm, I’m not exactly sure what I think of this ending. Did it give me all the answers? I think so. Did it satisfy me fully and do I really care? Not really.
Overall: I think there is definitely lots to talk about with this one and I think the reading experience would have been so much better if I had read this in a group environment. I think it would make a great book club book. Would recommend it!

I received a gifted copy from the publisher as well as a digital ARC through NetGalley.

There’s something about islands I find so enchanting.

Well, many things actually - the feeling of sand between toes, the sound of soft waves crashing, the warm sun, the unique sense of isolation, and so much more. So when I heard Saint X was (mainly) set on an island, I couldn’t help but request it.

And I’m so glad I did. But I’m also glad I read someone’s review that mentioned what this book is NOT. You shouldn’t go into it expecting a high octane, off-the-walls thriller.

It’s more of a character study (where the setting itself is just as much a character). It delves into family, race, grief, and identity.

But even though the story isn’t necessarily action-packed, that DOESN’T mean it’s boring. Far from it! It’s so dang compelling. It was infused with an air of mystery throughout, and I never wanted to stop reading.

**Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for the review copy.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin was a good but heavy read. Didn't see the twist at the end coming! The characters felt so real.

This book was very enjoyable. The obsession was intense and I totally empathized with her. What I didn’t like was we still didn’t know how Alison died- it would had been nice to see that. I thought the insight chapter insights from the guests effected by Alison really added to the story.

3.5 out of 5

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin is a slow burn character study, covering race, privilege, and grief. Following a family after the death/murder of their 18 year old daughter, we travel back in time to when it happened. When Alison disappeared, and was later found dead in a waterfall. We see the island police struggle to pin the murder on someone.

We then travel to modern day New York, and Alison's sister Claire finds herself in the cab of one of the men who was a suspect in her sister's murder. Claire become obsessed with inserting herself in his life, to find out exactly what happened to her sister.

The writing is...beyond. Schaitkin is not ever at a loss for words. Long sentences, full of description, building the scenes, creating the fictional resort on the fictional Saint X. It's a world that is so easily pictured, a murder that is easily recognized, a family's grief so easily felt.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

We’ve all heard stories about young privileged, white girls going missing while on vacation in the Caribbean and turning up dead, or not turning up at all and just disappearing forever with no trace. It feels a bit racist to even contemplate this as a real, potential danger and brings up a compelling consideration of race and privilege in holiday resorts in which the guests are often white and wealthy and the workers, who are there to serve them, are often local, black, and poor. In this case the teen is Allison and we spend some time getting to know her, mostly through her sister Claire. Allison’s disappearance and death is a mystery, possibly a murder, which Claire understandably feels compelled to solve.

While the mystery of Allison’s death is captivating it isn’t the main focus of this book. Allison is significant more for how she affects others than in her own right. We do get to hear some of the story from her point of view but she always feels like merely the catalyst for damage in everyone else’s lives and not so much important for her own sake. Allison’s death shatters the lives of her parents, the accused (Edwin and Clive), and most especially Claire. Claire always had a bit of an obsessive nature even as a child and when a chance meeting presents her with an opportunity to follow Clive she becomes fixated on finding out what happened Allison’s last night alive even while torpedoing her own career and relationships. The story is truly a look at the nature of grief and how it can so easily cross the line into obsession.

The mystery in this felt very relevant and made me remember the Natalie Holloway case. Because of this mental connection I thought I knew what had happened to Alison but I was wrong. The answer was surprising but also not surprising. I won’t give away anything more about it because half of the fun is trying to determine who might be a killer, and there are several potential suspects. I found this book to be rather weighty and more thought provoking than the average thriller. It had all the elements of suspense, mystery, and danger that I expected but was much more of a slow burn, deep dive into one woman’s mind. While I didn’t particularly like either Claire or Allison I did find them compelling and I was particularly interested in that fate of all those who found themselves swept up in their orbits. The ending wasn’t incredibly satisfying but it didn’t leave me exasperated either. This isn’t a happy tale for anyone but it does bring up some essential issues that should be examined more often, especially by those of us fortunate enough to holiday at resorts.

Thank you to Celadon Books for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin

This is an incredible debut novel by Alexis Schaitkin, a master storyteller. Schaitkin weaved successfully the multiple point of views in telling this story, a deeply harrowing story of how people’s lives were affected by a mysterious death of a young woman vacationing with her family in the Caribbean Island of Saint X.

The story centers around Claire who was only seven at the time when her sister Alison disappeared and days later was found dead. Two men were questioned but soon released for lack of evidence. Alison’s death affected the family so much that they had to move and start new to Pasadena, California.

Many years later, Claire finds a job in New York and as fate would have it, takes a cab driven by Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister.
Claire obsessed with finding the truth about her sisters’ death and in the pursuit starts to learn the truth about her who her sister really was and how Alison’s death affected much more than just their family.

Schaitkin’s brilliance was her writing style that I loved on how the prose and descriptions brings you into the story and to the characters’ most intimate thoughts. The detail made for a wonderful audio experience as well. The psychological perspective of those that have gone through a tragic death was spot on. The difficulties of how life just seems to stands still, the difficulty of moving on and finding that closure were all addressed so beautifully in this story.

The ending for me was emotionally charged and powerful. One of my most favorite conclusions that I have read. I highly recommend this book for the thought provoking issues that were addressed such as race, wealth, and privilege to name a few.

This was a well written book that I highly enjoyed very much and one that I would recommend to read!

A fiction of several versions of an American young woman's disappearance on a Caribbean island. A story of lost and found, poverty and wealth. The author digs deep, especially into the psyches of a suspect and the sister to reveal certain truths and how significant events shape us.


Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley

I received an ARC of #SaintX from @CeladonBooks in exchange for an honest review. I wasn’t so sure about this book from the beginning because it moved pretty slow for me, but I knew I needed to continue to give it a chance because there was a lot that the author needed to set up to create the entire atmosphere of #SaintX. I am glad that I continued with this novel because it turned out to be a fabulous debut for Alexis Schaitkin. I loved how she weaved the characters of Alison, Claire (Emily), and Clive into the story of how Alison ended up dead on the island of Saint X. I could not have predicted how this story ended, which made it such a good story with its plot twists. Cannot wait to read what @AlexisSchaitkin writes next. #SaintX was an amazing debut!

Disclaimer - I received this book from Netgalley for review purposes

Description
Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men – employees at the resort - are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.

Review
Wow, where do I start with this one? It took me a while to get into it and I ended up re-reading the first couple pages repeatedly due to not being able to focus or get into it - but once I did it seemed to really kick-off. I loved how beautifully written it was and how clearly it painted this picture of these gorgeous islands - but not everything, as we learn, is as beautiful as it seems.

The bond between the sisters seems more legitimately than most, and something about this book had such a realistic touch to it that it kind of got to me more than most mystery/thriller reads do. I genuinely cared for these people and felt like this was almost a true story.

The major cons to me were that it was almost overly descriptive? It felt like a bit of fluff here and there. It took one main character three pages to respond to a question due to all the filler in between which was a bit much for me. My other con would be the overall ending. You could tell it was almost over but it just felt like, wait, that's it?

The mystery was so strong and interesting but just fell flat and ended up feeling like a bit of a waste of time. This definitely feels like it's more centered around the mourning and aftermath of death than an actual mystery.

Not sure if I'd recommend. As long as you're not reading this for a thriller or a mystery then you should be okay. Otherwise, it'll fall flat.

Three in a half stars

Great story. The author got me hooked from the very beginning and it was hard to put down. I thought it was more suspense/mystery than thriller but very good.

A teenage girl dies during her family's resort vacation. Two men are arrested but later released. The family must go home with no answers. This novel is less of a mystery/thriller and more of a work of literary fiction set around a mystery. There is a very deep dive into each of the characters who were permanently affected by this young girl's death. The main protagonist is her sister who was 6 at the time of the death. She grows to adulthood and moves to New York where a chance meeting with one of the men originally arrested in connection with her sister's death sets off a slow unraveling, layer by layer of who her sister really was. I found the story compelling and the writing excellent. I would read more by this author.

Saint X is a Caribbean island somewhere near St. Kitts. On this island is Indigo Bay, a resort frequented by wealthy Americans, among them the Thomas family. Alison has just finished her first semester of college and sharing a room with her much younger sister is less than exciting, so she leaves each evening to spend time with another college student and then two young local men who work at the resort. The night before the family is due to fly back to New York, she disappears.

This both is and isn't a crime novel. Alexis Schaitkin is less interested in the crime itself than on how Alison's death affected the people around her, with a particular focus on her little sister Claire. Claire is too young to have fully understood what was going on and later her parents focused on keeping her childhood as normal as possible. It's years later, when she's living alone, that a taxi ride sends her into a compulsive search to learn more about her sister. As she digs into her sister's life, she begins to both intrude into the lives of others and to lose something of herself.

This novel is not quite sure what it's supposed to be. It begins as a wide look at a group of people, written with a sort of objective detachment, then becomes a close character study of one woman, only to finish as a "what really happened" look at Alison's disappearance. It works as long as the reader is willing to have the book constantly shift and adjust as it figures out what it is trying to say.

**Review will be posted on my blog Feb. 15, 2020, closer to publication date**

**3.5 Stars**

Thank you to Celadon Books and NetGalley for giving me a chance to read this eARC.

I went into this thinking it was a murder mystery where we find the clues to who murdered Alison, but I got something else.

Claire is an adult now but the death of her sister years ago still affects her and the people that were involved with the investigation. Instead of a real murder mystery, we are treated more to a look at the people that were affected by her death. There are news articles, witness statements, statements even from people who weren’t there but knew Alison. Claire runs into one of the people who was a suspect in Alison’s and she gets obsessed with wanting to find out what happened that night. What she comes away with is insight about her sister and man accused of committing the crime.

What I Liked:

*This was not the murder mystery I expected, but reading Alison’s journals and hearing accounts from people she came into contact was keeping me interested in this story! I did have to put this book down for a few days because I was bummed it was reading like a usual murder mystery but I’m glad I stuck it through.

*I liked that we get to meet Clive, who was one of the last people to see Alison alive and we get to see his back story. Through him we get to know the island Saint X and the local lifestyle as we watch him and his best friend Edgar grow up. Clive hasn’t had an easy life, compared to Claire who grew up wealthy and privileged. But they both experience pain in their lives.

*Alison is such an interesting character and we get to know her through her journals, videos, and personal accounts but in reality she was still so young and was finding herself.

*I’m glad Claire got closure in a way – she had tried to avoid everything about Alison and her murder all her life, understandably since she was so young when it happened. What a traumatic event to go through and try to process. When she bumps into Clive out of the blue, it hashes up all the memories of what happened and the sister she thought she knew.

*I think of all the characters in this book, Clive’s story was the strongest. His childhood, how he grew up on the island, how his mom abandoned him, meeting Alison and the night of the murder. Then there is the aftermath where he is living in NYC.

Things That Made Me Go Hmm:

*The ending was definitely unexpected! It’s sad how know one really knew the real Alison, she was still learning about herself too when she died.

*There were times in the book I was slugging through and like I said, I even put it down for a few weeks. There are a lot of different accounts being told, sometimes randomly from a teacher of Alison’s or someone who barely knew her. The beginning is slow if you are expecting a usual murder mystery, and I seriously wanted to DNF this book but I didn’t. When we finally get to Clive’s story about what happened the night Alison died is when I was fully immersed in the story. This comes past the halfway mark!

*Triggers: death

Final Thoughts;

I almost gave up on this one but I’m glad I didn’t because in the end I did enjoy it. Don’t go into reading this thinking it’s a fast paced thriller murder mystery. It is more of a character study of Alison, the murder victim, and the people that are left behind with the aftermath of a traumatic event.

I had very high hopes for Saint X. The premise of this book was extremely intriguing and was so excited to get my hands on it!

Although, wow this was a bit tough for me to finish. I felt that the book was extremely slow burn and found it to be overly descriptive at times. I didn't feel that all the characters were likable but were interesting for the most part. I felt like due to the descriptive and wordy nature of the book, I found myself putting the book down frequently and wanting to pick something else up.

I felt underwhelmed in this one and frustrated that it was such of a slow burn. I don't think that this one worked that well for me but if you're ok with a slow burning mystery than this is definitely the book for you!

Thank you to Netgalley and Celadon for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars

Pub day: 2/18/20
Published to GR: 2/2/20

3.5*
This book reminded me so much of the Natalie Holloway tragedy that I couldn't move beyond it to truly embrace the story-line.

Alison is a young, beautiful teenage girl on vacation with her parents and younger sister on the tropical paradise island of Saint X. Their lodging is an exclusive five-star resort where everything they could possibly want is brought right to them. Sounds like heaven, right? So when Allison vanishes, this beautiful island vacation quickly spirals into a nightmare.

The story-line follows the younger sister Claire years later as she moves forward in her life. And she’s making great strides. Until that fateful day she crossed paths with a man she recognizes as one of the boys employed at the resort all those many years ago when her sister vanished. This sighting re-ignites Claires’ memories, and now becomes an obsession to find the truth!

I wish I could say I enjoyed this more, but it just fell short. The pace seemed to crawl along. It’s a short book but felt like it was a good hundred pages longer than it actually was.


There are many fabulous five-star reviews for this book, so perhaps I just wasn’t the right reader.

A buddy read with Susanne!

Thank you to NetGalley, Edelweiss and Celadon books for an ARC to read and review.

aint X pulled me in immediately. It opens with a privileged family's Caribbean vacation that turns nightmarish when Alison, the college-aged daughter, is found dead. Unfortunately, most of the novel, about Alison's sister's search for "the truth" feels as languid as a beach vacation. I often fell asleep while reading it - but I was intrigued enough to keep coming back to it.

The dense, middle pages are filled with memories and backstory about Alison and veer into a character study of Clive, a hotel worker whose life was changed by the police investigation. Finally, the last 75 pages grabbed me again and I was wide awake until the end. This is an ambitious, uneven novel with big themes about class and privilege that feels like a debut. With patience, it is a rewarding read.