I really enjoyed this novel.

The author's prose set the scene so vividly. The Sanatorium is a highly atmospheric, gripping, psychological thriller and I loved the unique and chilling storyline. It was fast paced and full of twists and turns, and I did not guess "whodunnit" right until the end.

Set in a highly remote and isolated location in the Swiss Alps, a one-time Sanatorium with a deeply hidden past, is redeveloped and turned into a five star hotel. Every one of the characters we get to know is a potential suspect with a motive, but at the same time, they are all in deep danger. It's a race against time to catch the killer, but who could possibly be behind these barbaric murders?

A highly recommended novel. Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for the chance to read an early copy, in exchange for an honest review.

This book was more about the journey than the destination: I loved this book all the way through, equally creepy and engrossing, but I was disappointed with the denouement. The main character Elin is actually really annoying and damaged, a detective on a break from work who gets roped in to the investigation at the sanatorium- it made me laugh a bit that every theory she came up with proved to be wrong- so obviously her break from work was a good idea! Many thanks to Netgalley for an arc of this book.

This book is a clever claustrophobic crime thriller. It is fast paced, with lots of twists and turns along the way that keep going right to the end! The location of a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps is a perfect setting for a creepy intense thriller. Running in parallel to the main story is also an intriguing backstory to the main characters life with flashbacks to events that have had a significant impact on her life making her who she is today and effecting her relationships with people. Definitely a recommended read for 2021.

Clever, twisting and a total rollercoaster ride from start to finish. Just as you think you have worked out what is happening everything changes and you are as bemused as ever. An excellent read.

Brilliant setting. Brilliant story. Brilliant writing. Brilliant book.- I really enjoyed this one.
Set in hotel in the Swiss mountains that used to be a sanitorium this book is creepy and dark with a murderer on the loose in the middle of a snow storm and the hotel cut off by an avalanche.
Highly recommended

I really liked the sound of this book, all the perfect ingredients! The setting, the plot, the storyline are all perfect for me.

That’s why I was sorry to not enjoy the writing. I felt it needed both more editing and the style was just not for me. As a fan of anything from Agatha Christie to high octane thrillers, I don’t mind a wide array of writing styles, but this felt flat and sometimes clumsy and heavy handed. It very much felt like a debut that needed more work, which is a shame.

I’m sorry to say it was a DNF for me. I do wish the author and the book all the best on publication, and I hope others find it more riveting than I did! Please do give it a try, as my opinion may well not at all be the same as yours.

Thank you Netgalley for giving me a chance to read in exchange for an honest review.

Complex thriller set in a refurbished sanitorium,now a luxury hotel. Lots of twists,turns and red herrings. Good characters,a good read.

The first chapter is weird and disturbing and you’re not really sure how it is going to fit into the story – but you know it’s going to be creepy!

Then Elin’s story starts. She and her boyfriend Will are off to Switzerland to a fancy new hotel that used to be a TB sanatorium where Elin’s long time estranged brother Isaac and his fiancee Laure (who works at the hotel) are celebrating their engagement. It’s clear Elin has suffered a recent trauma as a police detective at work and is off on leave – but also has historic trauma from when hers and Isaac’s younger brother Sam died as a child.

I thought the descriptions of the swanky hotel were great – and I could really imagine it being quite creepy with displays of the old medical instruments as pieces of art.

When the weather turned and a storm set in, it felt quite reminiscent of Lucy Foley’s book The Hunting Party, where everyone is trapped in one place by the weather conditions and you know something awful is going to happen!

Now there are a lot of characters – and at times I found myself getting confused as to whom everyone was and how they were connected – but that could just me by small brain struggling to cope!

There are historic murders, current murders, people missing, a collection of not very likeable characters – and it twists and turns so much you’re not sure who you are rooting for and who is a baddie!

The pace of the book kept me wanting to read more – so I romped through it quite quickly. Whilst it was a little confusing with so many characters involved, overall I really enjoyed the book.

Thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for my advance review copy.

This book is absolutely spine tingling! I was drawn to the title, cover and premise and the content absolutely delivered. I was hooked from the start and couldn't put it down! What an amazing debut. Highly recommended.

I have to admit, I wondered if I'd end up in a sanatorium for real the rate this story was going! I found the pace really slow and almost gave up finishing it a few times. So glad I stayed the course as the best part of the story, in this case, really was saved for last.

The Sanatorium opens with Ellie reuniting with her estranged brother, Isaac, who is engaged to her equally estranged best childhood friend, Laure.

The plan is for Ellie, and her boyfriend Will, to stay with Isaac and Laure at the newly-opened hotel and former TB sanatorium aka The Sanatorium, but it's hidden past unveils secrets of former patients and present hotel guests following an avalanche which isolates the hotel from the outside world.

Will Ellie, a British police officer who is taking extended leave, be able to keep her wits about her when the dead bodies start building up? And will she be able to make amends with her brother?

Thank you to Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, and Netgalley for the e-ARC.

If, like me, you love suspense novels set in an isolated castle/island/community - or in this case, hotel - then the setting of this will be instantly attractive. The action takes place in the Swiss alps, in a luxurious hotel, recently converted from an historical sanatorium which specialised in TB. So far, so gothic.

Into this setting comes English police detective Elin, currently on extended leave, recovering from both a work-related trauma and the death of her mother. She and her boyfriend, Will are there to celebrate the engagement of her estranged brother, Isaac to her childhood friend, Laure.

In no time at all, they are nicely snowed in and sealed off from the outside world. Fantastically atmospheric and creepy enough to be contrived by Steven King. Then a body is found...

There is a lot to like about this book but there are other things which worked less well. The subplot regarding a younger brother was too obvious and didn’t draw me in. The denouement was a bit strange and there were too many red herrings and I could have lived without the epilogue. My biggest issue however is with the character of Elin. I want my police detective heroin to be Kick-Ass not somebody wandering around in a terribly amateurish way, accusing and blaming everybody with no evidence and never quite getting it right. Hopefully in the sequel she’ll be more ‘on it’.


With thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Very atmospheric, with a great setting and lots of creepy moments. I did get frustrated by the main character quite a lot, and I found some of the explanations / reveals a little unbelievable. There was something at the end that I desperately wanted to know more about - it felt like I had missed something, or that it was setting up another book. I loved the atmosphere, but was left a bit unsatisfied in some respects.

I struggled with this book. I wanted to like it, I loved the setting, who could not love the Swiss Alps. It is well written The writer captures the isolation and the pervading feeling of menace of the Sanatarium very well. Sadly the plot did not work well for me. I enjoy complex stories and I enjoy twists and turns but they have to be believable. It was well thought out but this for me was another book where more is less, we have a detective with lots of baggage and characters with just too many twists and turns.. It pushed my credibility a bit past its limit.

I was hooked right from the beginning. The author has researched well for this book and takes you on a thrilling ride in the Swiss mountains. Relationships, history and emotions are to the fore, You feel you are literally a fly on the wall throughout this book. A really riveting read kept me away from lots of tv.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for an early copy.


So, claustrophobic thrillers really have become a big thing, haven't they?

This one sounded like a whole load of fun: stuck in the Swiss mountains (my home country!), in an old sanatorium (yay for creepy settings!), with hella scary bad guys – picturing those masks, brrr...

And yet, something didn't work for me.

I'm gonna start with what I didn't like:

- This is a big pet peeve of mine, and I really hope it'll be proofread at the next step, before publishing, but publishers and authors, I'm begging you: if you're using foreign languages in your novels, have someone who's native read through it! The few sentences in French were absolutely terrible, and a great proof (if it was ever needed) that Google Translate is very limited. Please, please, lots of translators would be happy to help, and it would be less cringe.
- The characters just didn't click for me. They all felt a bit shallow, with backgrounds that weren't fully credible and even a bit forced – Elin's background with memory loss is so frequent in thrillers, I'd guessed it sometime around page 4.
- There were just too many twists. First it's one character who's guilty, then another one, then another one... and so on until I'd lost almost all interest in who was really the murderer. Same goes for the reasons behind the murders, too. I do think that a thriller is even more powerful when there's just the one brilliant twist; losing the reader through a maze of different twists just doesn't work for me.

What did work:
- The setting! I can confirm that Switzerland during snowstorms can be really creepy, and it was unsettling to picture what it'd be like to know you were stuck in there with a serial killer. Can you even imagine? Nowhere to go, it's freezing outside, and no one can help you. Creepy much!
- The historical background, because it's always interesting to know more about what happened in the past – even if there might have been some liberties taken, because it is a work of fiction, after all. This is actually why I like thrillers set in creepy places: they make for a really good historical background, and I love how the authors elaborate on that.

So, all in all, it's a good thriller in the veins of the claustrophobic, stuck-with-a-serial-killer-somewhere thrillers we see so many of nowadays, but not one that particularly stuck out to me. It was fun though to see a serial killer in Switzerland!

Elin Warner and her boyfriend Will take a trip to a luxury Swiss hotel, which was previously a TB sanatorium, to celebrate her estranged brother’s engagement. Elin is a police officer on extended leave suffering PTSD and panic attacks. This is a thriller with plenty of suspense and great descriptions. I enjoyed reading it with its twists and turns but I did find the final reveal a bit of an anticlimax. Unfortunately for me, it fell a bit flat with that.

I have some mixed feelings about this book!
I loved the premise, the constant tension and it was seriously atmospheric and set in a perfect mystery/thriller scenario.

My biggest problem was that I really didn’t like the main character and find it really difficult to engage because of it. She feels really vulnerable and although I could empathise I still struggle to like her. But for me, her boyfriend and her brother were quite despicable and toxic and it just made it difficult for me to love this novel.

Sarah Pearse does write in a really compelling way and I absolutely loved her descriptions and how I almost felt as if I was in the setting she described. I’ve enjoyed the fact that it had a good fair share of twists and enjoyed the mystery but it also didn’t left me completely gobsmacked - perhaps because I just couldn’t engage with the characters.

I did find it fast paced and even though the mystery of the crimes didn’t left me in awe, the whole journey until the end was overall really awesome.

Overall I still quite enjoyed it and would recommend it to fans of crime/mystery/thriller and am quite keen to see what other books are in store for us by Sarah Pearse

I would like to thank Netgalley, Random House UK, Transworld Publishers and Bantam Press for an advanced digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest and unbiased review

Arriving in the beautiful isolated setting of Le Sommet, an imposing minimalist hotel in the Swiss Alps, Elin feels a chill and not just from the impending storm, it's just a feeling that something is not right here.
We meet Elin, currently on sick leave from her job as a detective and her boyfriend Will as they arrive for an engagement party for her brother and his fiance Laure.
But when Laure mysteriously disappears and a body is found, it seems that the hotels past as a Sanatorium is causing problems in the present day. But there are also issues in Elins' past that need dealing with too.
I enjoyed piecing together the clues as the pace picked up throughout this book and the chilling descriptions of the stark interiors of the hotel certainly added to the eerie feel.

This book had me glued to the pages! It starts off slow in my opinion, but once I got to around 30% I was really intrigued, then by halfway I was hooked! My husband even had to ask me what was wrong as I gasped a few times!!

The book starts with a wierd and quite scary chapter, then the story changes and carries on with Elin and her boyfriend Will on their way up the mountain to the hotel Le Sommet, which used to be a Sanatorium. Creepy right. Well even creepier when Laure, the fiancé of Elins brother Isaac, goes missing. The Storm has set in, and most of the hotel guests have been evacuated when things start to develop. The staff and the remaining guests are scared, and frustrated at not knowing what exactly is happening, and with the police not being able to get to them due to the weather, it makes for bad news all round.

A creepy setting, and you get the feel of the isolation of the place with the description of not only the hotel, but the surrounding mountains, snow, and forests.

The story was quite really good towards the last half with some twists I didn’t expect, one that I did expect then retraced, then expected again, and one that had me wanting more. I’d definitely check out more of Sarahs work.

I wanted to love this book so much. The positives were how Pearse evoked the landscape, the glaciers, the snow fall, the eerie atmosphere. For me, that's about where the chill factor starts and finishes. I wish the depth of the characters were explored more. For example, the relationship between Laure and Elin would have been better understood if their past was delved into a little more. I didn't really like most of the characters either and some of the reasoning behind characters' actions lacked justification and depth.

Thank you, as always, to Netgalley for the advanced copy of this novel.