The first thing that immediately drew me to this book was the amazing cover, creepy victorian mansion set on a cliffside, yes please! Then I read the synopsis and was even more intrigued.

While it did have some good twists and turns I did find a lot of the story lacking for me. I'm always for an unreliable main character, they're my favorite kinds and Meg is the one that really saved the story for me. I questioned myself so many times while reading this whether she was crazy and hallucinating everything or if it all was actually happening. I loved the short chapters (as I always appreciate, especially in a thriller) and I also think that helped me find more to enjoy in this book.

The ending is what really got me though holy cow. It had plenty of twists and turns throughout but man that ending really blew me away with how crazy it was. This is one thriller that I can definitively say I did not see the ending coming. The only reason my rating is a high 3 is only because of the slow parts that dragged a little for me and took me out the story. Overall though this was a pretty solid thriller especially a rehab thriller which I don't believe I've ever read before.

Meg works undercover at a casino, busting loan sharks and never folding. Her sister Haley, a famous actress, finds herself on a different path leading her to a fancy rehab clinic. When Meg hears her sister has died by suicide within the clinic’s walls, she doesn’t believe it, so she goes undercover as a patient to get some answers.

THE CLINIC by Cate Quinn is a quick-paced, atmospheric, experimental thriller.

This is my first read by Quinn and I had such a fun time with it! The short chapters and alternating POVs had me cruising through and the frequent cliffhangers made it hard to put down.

I loved getting to know the characters and the setting of a fancy, exclusive, remote rehab facility was fun as well!

Definitely one I’d recommend and might have me dabbling in some of Quinn’s backlist 👀

Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Publication Date: January 23

This was a unique thriller that kept me guessing and surprised me with the ending.

Plot -
Meg quasi-undercover checks herself into a luxury rehab facility to investigate the death of her sister. The clinic says it was an overdose, but Meg doesn't buy it. While there, someone is messing with her, and leaving her notes purporting to be from her sister. The tension ramps up as Meg gets closer to the truth.

Thoughts -
First off, the book is a little longer than it needs to be and starts off a bit slow. However, once it got going, I found myself really enjoying the ride. Despite checking herself in under false pretenses, Meg actually was suffering from addiction issues, and we were left to watch her learn that she needed to help herself before she could help anyone else. Personally, I enjoyed the backstory on what black market science the clinic was working on behind the scenes. It really amped up the creepy factor.
The ending was a surprise to me, and I won't say more about it due to spoilers, but it wasn't where I expected the book to be going, despite the fact that in hindsight, there were obvious signs.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes a good, tense thriller.

First of all, love the cover. It’s intriguing and mysterious and made me excited to find out what the story would be about. Meg works for a casino, battling addictions of her own when her sister, famous singer Haley, dies inside a remote luxury rehab center. This prompts Meg to enter the clinic as a patient to find out the truth about her sister’s death.

I enjoyed this whodunit thriller! I love a flawed main character, and though Meg was exasparating at times, I also rooted for her to get her act together so she can solve the case. The author is really skilled in making you guess who the killer is. I kept changing my guesses per chapter who the villain is. And though I question the motivations of the killer in the end, what I liked about this book is the insider’s view of how luxury rehab centers work, and how crippling addiction is.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'm giving this book a 2 ⭐ & tbh I feel that's stretching it. This book has soooo much too it but everything just comes together as a big unbelievable mess .
The setting seemed peaceful & maybe could have been used more in the books like in therapy ? Something to take away from the ridiculousness .

Usually I would have enjoyed a book like this but unfortunately the whole book just never came together for me.

#Arc #honestreview #TheClinic 🥶

To be honest, the cover is what drew me to this book. That building, wow. Suffice to say, the setting was the strongest part of the story for me. I think the environment could have been used a bit more on the externals of the facility but that's just me. The two main characters were strong in conviction but I found one of them to be weak to the point of boredom. I loved the twists and turns around all the creepy corners. The story could have been shorter and I think all that was in there, didn't need to be.

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes a creepy setting and one strong female lead. The twists are well thought out too.

The Clinic by Cate Quinn was a mediocre read for me. Meg is a casino worker whose famous sister has supposedly died by suicide in rehab. Meg doesn’t believe her sister would have committed suicide so she gets herself admitted into the same rehab facility to investigate on her own. Things inside the facility are complicated, with questionable treatment methods, nurses with criminal backgrounds, and other celebrities who are entirely unlikeable. The crazy amount of plot holes is impossible to overlook in this book. I couldn’t set aside reality enough to find entertainment in this story. The single character that I actually thought was decent had a personality switch in the end and I couldn’t even like them. Personally, I don’t understand why other people have rated this highly. I think this is pushing it to be given 2/5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for allowing me access to an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Publication date January 23rd, 2024. This review will be found on Instagram and Goodreads indefinitely.
Instagram book reviews @CandaceOnline

Reading challenge - 2023 Booklist Queen: Winter Read... the cover looked wintry, there was frozen fog... but it mentioned fall. I read it in winter. I'm counting it.

Thanks to #NetGalley for the ARC ebook.

Meg, a casino 'cop,' receives a voicemail from her estranged singer sister, Haley, who is in rehab. Coincidentally, Meg is dealing with some addiction issues of her own. Reports of Haley's death send Meg into a spiral that ends with her infiltrating the rehab facility, The Clinic, to prove that Haley did not commit suicide. Meg discovers more than she bargained for about her sister, about The Clinic, and about herself.

There were some good parts to this - I enjoyed the dynamics of the different patients in the rehab facility. But, as someone who has knowledge/experience/education in the psychology and medical fields, there were inconsistencies and things that didn't make sense/add up. As an ARC copy, there were also a lot of spelling/grammar errors that I had a hard time overlooking. The author is British, but the characters are American, and there were moments of British jargon that I'm sure many Americans would not use/know/understand in everyday language.

It was "okay." 3/5 stars.

This book is as ominous as the cover would lead you to believe. The Clinic is a high end facility where rich people go for rehab. It's also the place where Meg's famous sister, Haley Banks, was murdered. Meg goes "undercover" as a patient to find out what really happened to her sister.

The book alternates between Meg's and Cara's, the clinic manager, points of view. The Clinic seems hippie dippie with it's cryotherapy, anger and sound rooms and the director looks like he'd be right at home at Woodstock.

While I had an inkling about the ending, the journey to get there was awesome. I kept the pages turning and read the book in nearly one sitting. The author mentions this book is written from her own experience with rehab (sans murder of course... or at least I hope!) with some license for creativity.

This is a great book and I'd be curious to read some of her others.

My thanks to Sourcebook Landmark Publishing and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

If you are looking for a fast paced book to suck you in and keep you on your toes, then look no further than The Clinic.

Set in a remote luxury rehab facility, Meg checks herself in to investigate the mysterious death of her sister labeled a suicide. Meg has her own demons and is an addict herself so she enters the facility under the guise of needing help but takes to prevent it until a series of small inconsistencies start to catch her attention and the downhill spiral takes place. Cara, the manager of the facility thinks everything is on the up and up with the facility’s groundbreaking research until a patient’s death gives her the courage to look at this more closely.

If you are a fan of locked room style mystery thrillers then add The Clinic to your tbr.



Thank you @bookmarked and @netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

I was excited to read this book after seeing some positive reviews on other platforms, but it was a total no-go for me. Unrelatable characters, unlikeable characters, and a completely unbelievable plot. Good concept, very poor execution. The more I read, the more frustrated I became. F bombs a plenty, a mystery that does not appear as often as it should, focus on the victim's sister (who is a disaster,) and POVs that are bland and campy. The entire thing read like a very bad straight to video movie. A real disappointment.

The Clinic by Cate Quinn is a solid psychological thriller that felt somewhat familiar. I feel like I’ve read another book or watched a movie with a similar plot line, but that doesn’t bother me because it’s a good storyline. Meg works at a casino, catching cheaters. Her sister is a famous actress who supposedly has died at a rehab clinic. Meg isn’t sure she believes the story, after all she’s the one with addiction issues. Was her death an accident, murder, suicide? She’s determined to uncover the truth. But going undercover might be more than she can handle as she is forced to deal with her own addictions. This is a tight, quick moving, unsettling psychological thriller. I’d like to thank Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review an eARC of The Clinic.

This was a story that had great insight into the world of addiction and ones affected by it. I found the atmosphere to be quite enjoyable and had some nice suspense and twists. I would definitely recommend it to someone who would enjoy those topics.

Thank you NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS Landmark for a complimentary copy of this novel! Meg and Haley are sisters and both experienced trauma and difficulties growing up. Now, Haley is a well-known actress and Meg helps catch cheaters in casinos. The problem is, Meg relies on oxy too much. Meg’s sister, Haley, also had addictions, so she has checked herself into a secluded, high-end rehab facility in the Northwest US. Suddenly, news reports of Haley’s suicide are popping up, but Meg isn’t convinced Haley died of suicide, especially from the states cause of heroin injection. It’s just not something Haley would do.

So Meg checks into the same rehab facility to discover the truth. But the truth isn’t so simple Meg discovers. The owner behind The Clinic is a shady, guru-like character. The rest of the staff and fellow patients all seem to also have secrets as well. As Meg struggles with her own demons and addictions, she fights to find out the truth of Haley’s death and who had motive to kill her.

This novel had so much going on. Definitely numerous surprises along the way and the truth will blow your mind!!! Definitely recommend!!!

I love thrillers with isolated settings, especially creepy ones like the rehab center in this book! Sometimes POV shifts in thrillers can be a little annoying because there’s one that is much more interesting than the other, but I actually really enjoyed both POVs here. The twists felt a little far-fetched and I wanted a little more explanation

I lived this book! I devoured it in two days, it is told from two pints of view which added to the intensity. I didn’t know who to trust!
Great ending.
It really showed you that trauma as a child can really affect you as an adult.
Many thanks to the author and NetGalley for a complimentary copy of this book. My opinions are my own.

Meg has just found out that her sister Haley is dead. The famous singer has apparently committed suicide at the rehab facility she had recently checked in to. Meg knows her sister had drug and alcohol problems, so does she, but she knows that Haley would never kill herself. To find out what really happened to her sister, Meg checks herself into rehab. There are six other patients, one of them killed her sister, will she be next?

This was a pretty decent thriller, full of twist and turns. We have dual POVs; Meg and Cara, the manager of the clinic. The chapters are very short, which I love, and made the book super easy to fly through. I read it in one day, I had to know what was happening!

Meg is a super unreliable narrator, as she is going in and out of withdraw. Are her hallucinations real? Is someone really trying to kill her, or is it all in her head? Cara's chapters are basically showing us all the behind the scenes of what is going on at the clinic. Through her, we get to see what the local police think of Haley's death, and what experimental therapy the owner of the Clinic, Dr. Lutz is performing.

I really had a good time reading this one, but the ending kinda lost it for me a bit. It was exciting getting to the climax of the ending, but then the epilogue had another twist that you don't see coming, and is hard to believe. <spoiler> I mean....how many times can one person die? </spoiler>

Overall, it was a fun, fast paced read! I hope others enjoy it just as much as I did.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Sourcebook Landmark and NetGalley for an advanced ebook copy in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4. This book was a wild ride. I really enjoyed the inside view of the rehab clinic where the majority of the story takes place, and I never did figure out the murder mystery. This was twisty, gritty, and fun to read.

Meg of working a late night at the casino when she hears her celebrity sister, Haley had died in rehab. Something makes her wonder about Haley’s death, so she decides to go to rehab to find out what happened. Only, Meg discovers that she has to break her own traumas to get to the bottom of her sister’s death.

Meg is used to living life undercover, working as she does catching crooks for a Los Angeles casino. Almost no one there even knows that she’s basically Hollywood royalty, the younger daughter of a famous actress as well as the younger sister of platinum-selling singing star Haley Banks. It helps that Meg is a social chameleon, a skill learned while surviving her nightmare childhood. While Meg wants little to do with her narcissist mother most days, her relationship with her sister is more tempestuous, as the two seem unable to break out of a cycle of fighting and staying estranged for weeks or months before finally reconciling.

They’re in one of these periods of estrangement when Meg hears, via Haley’s insistent texts, that Haley is back in rehab. The last thing Meg wants to do is talk about therapy, so she puts off responding. This is a choice she’ll regret when she inadvertently catches a news story informing her that her big sister is dead, the apparent victim of a suicidal drug overdose while staying at a fancy clinic in the Pacific Northwest.

Meg might be in denial about a lot of things, but she knows one fact with absolute certainty: Haley would never kill herself. With the help of her co-worker Harry, she goes undercover at the clinic, posing as a casino employee who wants to get clean. Of course, Meg has no intention of giving up the alcohol or painkillers that help her get through her days, and soon finds herself stymied by both the treatment program and the lack of solid leads.

Gently, Harry suggests that maybe trying to get clean and face her demons will actually help in her investigation. Being vulnerable towards her fellow patients, most of whom were present when Haley died, would encourage them to confide in her in return. Meg has to admit:

QUOTE
“That’s what my therapist keeps saying. Bond with the group. He wants me to read out this big honest statement saying all the messed-up stuff I’ve done.”

“So do it.”


“I don’t know if I can. If I do the honesty statement, the next step is digging up childhood trauma. I’m not ready for that, Harry.”

“Haley was remembering childhood stuff in rehab, right?”

“Right.”

“So maybe you and Haley’s past [...] is the key to what the fuck is going on.”

“What are you talking about, Harry?”

“You’re not going to like this, Meg. But to solve your sister’s murder, you might need to solve yourself.”
END QUOTE

The more Meg investigates, the more she has to admit that Harry might actually be right. But as she begins to voluntarily allow the clinic to use its methods on her, orthodox or otherwise, the more alarmed she grows by what she discovers. Given the timing and accessibility required to have harmed her sister, Meg knows that one of her fellow patients must have been Haley’s killer. The more secrets she uncovers about the clinic itself, however, the more she begins to worry that someone else might have malevolent intentions towards them all.

Meg isn’t the only one at the clinic with secrets or concerns. The live-in manager, Cara, is rigid and loyal to her employer, the mysterious Dr Lutz. While Cara wants to follow his instructions to the letter, the interest of the local police causes her allegiance to waver, especially in the face of the cheerful inquisitiveness of the disarming Officer Meyers, who’s clearly done her research when she brings up Cara’s last job:

QUOTE
[“]They couldn’t fire you. You refused to leave. So they shuffled you into a deadbeat hotel and hoped you’d quit of your own accord.”

“Thanks for the summary.” I give her my best icy smile. “Where I come from, people keep their internet stalking to themselves.”

“Oh, I come from a big family of oversharers,” Meyers says happily. “I also saw that you turned the hotel around,” she beams, oblivious to my displeasure. “Made friends with the hobos. Started turning a profit. Good for you.[“]
END QUOTE

Cara’s efficiency and determination are only two of the reasons she was brought in to run the clinic. But will these exemplary qualities aid or hamper Meg’s quest to uncover the truth about what happened to her sister?

This thriller holds some wild surprises, as Meg finally processes her suppressed memories of the past and gets to the bottom of not only what the clinic is doing, but what really happened to Haley. The depictions of addiction withdrawal and the way the famous patients deal with their traumas are all presented viscerally: it’s hard not to root for all of them, even knowing the terrible things they’ve done and that one of them is definitely a murderer. Cate Quinn draws from her own experiences, and it shows in the empathy and care she uses in writing this fascinating page-turner, that dives deep into family trauma and emotional repression and the ways people learn to cope with their pasts in order to survive.

When her famous sister dies in rehab, Meg goes undercover to find out who killed her. Trapped in an exclusive and expensive clinic, Meg must come to terms with her past while also being surrounded by people she doesn’t know and cannot trust. As Cara, the manager of The Clinic, simultaneously learns the truth about what goes on there, she realizes that she has played a role in mysterious and sinister happenings.

This is my first book by Cate Quinn, and I had a really fun time with it. Isolated settings are always a hit or miss for me, but I really enjoyed The Clinic and the descriptions of it. Meg was not a likable character - but I’m okay with that in thrillers - and by the end of the book, understanding her and her past helped me. I did like Cara, however, and had a fun time rotating back and forth between their POVs as they focused on different aspects of the clinic. I would have loved some more concrete information about Meg and her sister’s past - even with the reveal at the end, I felt that things were a little blurred - but other than that, I did have a really fun time with this book and couldn’t put it down.

CW for murder, addictions, abuse, alcoholism, violence, gambling, injections, fraud.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the ARC of The Clinic by Cate Quinn.