As a person with a chronic illness, this story is my worst nightmare. Poor and cut off from most of her friends due to the illness that is slowly killing her, she agrees to enter a study that might cure her once and for all. This story preys upon the worst fears of the chronically ill--the hope of being 100% well someday. The story builds, knowing that a cure is not likely to happen to the heroine, but still hoping. Only to find a terrible secret lurking behind the hospital doors.

This slow burn of a story of a patient's experimental medical trial, or is it? I was never sure what was what was going on. A great read!

#NetGalley

Honestly, this book had me second guessing everything. I felt like I was the one being paranoid. I couldn't tell what was real and what wasn't. A fantastic book that hooked me from the beginning and made me sad when it was over! Claustrophobic. atmospheric, and gripping from beginning to end! 5 stars!!

Meg has a rare auto immune condition and agrees to an inpatient hospital trial. She doesn't have any close friends or work colleagues and she doesn't tell her family about her hospital stay. So no one knows where she will be for several months. She is put into isolation in the trial and things start getting weird. Are they really getting weird? Or is Meg just hallucinating from her treatment? This was a page turner. Thank you to NetGalley for an advance copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. Margaret has a medical condition that has made her life a living and there is no cure for it. So when she is offered a spot in a clinical trial for experimental drugs, and she gets paid for this spot, she decides to go ahead with it. She must live at the hospital as a full time patient during the process. As treatments begin she starts to wander the halls of Graceview Hospital and meets some of the other patients. Then one day one of the patients is gone, then one of the nurses is gone and even though she was told the nurse no longer works there then why did Margaret stumble across here in one of the rooms. Is this all her hallucinating from the drugs or is it real.......Welcome to Graceview Hospital, you can enter but you can never leave....oh wait that's Hotel California....Enjoy!!!

That was not nice of Caitlin Starling… I was very engaged in the welfare and care of the main character and the mysterious apparition that was introduced! But then I turned the page, and out of nowhere, the book ended! How can you write such a unique and intriguing story but just say “The End” and never tell us what happened? Is there a Book 2 coming and I just missed that notification? 2 Stars ⭐️⭐️!

I don’t know how to articulate my feelings about this book. I don’t think I’ve ever read a story that felt quite so suffocating and anxiety-inducing.

The whole thing felt like some weird, hallucinogenic nightmare fuel. As someone who deals with chronic illness and an autoimmune disease, reading The Graceview Patient comes with its own unique level of terror. If you’ve experienced any sort of medical trauma or gaslighting from medical professionals, you know that particular flavor of stress and anxiety.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one. I’m not sure that I liked the main character all that well, but I still desperately wanted her to persevere. This is the second book from Caitlin Starling that I’ve read, and I’m very much looking forward to reading her other novels!

Caitlin Starling’s The Graceview Patient is a harrowing, beautifully constructed piece of hospital gothic that turns the sterile familiarity of long-term care into something deeply uncanny. Told from the perspective of Meg, a woman undergoing an experimental treatment for a rare autoimmune disorder, the novel explores what happens when bodily autonomy and trust in reality start to erode—slowly, then all at once.

This is horror grounded in the real: isolation, touch deprivation, institutional gaslighting, and the quiet, procedural nature of medical trauma. Starling captures the sensory strangeness of hospital life with remarkable precision. Her depiction of a long-term stay doesn’t sensationalize the setting; it understands it. Meg’s increasing paranoia, paired with her drug-altered perspective, pulls the reader into the same claustrophobic fog. You start to question everything right alongside her.

The scenes with Meg’s nurse, Isobel, are especially haunting—intimate, unsettling, and evolving into being disorientingly kind. And the ending? It offers no easy resolution. Meg’s mind is so fractured by the final pages that we, like her, are left unsure what was real. It feels almost like cosmic horror: the terror of losing control not to a monster, but to a system too big to comprehend.

As someone who has spent time in similar hospital rooms, watching my father die (physically and mentally) of brain cancer, this novel felt viscerally accurate in ways that were both validating and difficult. It’s a story that sees the horror of healthcare not as blood and gore, but as confusion, helplessness, and being slowly unmade.

Starling doesn’t just write horror—she writes why it haunts us.

A chilling, twisted story of illness and medical experimentation, THE GRACEVIEW PATIENT is another masterpiece from the ever-amazing Caitlin Starling.

The premise of the book intrigued me, but ultimately, it just wasn't my cup of tea. The beginning started off okay with Meg joining a strict medical study that requires complete physical isolation from the outside world except for a laptop and cell phone. The answers she receives from the medical staff are vague, and she starts doubting her own sanity. The ending was just a bunch of fever dreams (or real occurrences....I don't know) and the ending didn't provide much closure.

Thanks St. Martin’s press and NetGalley for this arc! I didn’t know what to expect as I went into this book blind. It did not disappoint! Great plot and great characters!

Meg is admitted to Graceview to trial a new treatment for her rare disease. As Meg starts treatment, one nurse cautions that she should back out before its too late. Before she knows it, there is pressure to continue the horrendous treatment. Soon she meets Victoria, a mysterious patient, who foreshadows Meg's fate.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC if this novel.

“The Graceview Patient” took me quite a while to get through-roughly a week, when books of this length normally take me about 2 days. I’m not sure why.

I did find the initial chapters well-written and I was drawn in immediately. The initial chapters of the story give us a bit of background on Meg, what her life was like prior to the novel’s events, and the barest outlines of the illness she has and the trial protocol intended to treat it. The story moves quickly, but after the halfway point Meg becomes more and more unreliable as a narrator and every incident that occurs could potentially be a hallucination.

The ending…left me a bit cold. I’m not sure I “got” it and what was supposed to have been happening, or what will happen to Meg from here on out. I felt like it was left quite vague and, while I didn’t want it spoon-fed to me, I would have liked a BIT more detail.

All in all, this was a solid 3 star read-enjoyed the ride, was mildly irritated by the ending, and will probably never be moved to re-read it, but it was worth the time spent!

You are taken on a roller coaster ride of a psychological thriller with this book. I was never sure what I could or could not believe as it was reading it and it kept me turning pages late into the night! This will be a good one to read during spooky season!

Meg agrees to participate in a trial treatment for an illness that is keeping her apart from everyone. She is lonely and afraid, willing to do anything to get better. What she soon comes to realize is her treatments are making her sicker. She is told she has contracted tuberculosis. Not only has she been given a grim diagnosis, but those in the trials with her are dying.

I recommend this to those interested in medical suspense, or mystery thrillers in general! Great, suspenseful five-star book!

I was given the opportunity to read this book by NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

Starling's writing creates a tense, oppressive atmosphere that pulls readers into Margaret’s terrifying journey. The novel expertly explores themes of trust, vulnerability, and the cost of scientific experimentation. As Margaret’s physical decline mirrors her emotional unraveling, the story evolves from a medical struggle to a haunting tale of survival.

With gripping pacing and a sinister setting, The Graceview Patient is a thought-provoking and unsettling read that will resonate with fans of dark thrillers and body horror.

An excellent read for any and all readers! Author comes at you with both barrels and knocks you out of your shoes! Great job fleshing out all the characters. I give this book FIVE stars! Definitely recommend!

I received an invitation from St. Martin's Press to read and review a digital ARC through Netgalley. The synopsis sounded intriguing and like it would be a mix of horror, thriller, and suspense taking place in a hospital. Based on the cover alone, this is not a book I would have picked up in a store to even look at, but the synopsis was promising. The book started pretty good, but I expected a little more horror aspect from it. The book wasn't bad, but it wasn't something I was rushing home to read. There were some really good parts and parts that made me what to keep reading, but some of the book just didn't keep me interested. I wanted a little more closure in the ending also.

If you are scared of hospitals and doctors, this book is not for you. However, if you find such things absolutely fascinating, you should definitely read this book. Caitlin Starling is a wizard with words and will take you deep into the bowels of a hospital, a terrified patient, and those who are supposed to be taking care of her. I can't even begin to express how horrifying but absolutely incredible this book was.

First, thank you to #NetGalley for the digital ARC.
This book was a RIDE. This is medical horror to the nth degree. Really well-drawn characters, perfect pacing, solid science in the story. Creepy as heck. I won't be able to "unsee" a LOT of these scenes for a long, long time. Yikes!