The Sanatorium

The last (physical) book that I finished in 2023 was The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse. I’ve had this on my shelf for a couple of years, and as winter began a few weeks ago, I was in the mood for some snowy thrillers and horrors. Set in the Swiss Alps, this one was a gripping and unsettling escape.

Summary

Elin Warner and her boyfriend Will have just arrived at a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps, the recently opened Le Sommet. Elin’s brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, are celebrating their engagement. Though Elin and Isaac aren’t close, especially since their mother passed away, she’s determined to put their differences aside and honor the happy couple. But Elin, currently on long-term leave from her detective job back in the UK, is nervous as soon as she arrives at the isolated hotel. And when a snowstorm strands everyone there, and Laure goes missing, it seems that they’re all in danger. Elin may be the only person who can solve this case before worse tragedy strikes.

Review

Some years ago, I enjoyed a movie called A Cure for Wellness, and when I first heard about The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse, I was intrigued to see how many similar themes it would present. (Spoiler: Only some, and it all unfolds quite differently!) The thriller is set at a newly opened hotel called Le Sommet, nestled high in the Swiss Alps, with an emphasis on minimalist design and rejuvenation for its patrons. Elin and her boyfriend Will are there for her brother Isaac’s engagement celebration with his new fiancée, Laure. But it isn’t long before things start to feel unsettling… and then people start disappearing and turning up dead.

Part of The Sanatorium looks at Elin’s fraught relationship with Isaac. The two siblings have never been close, and ever since their other brother, Sam, died in childhood, Elin has had a certain mistrust of Isaac. She can’t remember everything that happened, but she’s not able to let Isaac in all the way, and his manipulative personality doesn’t encourage much closeness, anyway. They’ve only grown further apart since their mother died, with only Elin around in her final months.

Another major element in this book revolves around the people who opened Le Sommet. The architect mysteriously died while working on the renovations a few years earlier, but his best friend and business partner, Lucas, carried the project to completion. Le Sommet was once a hospital to treat patients with tuberculosis, and that history is present in its new design, but it’s now a minimalist hotel for the wealthy. Its past casts an eerie shadow over the hotel, at least from Elin’s perspective.

The Sanatorium is divided into nearly 100 short chapters, each offering a quick glimpse of how things are progressing. People start going missing, and when Laure herself disappears, Elin is determined to find her. But the more she learns, the more concerning it all becomes. Then there’s a storm and they’re all snowed in, and more people disappear, and soon it’s obvious that there’s a murderer in their midst. But although Elin is a professional detective, she’s been scarred by her last case and is lacking confidence in herself. It gets increasingly intense as the days pass, and even the relationships she thought she could trust don’t seem so reliable anymore.

Final Thoughts

With its fast pace, numerous clues and victims, isolated setting, and dark connection to history, The Sanatorium is a chilling and engaging thriller. Sometimes I found Elin to be a bit frustrating, but the story was captivating.

While I was reading The Sanatorium, I had no idea that it’s actually the first in a series! Detective Elin Warner has more mysteries to solve in The Retreat and, later this year, The Wilds. I’m adding those to my TBR now, so stay tuned for my reviews of them.

Get the Book

You can buy The Sanatorium here – it’s available as a hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse
Series	Detective Elin Warner (#1)
Audience	Adult
Genre	Psychological Thriller
Setting	Switzerland
Number of Pages	416
Format I Read	Hardcover
Original Publication Date	February 2, 2021
Publisher	Penguin Books

Official Summary

REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK | An instant New York Times bestseller!

A page-turning thriller from the author of The Retreat.

“An eerie, atmospheric novel that had me completely on the edge of my seat.” —Reese Witherspoon

“This spine-tingling, atmospheric thriller has it all… and twists you’ll never see coming.” —Richard Osman, New York Times bestselling author of The Thursday Murder Club

You won’t want to leave. . . until you can’t.

Half-hidden by forest and overshadowed by threatening peaks, Le Sommet has always been a sinister place. Long plagued by troubling rumors, the former abandoned sanatorium has since been renovated into a five-star minimalist hotel.

An imposing, isolated getaway spot high up in the Swiss Alps is the last place Elin Warner wants to be. But Elin’s taken time off from her job as a detective, so when her estranged brother, Isaac, and his fiancée, Laure, invite her to celebrate their engagement at the hotel, Elin really has no reason not to accept.

Arriving in the midst of a threatening storm, Elin immediately feels on edge–there’s something about the hotel that makes her nervous. And when they wake the following morning to discover Laure is missing, Elin must trust her instincts if they hope to find her. With the storm closing off all access to the hotel, the longer Laure stays missing, the more the remaining guests start to panic.

Elin is under pressure to find Laure, but no one has realized yet that another woman has gone missing. And she’s the only one who could have warned them just how much danger they are all in. . .