I absolutely loved Emma Haughton’s first fiction book for adults, ‘The Dark’, set in a research centre in Antarctica. This was the perfect claustrophobic locked-room mystery with the inhospitable surroundings meaning escape was impossible.
I gulped that book down in one – so I was thrilled that NetGalley granted me access to Haughton’s next book, ‘The Sanctuary’.
In this book, Zoey wakes in an unfamiliar environment – she doesn’t remember much about the night before, a night out in New York, aside from a few troubling flashbacks. Now she’s in the desert in The Sanctuary, a high-end establishment helping people to kick their various addictions and face their problems. Zoey doesn’t want to be there…but how can she escape when the centre is miles from anywhere and surrounded by the threats of the endless, empty desert? Instead, she begins to get to know the other residents and participate in some often-unorthodox treatments. But is the desert really more of a threat than the perils lurking within The Sanctuary’s walls?
There was a lot in this book that I enjoyed – especially the dynamics between the various characters, the luxurious-but-sinister setting and the slow unfolding of the mystery. I’ll admit that I couldn’t see the solution, even as I was nearing the end, so it kept me reading. I also found the pacing of the second half of the novel to be compelling – as the danger increased, so did my interest.
Although I did enjoy this book a lot, I was not so keen on some of the characters. Zoey herself was fairly unsympathetic at times – especially in her desire to escape The Sanctuary, this amazing, luxurious place that she was dropped into and which she would never usually be able to afford. I found her bids to run away a bit distracting from the more engaging narrative thread – the mysterious people and events at The Sanctuary.
The start of the novel was quite slow because there were a lot of characters to introduce but, once it got going, I was hooked. Despite my frustrations at Zoey, I did genuinely get involved in the characters and relationships within the book.
I’d recommend this to fans of Ruth Ware, Lucy Foley and Sarah Pearse – if you like a slow burning, closed-circle mystery, this is for you. It might take a bit of concentration at the start to get the characters straight, but the pay-off is worth it in the end.
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Header photo by Steven Ungermann on Unsplash
