This book was published on 18th February, 2021.
The setting of this book was the thing that really drew me in to this novel – a thriller set high in the Swiss Alps, in an old sanatorium turned into a luxury hotel. Throw in a storm and avalanches that cut off the resort from the outside world and you have the perfect recipe for a tense and terrifying murder mystery.
The book centres on Elin Warner, a police officer on extended leave, who arrives at the hotel for her brother’s engagement celebrations. She has many personal struggles in her past and is estranged from her brother, Isaac, so is already uncomfortable with the idea of a family reunion when his fiancée, Laure, goes missing. As Elin starts to investigate the disappearance, the hotel gets cut off from police support and Elin finds herself thrown into a much bigger mystery than she first anticipated…
This book is certainly very tense – there were several points where I think I stopped breathing as I waited to find out what happened! The pace of the novel is well managed and kept me reading as I was keen to discover the truth, and there were plenty of twists along the way.
Pearse handles the setting of the old sanatorium very well – there is something very unnerving about a place of past suffering being turned into a luxury hotel and this is conveyed well. Elin never feels comfortable in the building and this puts the reader constantly on edge as she is faced with stark minimalism in the hotel’s furnishings, uncompromising weather conditions and eerie reminders of the past.
The relationships between the characters are also presented well. There is a real tension between Elin and Isaac which is believable, although I personally didn’t really like the repeated references to their shared past – while explaining their poor relationship, I thought this detracted a bit from the main narrative.
I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes tense and chilling mysteries. It is engaging and lively and will definitely keep you reading until you know what happened and – more importantly – why!
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Header photo by Marsumilae on Unsplash