I really need to stop buying books based on Reese Witherspoon’s recommendation alone, because every time I do that, I end up disappointed. But you cannot blame Reese Witherspoon for how deceiving the title, the cover and all the blurbs on The Sanatorium are. There is nothing gothic or thrilling about The Sanatorium. I wish this novel had been set in a decrepit, old sanatorium and had been a spooky, paranormal mystery. Instead, The Sanatorium is an insipid modern murder mystery with a not very convincing detective.

English detective Elin Warner is on a leave of absence from work after she botched her last case and was almost drowned by the suspect. She was also taking care of her dying mother without any help from her estranged brother, Isaac, who did not even attend their mother’s funeral. The trauma that Elin has been dealing with has led her to having flashbacks of when her youngest brother, Sam, died when they were children, and Elin is convinced that Isaac may have killed Sam. So she is obviously not in a good headspace when she and her boyfriend accept an invitation from Isaac to celebrate his engagement at the Le Sommet resort in the Swiss Alps, as she intends to use this opportunity to confront Isaac about Sam’s death.

Le Sommet is a former sanatorium that has been completely renovated into a modern and minimalist spa resort, hence the lack of gothic setting. Yes, Le Sommet has a dark, grotesque history, which the reader eventually learns about, but I think Pearse could have done more with the setting to make it psychologically unnerving for the characters. Instead, Elin’s edginess and discomfort had more to do with her own issues rather than an unsettling setting.

Just after Elin and her boyfriend arrive at Le Sommet, a huge storm cuts off the resort from the rest of the world (of course), Isaac’s fiancé Laure, who was once Elin’s best friend when they were children, goes missing, and bodies start piling up. Elin reluctantly agrees to help investigate until the Swiss police can make it to the resort. Perhaps I should be kinder to Elin because she was dealing with some very serious personal issues, but I just do not find her to be a very good detective. She asked obvious questions, came to obvious conclusions, and put other people (such as her boyfriend) in reckless danger by allowing them to assist with her investigation. I got the impression that maybe Pearse did not do a lot of research into detective work and policing, and instead just decided to make Elin do things to suit the purposes of her plot.

I actually was not able to figure out who the murderer was before it was revealed, but, as much as I could understand their motivation for wanting to get revenge, the way they went about getting revenge seemed very extreme to me. That just goes to show the lack of character development in this novel; I could not understand how the murderer was capable of doing the things that they did.

The ending obviously sets The Sanatorium up for a sequel or most likely a series featuring Detective Elin Warner, but I just do not find her, or this novel in general, interesting enough to read anything else written by Sarah Pearse.