Special Guest: Book Review: Asylum by Madaeleine Roux

Title: Asylum
Author: Madeleine Roux
Publishing Company: HarperCollins
Genre: YA—Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 311
Released: August 20th 2013

Once you get in, there’s no getting out….

For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, a summer program for gifted students is more than a gift—it’s a lifeline. No one at his high school gets his weird academic fixations, but at the New Hampshire College Prep program, such quirks are practically required.

When Dan arrives, he finds that the usual summer housing is closed, forcing students to stay in the crumbling Brookline dorm—formerly a psychiatric hospital. As Dan and his new friends Abby and Jordan start exploring Brookline’s twisty halls and hidden basement, they uncover disturbing secrets about what really went on here…secrets that link the teens to the asylum’s dark past. Because it turns out Brookline was no ordinary psych ward. And there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.

With haunting found photographs of real abandoned asylums throughout, Asylum is a mind-bending reading experience that blurs the lines between past and present, friendship and obsession, genius and insanity.

I would like to share my thanks to the girls at Epic Reads, Margaret and Aubry. Thank you for giving me the chance to win this book and for being such an awesome team as our first and foremost book nerds!

I think everyone knows just how much hype started about this book. We heard a lot about it a few weeks before the release date and I would pretty much see ads everywhere on the net. I knew I wanted to read this book because not only did the creepy and eerie cover draw me in, but also hearing about how there were real life photos inside and throughout the chapters made me anticipate the best. By the way, some of those photos gave me the chills, just letting you all know.

Asylum by Madeleine Roux starts with sixteen-year-old Daniel—Dan for short—explaining how he’s never been very outgoing at his high school because all the other kids don’t share his fascination for studying. From there on he pretty much explains how his smarts got him into a program at a New Hampshire College and that the usual dormitories would be closed that summer, so all of the kids in that program would have to spend their summer at another dormitory that was once a psychiatric ward called Brookline.

I didn’t know what to expect before diving myself into the world of Asylum and I can admit that I went in with a whole lot of expectations. One of them being that I would read on until midnight and expect to have nightmares once I went to sleep about the words inside that book. The old photographs were probably what kept me reading. I thought they were really interesting (besides creepy) and the ongoing mystery kept me on my toes. I did figure out who was behind all the bad stuff that was happening before the final chapters revealed the culprit. I can admit it wasn’t such a big surprise once that person was revealed.

I would say that the feeling I had for Dan, Abby, and Jordan was a love-hate relationship. If the characters were being good I liked them and if they did something that made me want to scream in frustration I instantly hated them. It was an ongoing feeling, even until the end and I expect other readers felt the same way. There was a lot more conversation going on than trying to figure out the big mystery and I pretty much had to remind myself that I had to finish this book.

Asylum by Madeleine Roux was a good read. I think it was heading in the right direction, but it needed a push and bigger plot in it to make it rock your socks off. This was an easy read and anyone who likes solving mysteries quickly might enjoy the plot in this book. I did enjoy this story, but I just needed a little more to hit the mark. Besides that, I would say everyone can make up their own minds about this story and see for yourselves what the big mystery is all about.

I liked it a lot. Would recommend.

Review written by Hillary

Special Guest: Book Reviewer:

Hillary

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Hillary currently lives in Fontana, California and sometimes wishes she lived in a rainier place. When out of her world of fiction and music, college homework becomes part of her focus and so does worrying about exams. She still manages to find plenty of time to read YA books and hopes to have a room full of books like some authors are fortunate to have. Hillary is currently working toward earning a degree in English, but in the meantime she is content to help a very kind book blogger known as Beckie from Bittersweet Enchantment. Hillary hopes to become a well-known author one day, but currently writes small stories whenever she has time.

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