The Retreat

by Sarah Pearse

Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/Viking

Ginasbookreport Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

Genre: Crime

Read This If You Love: The Sanatorium

In this follow up novel to The Sanatorium, we are back with Detective Elin Warner as she picks up the pieces and gets back to work. Once again, Elin finds herself investigating a death in a secluded location. This time it is on a island enveloped by a stormy sea. Not just any island, this place has a long history as the scene of a murder of students on an outbound retreat. With the Reaper’s Rock formation hovering over the island, everyone is on edge as bodies start to pile up. 

From the beginning, I was excited about this book. It fits into my all-time favorite type of novel…mystery/crime with quick chapters, lots of movement, developed characters, and clues throughout. I liked the first book in the series well enough to read another Elin case and both books are locked room/isolated setting mysteries, which is a trope I enjoy. 

However, as the book went along, I found the novel to be too bogged down with Elin’s own back story instead of the murder mystery at hand. While I am all for a developed main character, I find getting to know a character through natural interactions with others to be much more interesting than a written narrative from the character’s own mind. (Plus, I’m not sure you could read The Retreat and understand Elin’s references to her own life without having read The Sanatorium.) The back and forth with Detective Steed was much more natural and didn’t detract from the main plot. If the side exposition of Elin’s back story was edited down, the book could have been 75 pages shorter with a tighter and more edge-of-your-seat mystery. (Maybe it’s just me, but what was the Twitter stuff about Elin? Purpose?) My last criticism is that I found her approach in one of the final scenes to be ludicrous. 

All that said, I did still like the book enough to give it 3.5 stars and I would recommend The Sanatorium to people who like an isolated setting mystery. If you end up loving that book, then give The Retreat a read.