The Sanatorium by Sarah Pearse was a Reese’s Book Club pick and a VERY controversial book among my spoiler discussion posts. The Retreat is the sequel, another mystery starring Detective Elin Warner. What did I think? Check out my Review of The Retreat!
The Retreat by Sarah Pearse
Published on July 19, 2022 by Pamela Dorman Books
What Other Books Has Sarah Pearse Written?
The Retreat is book two in the Elin Warner police procedural series.
Elin is a British DS, or detective sergeant. The ranks, in case you were wondering, are DC (detective constable), DS, DI (detective inspector) and DCI (detective chief inspector). So Elin isn’t a rank and file officer, but she’s not a supervisor either.
Book one of the series was The Sanatorium, a book that was very controversial among my fellow readers. In my Spoiler Discussion for The Sanatorium, a lot of readers found Elin VERY irritating and the mystery ultimately unsatisfying. I didn’t mind Elin but agreed that the ending didn’t really work for me.
If you read The Sanatorium (or didn’t) and need a complete plot summary, you can find that in the Spoiler Discussion of the Sanatorium.
Review of The Retreat
- In the Sanatorium, Elin was visiting her brother and his fiancé at Le Sommet, a mountain resort. A former sanatorium, Le Sommet had a dark history.
- Multiple bodies are discovered and then Elin got trapped without any help by a storm and had to solve all the murders herself.
- At the same time, she was creepily stalked by someone who might have been a) a murderer she investigated or b) her own brother or c) someone else.
- The setting was cool, and the mystery was good, but things fell apart a little at the end.
A full recap can be found in my Spoiler Discussion for the Sanatorium.
In The Retreat:
- Elin is summoned to investigate a murder at Lumen, a resort designed by her partner, Will. A former school, Lumen had a dark history.
- Multiple bodies are discovered and then Elin got trapped without any help by a storm and had to solve all the murders herself.
- At the same time, she is creepily trolled on Twitter by someone who might be a) a murderer she investigated or b) her own boyfriend or c) someone else.
- The setting, an island off the Dover coast, was cool and the mystery was good, but things fell apart at the end.
Yes, I am here to tell you that to me, The Retreat felt pretty similar to the first book.
This is not always a bad thing, because a series SHOULD give a reader what they expect.
But another wellness resort.
And yes, another wellness resort that the partner of a family member works at. (In The Sanatorium, the fiancé of Elin’s brother works there. In The Retreat, Will’s sister Farrah works at Lumen.)
Multiple murders.
AGAIN, Elin can’t get any help. In The Sanatorium, she was in a different country. But I could NOT believe that after multiple murders, Elin’s superiors were like, hey we’re too busy to send you any backup. Sorry! Poor Elin.
Again, Elin is certain someone is after her, but we don’t know who it is.
And again there were things about the mystery that just didn’t make sense. I’ll go over it all in my Spoiler Discussion for the Retreat.
I was rooting for Elin to get a better case her second time. But I am sad to say that she ended up in Groundhog Day. And we still have no idea who is following Elin. But I am READY for book three!
Did you read this and want to discuss? Come over to my Spoiler Discussion for the Retreat!
And I have also reviewed book three, The Wilds With Spoilers!
