For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, New Hampshire College Prep is more than a summer program—it's a lifeline. An outcast at his high school, Dan is excited to finally make some friends in his last summer before college. But when he arrives at the program, Dan learns that his dorm for the summer used to be a sanatorium, more commonly known as an asylum. And not just any asylum—a last resort for the criminally insane.
As Dan and his new friends, Abby and Jordan, explore the hidden recesses of their creepy summer home, they soon discover it's no coincidence that the three of them ended up here. Because the asylum holds the key to a terrifying past. And there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.
Featuring found photos of unsettling history and real abandoned asylums and filled with chilling mystery and page-turning suspense, Madeleine Roux's teen debut, Asylum, is a horror story that treads the line between genius and insanity.
Rating: 1.5/5 Stars
Well, emm…
I’m not quite sure what to make of this book. On the one hand, it showed great
promise with the concept of an abandoned asylum being turned into a college and
“scary” and mysterious things happening to its students, on the other it
completely failed at delivering a compelling plot, fleshed or even likeable
characters, create suspense, mystery and was pretty much a forgettable mess.
What
happened here?
I’d wanted
to read a mystery/scary book for a while now, and Asylum looked like a good
choice. I get scared pretty easily so I thought there wouldn’t be problems in
getting that spooky quality I was looking for here. Clearly, it failed, but it
surprises me because there is hardly anything positive I can say about this
book while at the same time, I didn’t hate it.
If anything
I’d have to say that this book lacks passion. Everything, from the writing
style (nothing memorable there), to the characters (all easily forgettable,
interchangeable and sometimes annoying) where missing a spark. Asylum failed at
leaving an impression, it didn’t engage me in the story or the characters
driving it.
Asylum has
three main characters, Dan the shy loner who struggles to make friends, Abby
the cute artist who… is cute and that’s all that seemed to care to make this
character since she doesn’t have another quality (who needs something else for
boring insta-love, after all?) and Jordan the gay math student who is never
given a plot of his own and is hardly seen in the novel at all. The three of
them become friends for reasons that are beyond me, since they seem to fight
more and be apart than actually getting along, and they’ll get caught up in a
mystery of strange letters that… I guess are scary? Kinda? Oh and some murders
who start happening at the 70% mark, instead of right at the beginning to make
things interesting.
I feel
frustrated with this Asylum because, if well I imagined the plot and ending
could be predictable, the characters had the potential to be relatable and they
all had things in common that could create a good friendship, but instead they are
shallow and start being friends on the first day for no reason at all.
Dan was the one I could have connected with the
most; he is shy and used to be alone, but he wished he could be more outgoing,
to share more and have friends. I struggle with that too, I marvel at how some
people can make friends wherever they go, how they actually like meeting
strangers and the possibility of new friends instead of being terrified by it.
Yet the
more I read, the more I understood why the guy had no friends; Dan was a snob.
He looked down on everybody who didn’t think as he did, who didn’t enjoy
studying as much as he did (even though the guy hardly picked a book during the
entire thing!) or who didn’t know of “obscure” topics such as psychology and
history.
Basically,
he was that person who hates on things because they are popular and claims to
have a better taste.
“He dared to be different, to challenge the status
quo. Even if he was rejected for it. Wasn’t that a little of what Dan was like-
scorning the popular opinion, the
popular crowd, and aspiring to something more?”
He put his
friends in danger of being expelled even though he knew how much the two of
them wanted to be at that college, not to mention Jordan’s situation, and then
he complained that they got mad at him! It was no surprise to see that Dan didn’t
have any friends, it wasn’t just that he was shy, it was that he was selfish. In
his mind, his friends were all about satisfying his needs, but offering nothing
in return.
His relationship
with Abby was more of the same. Dan becomes instantly possessive of her because
she “makes his world brighter whenever she’s there” (even though we don’t
really see that) but it never goes both ways; what does Dan offer to Abby? What
does he do for her? Absolutely nothing. Dan always thinks of Abby as means to
an end; she keeps him calm and loneliness at bay, but never once does he ever
do something for her. He only backs her up on a theory because he doesn’t want
her to be mad at him and leave him, but he always thinks that she’s wrong and
is very condescending towards her.
Abby was
the beautiful and artistic girl that seems to accompany every stuck up dude in
YA books. She didn’t have much of a plot besides being there so Dan could
complain on how gorgeous she was and how she had other friends besides him, not
to mention to give the chance for some very weird stereotypes on artists that
just make no sense.
“I actually hate the taste of coffee, but the
sugar helps cover it up,” she admitted. “And you can’t be an artist and not
drink coffee. It’s just… not done. Every installation I’ve ever gone to has
either coffee or wine, so you’ve got to suck it up and deal.”
Jordan was a character that could have been
interesting; he had become obsessed with math problems and something strange
seemed to happen with him during the entire novel. Unfortunately, this is never
explored since Jordan has only a few scenes in the book and they add very
little to the flimsy plot. Perhaps in the next book?
The pace is
quite awkward, and it doesn’t help that the characters make very dumb
decisions. One moment Dan would find evidence that there was someone stalking
him and his friends and instead of doing something about it, he brushes it off
and decides not to tell anybody (including the very friends who are in danger)
because… it might make him look crazy? How could that even work? It makes no
sense and it drags the story. But when he has a theory out of nowhere, he’ll go down to the creepy
basement where a killer probably lurks with no backup, no telling anybody where
he’s going or what he’s doing.
“Dan knew it was not his best idea, sneaking
into the basement by himself. To start with, the door would be locked. One of
the hall monitors might be standing guard. But
he wasn’t going to overthink this.”
He wasn’t
going to overthink going to an abandoned place where his creepy stalker could
possibly be at! Well, that shows a lot of brain dude.
The
pictures where something I was really excited about, it’s not common for me to
read narratives with them, especially horror, so I was curious to see what they
were like. To be honest, most of them just felt out of place. At the beginning Dan
says how the sight of the college freaks him out because it looks taken down
from a horror film, but in the picture it looked like a regular building, quite
pretty even. Then, there were mentions of patients, treatments and all kinds of
things that could have made up for some interesting visual aid, and we got a
random picture of keys or letters on some vintage patter. It wasn’t well put
together.
The ending
was super disappointing. I was hoping a few mysteries would be solved, but
actually none of them where except who the killer was, and even that wasn’t
explained at its fullest not to mention how predictable it was.
Overall, I’m
surprised at how disappointed I am. I honestly expected so much more of this
book but it failed in every aspect. I’m not sure whether I’ll continue with the
series.
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