ASYLUM
By
Madeleine Roux
Genre: Horror
Publication
Date:
2013
Number
of Pages:
313
Summary
Asylum by Madeleine Roux,
and the first book in the series, is a story about Dan, Jordan and Abby who are
attending a summer college while on break from high school. While taking
classes, the dorm they will be staying in is a former psychiatric hospital
where horrible experiments were performed on patients. During their stay, Dan,
Jordan and Abby find strange pictures, receive texts from which no one knows
where they came and discover a strange set of rooms in the basement. Roux
sprinkles found photos throughout the text to illustrate the photos the teens
find. The mystery of the old hospital finally becomes uncovered after numerous
trips to town and meetings with the townspeople.
Subject Headings:
Haunted Places
Universities
and Colleges
Mental
Illness
Psychiatric
Hospitals
Supernatural
Three terms that describe this book:
Foreboding tone
The darkness that shadows this entire novel gives it its foreboding tone. Each person the teens meet seems to have a creepy secret and the dorm reminds one of a haunted house that you might visit on a creepy fall midnight. As the protagonist and his friends do their research, everything they find is foreboding.
Storyline is complex with an unresolved ending
The storyline is littered with many subplots and the main plot has a lot of twists and turns. There aren’t an over-abundance of characters but the subplots revolve around the handful of characters. The ending is indeed unresolved as there are two more books in the series that follow.
Pace is intermittent
Roux does a great job of intertwining the fast pace with the slow pace. For example, discovering the rooms in the basement was very exciting and fast paced but while they are down there is seems to slow down but then picks up as they ascend to the upper floors once again.
Read-A-likes
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
by Ransom Riggs
Fearscape by Simon Holt
The Sleepwalkers by J. Gabriel Gates
The Prank by Ashley Rae Harris
Sanctum by Madeleine Roux
(Book 2)
Another excellent annotation! This is however a young adult book so I will be taking half a point off. Very well written though!
ReplyDeleteOops! Sorry Erin! I didn't realize it couldn't be a YA book, just thought it had to be horror.
DeleteNo worries, it's not a huge infraction :)
DeleteThis storyline sounds engaging. I am wanting to read more YA books, so I might give this one a try.
ReplyDeleteThis storyline sounds engaging. I am wanting to read more YA books, so I might give this one a try.
ReplyDeleteThis story sounds really scary. It reminds me of Arkham Asylum from Batman, at least that is the vibe I got from reading about it. Nice annotation!
ReplyDelete