Flux Reviews: Asylum by Madeleine Roux

5:46 am

Title: Asylum
Author: Madeleine Roux
Publication Date: August 26 2014
Publisher: Harper
Format: Paperback
Price: ₱359 (Philippines) - $5.23 (Amazon)

Plot Synopsis:

For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, the New Hampshire College Prep program is the chance of a lifetime. Except that when Dan arrives, he finds that the usual summer housing has been 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 Dan and his friends to the asylum's dark past. Because Brookline was no ordinary mental hospital, and there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.

The Review

“It was a house for those who could not take care of themselves, for those who heard voices, who had strange thoughts and did strange things. The house was meant to keep them in. Once they came, they never left.”

I actually bought this a couple of months ago, lent it to my friend Godwin from Machinations of My Muddled Mind (Thanks again! :D ) to get signed, and i just got it back this week! XD I've been meaning to read this for a while, some people say it's a good series to start reading after Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, and it look creepy and interesting as hell, and I have it now, so why not? (Also, two words: BOOK. SLUMP.)

This is the first book in Madeleine Roux's Asylum trilogy, with Sanctum as it's sequel, and the upcoming Catacombs coming out this September!

It follows the POV of Daniel Crawford who's going to summer school at NHCP, and his guess where his dorm room is or what it was? You guessed it, an asylum! Because it's always a good idea to put college dudes in a building that used to perform lobotomy and experiments on insane or disabled patients! :D Did I mention that it used to house a serial killer?

What I like a lot about this book is that it has pictures from asylums, people getting experimented on, abandoned rooms, and all that creepy crap! It's like Miss Peregrine's except there aren't any young kids there with superpowers like going through walls or controlling bees that come from inside you!

Mysteries begin to pile up, ghost emails, pictures popping up with grotesque images of doctors and nurses restraining patients, almost-normal-pictures but with scratched out eyes and contorted nurse-necks. The old office still containing phones, files, and pictures, as if the people there left in a hurry, strange eerie notes, is this just them getting hallucinations and nightmares about gurneys and being operated on? And when a student get's murdered in the dorm, it raises the question: Is the serial killer still alive? Every chapter gives you more questions to ask and less time to figure them out.

But he has the help of Abby Valdez (Not related to Leo Valdez, unfortunately) and the kind-of-an-asshole-but-not-really Jordan, who are really cool and they just seem like a good trio!

Finished it in a day and a half, that's how intriguing the story is! With so many riddles and puzzles you'll feel the need to read all of it. I definitely recommend this to someone who's read Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrines, or for anyone who wants a YA about an asylum turned into a school! Word of advice though, try not to read this at night, all alone with your back to the rest of your room. Trust me, your non-peripheral vision will play tricks with you. Out of the corner of your eye . . .

“Sometimes, Dan, friends have to take a stand and say:Hey, idiot, we’re here for you no matter what. We’re notgoing to disappear when you get grumpy or angry, we’re inthis for the long haul. We’re in this for each other.”