The Writing Retreat

i just genuinely did not think this was a good book. it had completely unhinged vibes, so if you like your thrillers to go off the deep end, this might hit better for you.

i also had a lot of issues with some ‘problematic' elements of the book. for one: the main character explicitly describes being sexually assaulted but it is literally never acknowledged to be SA. it was really bizarre to me that we were apparently supposed to ignore the assault itself and focus only on the aftermath. there was also one scene that was clearly trying to be super woke – all the characters introduce themselves with pronouns and then the MC ponders how she hasn't even thought about racism until recently. it just felt completely out of place and ‘look i know how to be progressive!' and wasn't even really relevant to the rest of the book. which is ironic, considering the predatory gay trope is all over the place in here. and then on top of that, there's a ‘jewish girl falls in love with a nazi' substory tucked into the middle.

this really could have gone through another round of edits and didn't really work for me on any level. the only pro is that it's super readable and i was able to get through it very quickly.