Book Summary

I chose this book after looking at several book club lists and recommendations; eventually I chose this from Reese’s Book Club because I love a good thriller and this one promised a creepy, claustrophobic ride and it delivered.

The setting is in an isolated getaway spot in the Swiss Alps; a former abandoned sanatorium that has been renovated into a 5 star minimalist hotel. See? It already sounds creepy and claustrophobic! The main character is Elin – a detective taking some time off. She agrees to meet her estranged brother and his newly announced fiancee to celebrate their engagement. They arrive in the midst of a storm that would end up closing off all access to the hotel. Soon after her arrival, the fiancee goes missing and the story unfolds and unravels from there.

I thought the book was written very well and I didn’t want to stop reading. It offered a lot of discussion points for our group; wild predictions and outcomes we didn’t see coming.

To celebrate this book, we picked a supper club in East Dubuque because it was set high up on a bluff that seemed reminiscent of the hotel in the book. We stopped a couple of places on our way up, but the highlight was the 4th St Elevator – the Fenelon Place Elevator Company’s funicular railway. The book starts with a funicular ride up the mountain so we were excited to find something similar so close to home. Our dinner at the supper club was delicious and offered beautiful panoramic views of the sun setting over the Mississippi River. We stayed at a hotel near there that we are pretty sure was haunted – strange noises and radio starting on its own, sometimes just static. That helped re-enact some of the creepiness from the book for sure! We visited our favorite spot in East Dubuque – The Swiss Inn. It was karaoke night and some participated in that. Ironically, there were replicas of the Dubuque funicular at some of the tables! Leftovers from a wedding reception; of course we took one – sorry, Barb!! This happens a lot, something random from the book shows up during our trip to celebrate it. The next day we had breakfast and then bar crawled our way back home.