Asylum by Madeleine Roux: I don't think this is my kind of book

Asylum 

by 

Madeleine Roux

     This was on a previous Top Ten list because it promised a creepy ghost story set in asylum along with black and white photos that were supposed to be terrifying. I’m not really sure if they were actually ‘TERRIFYING!!’ terrifying but you might want to ask me after I go to sleep tonight IDK. 

Anyway the plot centers on Dan, a kid who ends up at the re-purposed asylum while visiting a college for a summer camp. Dan makes friends, finds a strange room that belonged to the warden of the asylum and of course creep-tastic things start happening along with a bit of an ‘unreliable narrator’ thrown in for some extra spice.

Honestly though I have very mixed feelings about this book. While it was a perfectly enjoyable ghost story it failed to explain itself in the end. It left me feeling vaguely cheated. Don’t get me wrong open endings are a perfectly legitimate form of writing but the whole thing ended so abruptly and with so little explanation . . . Oh well apparently there is a sequel so I guess I can’t complain too much. The most problematic thing was that I felt the book encouraged (though encouraged might be a strong word) some stereotypes that were, frankly a bit mean. But I’ll leave those for the dislikes. 

Characters

Daniel Crawford: I found Dan to be a decent main character. Sure he fell into the YA pit that is insta-love and wow could this guy mope but in the end I certainly didn’t hate him. But . . . I won’t be naming my pets after him or anything. My feelings for him were decidedly ‘meh’ I suppose. 

He was kind of a blank slate of a character. Pretty simple but with just enough extras added to make him more than a cardboard cutout. However when he started to become an unreliable narrator it got a bit more interesting. Kind of like a backwards special snowflake trope now that I think about it.

Abby: Hello love interest. Yet again a character that was all around meh. Still for a character that was obviously there to be the love interest ‘all around meh’ is pretty good compared to the alternative. Still she had her own motivations and her own goals and even her own hobbies (art mostly) which made her much better than the most recent love interest characters.   

Jordan: Okay I’m not sure how I feel about this dude. Not only was he gay and actually rather obnoxious about it but he disappeared for the whole middle of the book only to be back and normal again afterwards. Is somebody trying to make gay the next special snowflake trope? Because I swear every gay character I have ever read has had one or two defining traits. Being gay and being okay with/struggling with being gay. Diverse characters are all fine and good! But we need well rounded diverse characters not diversity stuck into a story with no finesse. Is anybody with me on this? 

Look if I published a book with a crappily written, overly cliched mentally or physically disabled character I would be (justifiably) booed of the internet. Are gay characters exempt from this just because they're a more socially prevalent issue. Heck freaking no! I just feel like you should know how to write disabled or depressed or any other sort of diverse character before you start throwing them in randomly. Ah what am I saying of course I’m alone in this. 

Rant over I’m going to go hide from the internet now.

Likes

There were some really creepy parts: I’ll admit that I’m not usually one to be creeped out by books. It’s just not my thing I guess. While I wasn’t huddled under the covers in terror there were certainly bits that made me feel a kind of sick dread and at the very least uncomfortable. So good job that’s the most scared I’ve been since I was ten years old reading Goosebumps in the dark.

Dan’s attitude towards people who don’t feel the need to learn is mine: I have no shame! 

Well maybe a tiny bit of shame. His first thought after getting to this summer camp was that he was so glad that he’d actually get to spend time with people who wanted to learn as opposed to being more interested in slacking off. That is me. That is my attitude 90% of the time. Honestly it was probably just a breath of fresh air after the string of YA who seemed to think that school was secondary to such things as alcohol, sex, and the occasional adventure.

The police actually showed up! Thank goodness for one absent cliché. I mean they were basically useless but . . . you can’t win ‘em all.

Dislikes

Problematic bits: there were two major problems I had with this book. Frankly I already expressed the first in Jordan’s character paragraph so I’ll just move onto the next one.  Now admittedly this was an extremely small part in the grand scheme of the narrative but it still bothered me all to bits and I mostly want to know if anybody else even noticed it or if I’m just crazy. Ha, ha . . . crazy. Get it? Because it’s Asylum? 

Never mind that wasn’t funny at all.

Anyway there’s a part where Dan has to ‘admit’ that he sees a therapist. The book seems to imply that seeing a therapist is some sort of . . . taboo? Or maybe even something to be ashamed of?!

Now I know that there is a difference between expressing something in a story and actually agreeing with it. But since this implication is never even mentioned again much less refuted I just . . . don’t really know what to think. Because frankly it’s a mindset that is downright insulting to me.

There is nothing wrong about anyone just because they see a therapist. It does not mean that they are crazy or messed up and most certainly should not be something to be ashamed of.

The whole thing just felt very gross and a bit antiquated.

That Ending: I’ve already complained about it vaguely at the beginning of this review but now I’m going to talk about in a very spoiler-y fashion so if you still want to read the book SHOO!

Alright with that cleared away.

The ending was extremely abrupt and had very little explanation. For some reason Dan was having visions where he saw through the eyes of the Warden, a man also named Daniel Crawford who may or may not be related to Dan. Now I can deal with that, after all it was at least somewhat explained. But I cannot deal with the bad guy somehow being the serial killer that the Warden operated on (messily I might add and with much pain so I can see why the guys a bit sore) And somehow he was possessing Dan’s roommate.

Again somehow. As far as I could tell there wasn’t any sort of relation like Dan’s and the Warden. 

Heck I could even believe that the operation the guy performed on him gave him sort of psychic/ghost ability (though that sounds like a terrible X-files episode) but such a big emphasis was but on the fact that his body was never accounted for that I just expected, I don’t somebody who wasn’t a possessed teenager to be him.

Maybe I was just treating it too much like a mystery. I’m not really a horror reader so for all I know this was actually a pretty good one. Still I’m decidedly unimpressed. Not terribly angry. But mildly insulted and, again, unimpressed.