Asylum (Asylum, #1)

by Madeleine Roux

The asylum holds the key to a terrifying past...

A thrilling creepy photo-novel, perfect for fans of the New York Times bestseller Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

For sixteen-year-old outcast Dan Crawford, the summer program at New Hampshire College Prep is a lifeline. Finally, a chance to make some friends before college. Even if that means staying in a dorm that used to be a old asylum.

Soon Dan's hanging out with Abby and Jordan, and summer is looking up. But then he learns that the asylum was not just any sanatorium - it was a last resort for the criminally insane.

As Dan, Abby and Jordan explore the hidden recesses of their creepy summer home, they discover it's no coincidence that the three of them ended up here. And that some secrets refuse to stay buried...

Featuring unsettling found photos of real abandoned asylums and filled with chilling mystery and page-turning suspense, Madeleine Roux's teen horror debut ASYLUM treads the line between genius and insanity.

• ISBN10: 0062220977
• ISBN13: 9780062220974
• Publish Date: 26 August 2014 (first published 20 August 2013)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[kalventure]

Full RTC!

quick thoughts:
- fast-paced and enjoyable read
- I just didn't believe the premise of this asylum being a dorm & the whole summer college prep program thing was so poorly crafted it detracted from the plot for me
- Predictable plot: I guessed the culprit in the first chapter and each of the "twists" early on
- Not remotely scary, sorry
- I didn't care for any of the characters and found them all incredibly annoying (if I were a teenager, the annoyances probably wouldn't have been so high for me - so take this with a grain of salt)

Buddy reading with Destiny!

[limabean74]

I couldn’t wait to read this book, I picked it for the challenge Can you read a series in a Month? I was eager to step into this world and be totally creeped out. I have to say the pictures in the book add a lot to the creepiness and I loved how this keeps you guessing.

At first I wasn’t sure about the characters. I enjoyed reading in Dan’s POV and I actually enjoyed Abby, however Jordan got on my nerves a bit more than I would have liked. I really believed as much as all three characters were suppose to be friends they spend a lot more time fighting because they just liked to keep things to themselves and had serious trust issues. I did like the character development but as some points I felt the story was a little disconnected. It didn’t flow like I had hoped it would and it got sort of choppy that by the end I was sort of confused how it all happened. I am not saying I didn’t like the book because I really, really did. Since this is the series I picked I am eager to find out what happens to the characters and the end gave me chills. I also plan to read the novellas at some point maybe it will fill in the parts I that were choppy.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, Jordan got better in the end and the friends seemed more connected just took a bit of time to get there. I totally recommend if you are looking for something creepy to make you sleep with the lights on. Can’t wait to read the next one.

Thanks for stopping by to check out my review.

Have a great day and Happy Reading!

This review was originally posted on Because reading is better than real life

[Nessa Luna]

I guess that when Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children came out, more authors thought it would be a nice idea to publish a book with creepy/strange pictures, and a story written around them. Because I personally loved Miss P very much, but thought it wasn't horror enough (even though I still loved it to bits), I picked up Asylum a while back, hoping it would have that horror story that I had been hoping.

Asylum tells the story of Dan Crawford, a student at the NHCP, the New Hampshire College Prep a five-week summer program, who one day finds a strange picture in the drawer of his desk. The person on the picture has had his eyes crossed out, and that is what intrigued Dan so much. Together with his new friends Abby and Jordan, they discover an out-of-bounds area full of pictures similar to the one Dan's found. Throughout their weeks at the NHCP, the three uncover a disturbing story about the dormitory that used to be an asylum for the criminally insane.

To be honest, I was rather disappointed in this book. I had been hoping for a super scary story with loads of creepy pictures, but it wasn't at all scary. It was actually rather boring. The real exciting part didn't start until we were 200+ pages in, and even that couldn't get me that exciting anymore. This story could have been so much, could have been so scary, so creepy - but it failed at that.

First of all, I didn't like any of the characters. I didn't like Dan, I didn't like Abby, I didn't like Jordan or Felix or Joe or basically anyone. I didn't believe in the insta-love between Dan and Abby, and I actually didn't like the way Dan was around her. I mean, he sees her and he's almost instantly in love with her. From that moment, he starts acting jealous every time another guy talks to her. Seriously? Stop it. And I just didn't believe in their friendship at all. I mean they barely know each other, and they were fighting half the time, that is not what a good friendship should be like. Okay maybe friends bicker sometimes, but this was just unbelievable.

Also, I found this story so predictable. I knew half of the plottwists before they happened already, and that made me so sad because they were good plottwists, but the hints were way too obvious which just wasn't fun anymore. I had guessed Felix was the guy behind it all from moment we 'met' him. Okay, I didn't really suspect him, but I just didn't trust him right away. And in the end, I was 100% right. He was possessed or something, I guess, but still it was Felix's body that did all those things.

The writing also didn't really appeal to me, I don't know it sometimes sounded very childish. These characters were supposed to be around sixteen, but they sometimes just felt like children to me. The upside about this, was that it was a super easy read and I finished it within a day (even with my current Harry Potter Lego addiction).

It honestly was an enjoyable story though, I didn't give it two-and-a-half stars for nothing. Like I said after the 200-page mark it started getting more interesting, when murder happened. And it did kind of turn out to be a ghost story after all. Even though we didn't see actual ghosts but it was Felix sort of being possessed by that Sculptor serial killer so yeah, in the end Asylum was an enjoyable book, but it was still not the book-with-creepy-pictures-that-is-actually-a-horror-story book that I have been looking for. *sighs*

My opinion on this book in one gif: 

[cornerfolds]

Asylum has been on my to-read list for an exceptionally long time - ever since I saw the cover, honestly. I knew it had to be spectacular with that cover and a description about a haunted insane asylum! There's no way it could be anything BUT awesome! Right? Um... well.

This book started out pretty good. It had all the creepy factor it needed and the setup seemed like it was going to lead to something amazing. Unfortunately, it didn't take very long for me to realize this was not the horror of my dreams. Perhaps it's because this is one of the first YA horror novels I've ever tried to read, but it just didn't work for me for a number of reasons that make me sad. Because I so wanted to love this.

The characters were really the beginning of the end for me. Dan seemed like an okay guy, but he was just too... young. I read a ton of YA. In fact, that's almost all I read. But Dan seemed entirely too young to be in a college prep program. His actions around Abby seemed ridiculous, to be honest. Really, Dan acted like I would have at his age, but I definitely wasn't out doing the things other kids my age were doing back then so... maybe he was sheltered? Abby and Jordan weren't all that likable either. Jordan was kind of a jerk and Abby was a little bit too whiny for my taste.

One thing that did work in Asylum was the mystery surrounding the institution. I think if this book had been marketed primarily as mystery it would have been a heck of a lot better. But the horror aspects fell flat for me. I did keep reading (er... listening) because I wanted to know what was going to happen, who the bad guy was, etc. I was never scared though, and that's something I'm looking for in a scary book, especially an audiobook, which should really be even more frightening if done well.

The potential was definitely there, but Asylum didn't come through, which really is unfortunate. I think the main problem is probably that I'm much older than the target age group, although that isn't usually an issue with other YA books. I would recommend this very hesitantly to fans of mystery, but perhaps fans of middle grade books rather than YA. I guess you can't win them all!


Notes on the Audiobook
Michael Goldstrom was a pretty excellent narrator! He did a good job distinguishing characters and he did really do the best he could with the material. I'd definitely listen to more books narrated by him!

[celinenyx]

3.5 Stars

Everything about Asylum screams creepy. The title, the disturbing cover, the pictures inside. It's good for some classic scares, but falls short in the characterisation department.

Dan is excited to be going to a summer program filled with exciting courses and like-minded students. The dormitories are in an old sanatorium, and together with his new-found friends, Abby and Jordan, he finds out that there are plenty of secrets in the asylum.

The set-up for Asylum is very archetypical for a horror story. Night-time explorations: check. Creepy happenings: check. Inexplicable notes and thoughts: check. Disturbing experiments: check. I have to admit that Asylum definitely worked its job on me. I read it at night while my boyfriend was asleep, and it was pretty scary. It wasn't completely comfortable to read it in the dark.

Dan is supposed to be sixteen years old, but he and the other main characters read more like they're fourteen-ish. The book is narrated through Dan's eyes, and the story unfolds his own connection with the asylum. Ms Roux goes for a King-eske evil that lumbers within the asylum, influencing the students. Although I really enjoyed this concept, the execution wasn't satisfactory. It's hard to connect to Dan, of whom we only get glimpses of his inner life. I would have enjoyed the book more if we had dug into his psyche, really see all of the consequences being in the asylum has for him. Sadly all interaction of the reader with the characters stay superficial, and it's hard to truly care for their plight.

Asylum provides solid horror vibes and cool artwork, but doesn't go beyond that. It doesn't have the amount of introspection other young-adult books display, and leaves many questions open for the second book in the series.

[Beth C.]

What do you get when you have a bunch of teenagers living in an old asylum where a serial killer disappeared and the head was no angel himself? Death and destruction and utter chaos. Such is the world that Dan Crawford is thrust into when he decides to take a program for gifted students at the New Hampshire College Prep Program.

I was initially drawn to Asylum because the story line sounded interesting, and the idea of the photos bearing that out was even better. Sadly, I was less than impressed with the story. It was...ok...but it doesn't bode well when it turns out I have figured out a large portion of the mystery half way through the book. The ending promises further books, but I can't say that I would be interested enough in actually keeping up with any more. If I did, I would definitely get it from the library rather than taking up valuable book shelf space.