Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin on February 18, 2020
Genres: Fiction / Coming of Age, Fiction / Family Life / Siblings, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Women
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback
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“I fooled myself into believing I was after closure, when all I really wanted was never to let go. Because, as Alison’s scar was her most sacred vanity, her death was mine.”
Claire is only seven years old when her college sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation.. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives. Years later, Claire has a brief but fateful encounter that brings her together with one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth – not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister?
I went into this book thinking it would be a thriller. It is not. For me, the premise was extremely intriguing. I had high hopes for this book and although it does provide food for thought, I found this book to be overly descriptive and wordy at times. SLOW BURN says it all. Not all the characters are likable, but they are interesting. The story kept drifting from the main plot to other characters and a lot of the detail to those side stories were repetitive and felt unnecessary. The narrative became too longwinded and overly descriptive which was a bit exhausting. SPOILER, I did feel like the ending left the mystery a bit unresolved, and there wasn’t a clear answer to what really happened.
I gave this book a 2.5 star-rating. I wish I could say I enjoyed this more, but it just fell short. The pace seemed to crawl along. It’s a short book but felt like it was a good hundred pages longer than it actually was.