The retreat at health-and-wellness resort Tranquillum House promises total transformation.
Nine stressed city dwellers are keen to drop their literal and mental baggage, and absorb the meditative ambience while enjoying their hot stone massages.
Miles from anywhere, without cars or phones, they have no way to reach the outside world. Just time to think about themselves, and get to know each other.
Watching over them is the resort's director, a woman on a mission. But quite a different one from any the guests might have imagined.
For behind the retreat's glamorous facade lies a dark agenda.
These nine perfect strangers have no idea what's about to hit them . . .
Comment: I had had my eye on this book for a while and this month I got the perfect opportunity to read it, for it suits a topic in the challenge I'm doing with one of my GR groups.
In this adventure, a group of characters is reunited at an isolated estate for a health-and-wellness experience. The Tranquillium House has been synonym of a revolutionary approach to how one takes care of oneself, and this new batch of clients will have the best treatment yet, but will they all enjoy the process? At first they all registered for personal reasons, but several things are meant to be done in group. Will the different personalities and situations in life be reason for some things to not work for everyone the same way? What is really going on at the resort?
I confess that when I first saw the blurb for this book, my imagination took to me to a different type of story. I had read other books by the author and I knew mrs Moriarty could introduce drama and mystery to her work, even if that isn't the primary intent of the story. Still, the development of the plot was a bit slow and only when I adjusted the expectation that this would not be a story about a crime, for instance, or a cult-like estate, and that the isolation of the resort was only circumstantial did things improve for me.
I really thought the choice of having nine "clients" meant they all would have an important role, but then there were only three main characters in terms of resort personal to interact with them, that I've felt the attention span was never on all of them equally. I feel I've never really knew the characters beyond the basics and in that regard, the author probably lost an opportunity to create something more impactful or with more twists in the plot.
In fact, the plot is quite simple, the characters who will benefit from the resort's activities need some kind of help, especially a psychological one in my opinion so they can deal with some trauma/problem. The promised physical changes by eating and drinking certain things seems almost secondary. I don't really mind how this was planned but I did expect more from the actual resort and how it was meant to work out. In that regard, this was not what I imagined... of course, at some point there's a novelty which changes everything but I don't think it's a big enough surprise.
The nine clients are all very different and we have the POV of all of them, plus the resort's owner and the two staff members. It's a lot of people to keep track of but each one had an unique voice, it' was not difficult to get used to each of their voices. But with so many people's POV, even though in third person, it's just not possible to have enough time for a fair development to all. Even admitting some characters don't require as much focus, it still feels some, like Frances, were given way more attention than others.
Some themes were very obviously presented, namely what these types of resorts might really want to be, how what seems a great option for someone isn't for the other, how we place too much trust in certain situations and/or people, how stress can affect one's reactions, how social media can numb some people out of thinking for themselves but how we also judge those who see that world for what it is, among other things. I think the social commentary was well inserted and I liked following the characters. I can also say I was not bored with any, and liked seeing what they were all thinking.
When things reach the end, I think many situations were over the top,especially the ones related to the resort's owner and the last experiment done with the nine clients. Then, when everything is solved, we get to have some final chapters letting us know what happened to the characters and the end is happy for them all except the owner, i'd say. Still, it can depend on one's POV. Thus, this was a good novel to me, I've enjoyed reading it, but it could have more polished and better outlined.
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