Couldn't put this down! the author found a way to make you feel like you are really in the character's shoes and understand their mind frame as they try to live their lives after a teenager is found murdered on a Caribbean vacation and how it is still impacting them 20 years later. I cant wait to read more from this author!

My honest review is that I am not able to finish this book. I’ve tried. I did not give up easily. I pushed myself through 151 pages of it. Then I set it aside, hoping that it was a matter of mood and that time would make it more bearable. Upon picking it up again, I’ve taken three days to slug through another 19 pages. It seems that I am not the right reader for it and finishing the book won’t lead to a positive rating. Although the premise is incredibly intriguing, I cannot get into the story and dislike the detached writing style.

This book is more literary fiction than thriller, despite how it is being promoted. I’ve no issue with slow burns but I am not intrigued enough to push through to the end. If it’s on your TBR, keep it there, but go in with the right expectations. I hope your reading experience is better than mine.

This literary page-turner is brimming with psychological suspense and kept me guessing all the way to the surprising (and satisfying) conclusion. There are no saints here, only flawed humans struggling to come to grips with the past. Saint X refers to an island in the Caribbean. From the first pages, I fell into the flow of the story, wherein little sis Claire is barely 8 when her teenaged sister, Alison, disappears from a holiday resort. The author braids exquisite descriptions of setting and states-of-mind to deepen the narrative, which spans decades. Part omniscient narration and part first-person gives readers access to vulnerable and flawed Claire (who changes her name to Emily). Eventually, living in NYC, Claire/Emily is desperate to excavate the truth of what happened to her sister decades earlier. One day she encounters an islander, Clive, who has his own secret history to grapple with. But truth is complicated, blurred by secrets and capricious memory. For fans of twisty thrillers and unreliable narrators.

On the island of Saint X, families and couples relax and enjoy tropical vacations. Until one day when 18-year-old Alison goes missing and is found dead. Her sister, Claire, is only 7 at the time and has so many questions. Years later she encounters one of the men who was suspected of murdering her sister but was released. Was he involved in the murder? Claire needs to find out what happened to Alison, but as she pieces things together she discovers lot about Alison.

Claire is an interesting character with a lot of depth. The writing in this book is so well done and the locations come to life. You can imagine the island and see yourself in the setting where Alison went missing. I have seen so many rave reviews for this book and now I know why!

<b>Emotionally-charged, descriptive & powerful!</b>

SAINT X by ALEXIS SCHAITKIN is a slow burn psychological tale that often meanders. It has quite the interesting and fascinating premise though but didn’t always possess my full attention. I think this is my very first book that I found myself wanting to skim as I was getting a little impatient at getting to the climax of the novel. The pacing was extremely slow at times and I definitely got a little bit annoyed with all the extremely wordy and long passages. The writing in itself though was quite lyrical and beautiful but it wasn’t quite enough to make this a thrilling or exciting book for me to read. I was interested and engaged enough though that I needed to know how the story ended.

ALEXIS SCHAITKIN delivers quite the interesting character study, thought-provoking, powerful and well-written story here that had extremely long chapters, was a little bit overly descriptive and dense to make this a fully enjoyable novel for me. I think the author totally excelled with how exceptionally well-developed and portrayed these mostly unlikeable characters were though. I also thoroughly enjoyed the true crime atmosphere to the storyline and loved how we got an inside look into how all the pertinent characters were affected by this tragedy at the end of each chapter.

Expected on sale date: February 18, 2020

Norma’s Stats:
Cover: Love this beautiful cover!
Title: Intriguing, effective, and a fitting representation to storyline.
Writing/Prose: Well-written, lyrical, beautiful, wordy, and overly descriptive.
Plot: Interesting, thought-provoking, emotional, powerful, meandering, and a little monotonous at times.
Ending: Hmmmm, I’m not exactly sure what I think of this ending. Did it give me all the answers? I think so. Did it satisfy me fully and do I really care? Not really.
Overall: I think there is definitely lots to talk about with this one and I think the reading experience would have been so much better if I had read this in a group environment. I think it would make a great book club book. Would recommend it!

I received a gifted copy from the publisher as well as a digital ARC through NetGalley.

There’s something about islands I find so enchanting.

Well, many things actually - the feeling of sand between toes, the sound of soft waves crashing, the warm sun, the unique sense of isolation, and so much more. So when I heard Saint X was (mainly) set on an island, I couldn’t help but request it.

And I’m so glad I did. But I’m also glad I read someone’s review that mentioned what this book is NOT. You shouldn’t go into it expecting a high octane, off-the-walls thriller.

It’s more of a character study (where the setting itself is just as much a character). It delves into family, race, grief, and identity.

But even though the story isn’t necessarily action-packed, that DOESN’T mean it’s boring. Far from it! It’s so dang compelling. It was infused with an air of mystery throughout, and I never wanted to stop reading.

**Thank you to NetGalley & the publisher for the review copy.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin was a good but heavy read. Didn't see the twist at the end coming! The characters felt so real.

This book was very enjoyable. The obsession was intense and I totally empathized with her. What I didn’t like was we still didn’t know how Alison died- it would had been nice to see that. I thought the insight chapter insights from the guests effected by Alison really added to the story.

3.5 out of 5

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin is a slow burn character study, covering race, privilege, and grief. Following a family after the death/murder of their 18 year old daughter, we travel back in time to when it happened. When Alison disappeared, and was later found dead in a waterfall. We see the island police struggle to pin the murder on someone.

We then travel to modern day New York, and Alison's sister Claire finds herself in the cab of one of the men who was a suspect in her sister's murder. Claire become obsessed with inserting herself in his life, to find out exactly what happened to her sister.

The writing is...beyond. Schaitkin is not ever at a loss for words. Long sentences, full of description, building the scenes, creating the fictional resort on the fictional Saint X. It's a world that is so easily pictured, a murder that is easily recognized, a family's grief so easily felt.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

We’ve all heard stories about young privileged, white girls going missing while on vacation in the Caribbean and turning up dead, or not turning up at all and just disappearing forever with no trace. It feels a bit racist to even contemplate this as a real, potential danger and brings up a compelling consideration of race and privilege in holiday resorts in which the guests are often white and wealthy and the workers, who are there to serve them, are often local, black, and poor. In this case the teen is Allison and we spend some time getting to know her, mostly through her sister Claire. Allison’s disappearance and death is a mystery, possibly a murder, which Claire understandably feels compelled to solve.

While the mystery of Allison’s death is captivating it isn’t the main focus of this book. Allison is significant more for how she affects others than in her own right. We do get to hear some of the story from her point of view but she always feels like merely the catalyst for damage in everyone else’s lives and not so much important for her own sake. Allison’s death shatters the lives of her parents, the accused (Edwin and Clive), and most especially Claire. Claire always had a bit of an obsessive nature even as a child and when a chance meeting presents her with an opportunity to follow Clive she becomes fixated on finding out what happened Allison’s last night alive even while torpedoing her own career and relationships. The story is truly a look at the nature of grief and how it can so easily cross the line into obsession.

The mystery in this felt very relevant and made me remember the Natalie Holloway case. Because of this mental connection I thought I knew what had happened to Alison but I was wrong. The answer was surprising but also not surprising. I won’t give away anything more about it because half of the fun is trying to determine who might be a killer, and there are several potential suspects. I found this book to be rather weighty and more thought provoking than the average thriller. It had all the elements of suspense, mystery, and danger that I expected but was much more of a slow burn, deep dive into one woman’s mind. While I didn’t particularly like either Claire or Allison I did find them compelling and I was particularly interested in that fate of all those who found themselves swept up in their orbits. The ending wasn’t incredibly satisfying but it didn’t leave me exasperated either. This isn’t a happy tale for anyone but it does bring up some essential issues that should be examined more often, especially by those of us fortunate enough to holiday at resorts.

Thank you to Celadon Books for providing an Electronic Advance Reader Copy via NetGalley for review.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin is the perfect beach read . . . if you don’t mind a little murder on your holiday.

Claire’s sister, Alison, disappeared on a family vacation to the Caribbean island of Saint X when Claire was only seven years old. Shortly after she disappeared, she was found dead. The death went unsolved, and the two young men who were seen with her sister that last night were ultimately released due to lack of evidence.

After a brief investigation, Claire’s family had to return to the States, broken and devastated by their loss.

Now, Claire’s an adult living in New York City. The past shaped her, but she’s doing okay for herself. That is, until she runs into Clive Richardson in a cab. Clive was one of the two men who spent time with Claire’s sister before she died, and seeing him sets Claire into a tailspin. She’s desperate to get close to Clive, desperate to solve her sister’s murder.

Both Clive and Claire were affected by the tragedy in Saint X in different ways, which brings them closer together. Will Claire get the answers she desires? Will she ever be able to put her sister’s death to rest?

I enjoyed reading to Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin–I was hooked by the story and curious to know the truth behind Alison’s disappearance an ultimate demise. I wasn’t disappointed.

While the story was intriguing, it was slow at times. I wouldn’t call this a fast-paced thriller–more of a slow burn.

The characters in the book were excellent. They were realistic, unique, and captivating. I loved Alison’s character. She was bold, smug, and a little rebellious. While she enjoyed the trappings of a life of luxury, she was also embarrassed by how much she had compared to others around her.

Claire was an equally interesting character. Claire was determined and a little conniving. After meeting Clive, she becomes singularly focused. Nothing else matters beyond her sister’s murder.

The ending was great and took me by surprise. I love a good twist.

Saint X was awesome to listen to on audiobook! If you enjoy audiobooks with multiple narrators, look no further than this gem. The narrators were fantastic.

I highly recommend Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin to lovers of thrillers and mysteries. This book would be a fantastic summer beach read.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio for providing the audiobook version of this book and NetGalley for providing the Kindle version of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin

This is an incredible debut novel by Alexis Schaitkin, a master storyteller. Schaitkin weaved successfully the multiple point of views in telling this story, a deeply harrowing story of how people’s lives were affected by a mysterious death of a young woman vacationing with her family in the Caribbean Island of Saint X.

The story centers around Claire who was only seven at the time when her sister Alison disappeared and days later was found dead. Two men were questioned but soon released for lack of evidence. Alison’s death affected the family so much that they had to move and start new to Pasadena, California.

Many years later, Claire finds a job in New York and as fate would have it, takes a cab driven by Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister.
Claire obsessed with finding the truth about her sisters’ death and in the pursuit starts to learn the truth about her who her sister really was and how Alison’s death affected much more than just their family.

Schaitkin’s brilliance was her writing style that I loved on how the prose and descriptions brings you into the story and to the characters’ most intimate thoughts. The detail made for a wonderful audio experience as well. The psychological perspective of those that have gone through a tragic death was spot on. The difficulties of how life just seems to stands still, the difficulty of moving on and finding that closure were all addressed so beautifully in this story.

The ending for me was emotionally charged and powerful. One of my most favorite conclusions that I have read. I highly recommend this book for the thought provoking issues that were addressed such as race, wealth, and privilege to name a few.

This was a well written book that I highly enjoyed very much and one that I would recommend to read!

Even after finishing Saint X, I'm still unsure what the book was supposed to be. Mystery? Thriller? Psychological?

I had a hard time starting and finishing this book because it felt like it took forever to get to the actual plot. It was tedious at first, the first chapter being a long account of things that led up to Alison’s death and what happened with her sister Emily/Claire and their family afterwards.

The second chapter was similarly tedious since it was just Claire describing her life post-Alison’s death, such as where their family moved to next, what guys she dated, what she did for work, etc. So much of this was unnecessary.

The author Alexis Schaitkin had a lovely writing style which I really enjoyed! Her description of New York in Clive’s POV was absolutely beautiful and one of my favorite parts in the book. But even though I enjoyed Schaitkin’s writing style, I didn’t like how her book was bogged down by just how long it was and how slow the plot was.

Based on the blurb, I thought this book would be a thriller about Claire trying to get closer to Clive to learn the truth of her older sister Alison’s disappearance and death. I thought Claire would struggle with hiding who she truly was and would eventually discover that Clive isn’t who she thought he was.

Claire did struggle, but her relationship and all her scenes with Clive went in a very different direction than where I thought it would go. The book can be summarized as a lot of commentary that just doesn’t go anywhere and is about anything and everything, from race to sibling relationships to gender. Many pages would be full of this commentary, and it seemed pointless and was not at all a connection to Alison.

For much of the book, Alison realizes how privileged she and her family are and disapproves of how they all flaunt their wealth to other people that aren’t privileged. Although I liked that Alison was aware of this, I was tired of reading pages and pages dedicated to this realization.

I felt as though the author was trying to make some certain points about the rich and the gap between the rich and the poor, but these points took away from the main plot of the book with Claire, Clive, and Alison. Almost every time, whenever the book finally seemed like it was going in the right direction, it would once again return to commentary all over again.

There were so many POVs as well that I never got to truly know any character because by the next chapter, you were usually in the POV of someone else, even someone completely new.

When I finally learned the truth about Alison, it was so underwhelming, like I had to crawl to get there. I didn’t like the truth or the twist because there was barely any building up to it. I didn’t even like any character. Claire in particular was frustrating and obsessed with Clive (and Alison, despite her death many years ago) to the point where she did less and less of her work and got fired for it. Claire was practically Clive’s stalker.

While I wouldn’t recommend Saint X to anyone expecting a fast-paced thriller, I would recommend it to anyone who doesn’t mind a lot of character thoughts and social commentary, with only hints at the mystery of Alison’s death from the side.

A fiction of several versions of an American young woman's disappearance on a Caribbean island. A story of lost and found, poverty and wealth. The author digs deep, especially into the psyches of a suspect and the sister to reveal certain truths and how significant events shape us.


Copy provided by the Publisher and NetGalley

I received an ARC of #SaintX from @CeladonBooks in exchange for an honest review. I wasn’t so sure about this book from the beginning because it moved pretty slow for me, but I knew I needed to continue to give it a chance because there was a lot that the author needed to set up to create the entire atmosphere of #SaintX. I am glad that I continued with this novel because it turned out to be a fabulous debut for Alexis Schaitkin. I loved how she weaved the characters of Alison, Claire (Emily), and Clive into the story of how Alison ended up dead on the island of Saint X. I could not have predicted how this story ended, which made it such a good story with its plot twists. Cannot wait to read what @AlexisSchaitkin writes next. #SaintX was an amazing debut!

Disclaimer - I received this book from Netgalley for review purposes

Description
Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men – employees at the resort - 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.

Review
Wow, where do I start with this one? It took me a while to get into it and I ended up re-reading the first couple pages repeatedly due to not being able to focus or get into it - but once I did it seemed to really kick-off. I loved how beautifully written it was and how clearly it painted this picture of these gorgeous islands - but not everything, as we learn, is as beautiful as it seems.

The bond between the sisters seems more legitimately than most, and something about this book had such a realistic touch to it that it kind of got to me more than most mystery/thriller reads do. I genuinely cared for these people and felt like this was almost a true story.

The major cons to me were that it was almost overly descriptive? It felt like a bit of fluff here and there. It took one main character three pages to respond to a question due to all the filler in between which was a bit much for me. My other con would be the overall ending. You could tell it was almost over but it just felt like, wait, that's it?

The mystery was so strong and interesting but just fell flat and ended up feeling like a bit of a waste of time. This definitely feels like it's more centered around the mourning and aftermath of death than an actual mystery.

Not sure if I'd recommend. As long as you're not reading this for a thriller or a mystery then you should be okay. Otherwise, it'll fall flat.

Three in a half stars

Great story. The author got me hooked from the very beginning and it was hard to put down. I thought it was more suspense/mystery than thriller but very good.

A teenage girl dies during her family's resort vacation. Two men are arrested but later released. The family must go home with no answers. This novel is less of a mystery/thriller and more of a work of literary fiction set around a mystery. There is a very deep dive into each of the characters who were permanently affected by this young girl's death. The main protagonist is her sister who was 6 at the time of the death. She grows to adulthood and moves to New York where a chance meeting with one of the men originally arrested in connection with her sister's death sets off a slow unraveling, layer by layer of who her sister really was. I found the story compelling and the writing excellent. I would read more by this author.

Saint X is a Caribbean island somewhere near St. Kitts. On this island is Indigo Bay, a resort frequented by wealthy Americans, among them the Thomas family. Alison has just finished her first semester of college and sharing a room with her much younger sister is less than exciting, so she leaves each evening to spend time with another college student and then two young local men who work at the resort. The night before the family is due to fly back to New York, she disappears.

This both is and isn't a crime novel. Alexis Schaitkin is less interested in the crime itself than on how Alison's death affected the people around her, with a particular focus on her little sister Claire. Claire is too young to have fully understood what was going on and later her parents focused on keeping her childhood as normal as possible. It's years later, when she's living alone, that a taxi ride sends her into a compulsive search to learn more about her sister. As she digs into her sister's life, she begins to both intrude into the lives of others and to lose something of herself.

This novel is not quite sure what it's supposed to be. It begins as a wide look at a group of people, written with a sort of objective detachment, then becomes a close character study of one woman, only to finish as a "what really happened" look at Alison's disappearance. It works as long as the reader is willing to have the book constantly shift and adjust as it figures out what it is trying to say.

**Review will be posted on my blog Feb. 15, 2020, closer to publication date**

**3.5 Stars**

Thank you to Celadon Books and NetGalley for giving me a chance to read this eARC.

I went into this thinking it was a murder mystery where we find the clues to who murdered Alison, but I got something else.

Claire is an adult now but the death of her sister years ago still affects her and the people that were involved with the investigation. Instead of a real murder mystery, we are treated more to a look at the people that were affected by her death. There are news articles, witness statements, statements even from people who weren’t there but knew Alison. Claire runs into one of the people who was a suspect in Alison’s and she gets obsessed with wanting to find out what happened that night. What she comes away with is insight about her sister and man accused of committing the crime.

What I Liked:

*This was not the murder mystery I expected, but reading Alison’s journals and hearing accounts from people she came into contact was keeping me interested in this story! I did have to put this book down for a few days because I was bummed it was reading like a usual murder mystery but I’m glad I stuck it through.

*I liked that we get to meet Clive, who was one of the last people to see Alison alive and we get to see his back story. Through him we get to know the island Saint X and the local lifestyle as we watch him and his best friend Edgar grow up. Clive hasn’t had an easy life, compared to Claire who grew up wealthy and privileged. But they both experience pain in their lives.

*Alison is such an interesting character and we get to know her through her journals, videos, and personal accounts but in reality she was still so young and was finding herself.

*I’m glad Claire got closure in a way – she had tried to avoid everything about Alison and her murder all her life, understandably since she was so young when it happened. What a traumatic event to go through and try to process. When she bumps into Clive out of the blue, it hashes up all the memories of what happened and the sister she thought she knew.

*I think of all the characters in this book, Clive’s story was the strongest. His childhood, how he grew up on the island, how his mom abandoned him, meeting Alison and the night of the murder. Then there is the aftermath where he is living in NYC.

Things That Made Me Go Hmm:

*The ending was definitely unexpected! It’s sad how know one really knew the real Alison, she was still learning about herself too when she died.

*There were times in the book I was slugging through and like I said, I even put it down for a few weeks. There are a lot of different accounts being told, sometimes randomly from a teacher of Alison’s or someone who barely knew her. The beginning is slow if you are expecting a usual murder mystery, and I seriously wanted to DNF this book but I didn’t. When we finally get to Clive’s story about what happened the night Alison died is when I was fully immersed in the story. This comes past the halfway mark!

*Triggers: death

Final Thoughts;

I almost gave up on this one but I’m glad I didn’t because in the end I did enjoy it. Don’t go into reading this thinking it’s a fast paced thriller murder mystery. It is more of a character study of Alison, the murder victim, and the people that are left behind with the aftermath of a traumatic event.