🌴BOOK REVIEW🌴⁣
Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin⁣
Publication Date: February 18, 2020⁣
352 pages⁣
⁣
-DESCRIPTION-⁣
A college age girl goes missing, and is subsiquently found murdered, on the last night of their family vacation. The younger sister, 7 at the time of the murder, later runs into one of the men accused. She then goes on an obsessive quest to find the murderer.⁣
⁣
-THOUGHTS-⁣
1. This was definitely a slow burn type of book. Which I am ok with. Do not go into this thinking it's some type of page turning thriller. It's just not the case. But again, thats ok. ⁣
2. In the end, the main points really are more about the country's obsession with young, wealthy, girls being kidnapped or murdered. How differently these cases are handled. How much more the media collectively values these lives.⁣
⁣
-RATING-⁣
⭐⭐⭐⭐⁣
I recommend this book.⁣
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-SIMILAR RECOMMENDED READS-⁣
The Perfect Couple ⁣
The Wife Between Us⁣
The Woman in the Park⁣

I will admit the entire reason I even looked at this book was because of that gorgeous cover! But I'm glad I did--it was an engaging, page turning story that kept me interested from the very beginning! In the beginning of the book you almost feel like you're on Saint X, the writing and description of the island is so great. The different perspectives from all the characters really worked in this book as well to tell the story. I listened on audio and all the different voices were excellent. A solid mystery/thriller!

great easy read for me! love the characters and the story. good book club discussion. would recommend totally

Upon reading the description of this book, I was very intrigued and had to read it and find out "whodunit". I'm a sucker for murders, thrillers and mysteries and wanted to get to the bottom of this mystery. Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on your views), I got a whole different story.

At the beginning, we get a very detailed story about a vacation that Alison and her sister Claire were enjoying with their family on a remote island in the Caribbean. They are obviously a well to do family but the girls are separated by their age. I was waiting for longer than I thought I would before we got the news of Alison's demise. But all the details were important into building up what type of people were involved in this case. It was a case of wealth, of privilege and race.

After the murder of Alison, we go on a journey to see how her family and friends fared through the years and how Claire is still looking for answers she didn't know she needed. When she stumbles upon a man that may have had something to do with her sister's death, I was definitely hooked and waiting for the other ball to drop. But I didn't exactly get that. I got a lot of point of views from people that may or may not have had something to do with Alison, or maybe just people that were from the island and Alison's life. This is where I would have to take off stars from the story. Too many characters and too many stories being told.

BUT, with that being said, with how the story was being told I could SEE this whole story being played out. I could see a movie or tv series being made about this very story. The descriptive narrative along with all the characters and their background, it HAD TO be slowly building up to something. This is where my star rating is a little confusing. I felt the story drifted from where it needed to go and had too many characters POVs. I wanted more action and not this slow build to what I thought was a mediocre climax. But if we didn't have all these characters and their history and thoughts, the story would have fell a bit flat and wouldn't have been as visually appealing. For this reason, I have to give the book 3.5 stars since it created such a visual impact by the characters and their narrative. I just wish it was more climatic and put together in a slightly more interesting manner.


Overall, the book intrigued me but didn't excite me as I wish it would. I liked the way it was told and how we got to see a bit of how the sisters lived and who they were. Claire was an interesting character in that she felt a bit confused about herself, all her emotions and the way she was living her life. I just wanted more of a 'punch in the gut' feeling from her or from another important character she encountered.

"Alison's death is a mystery like God or Stonehedge or intelligent life in the universe-if you aren't careful, that sh$t will consume you, and in the end you'll still be no closer to solving it. I'm 37 years old, and if I've learned anything it's that you can live a pretty decent life without unpacking life's mysteries."

I went into this thinking "Oh another thriller - girl goes missing on vacation, investigation ensues, girl is ultimately found or presumed dead." What I got was SO different - and kind of what I've always wanted, but never knew I did.

When Natalie Holloway went missing I was RIVETED. I watched every news clip and internet article I could find during that investigation - still do. Where IS she?! Same with Jon Benet Ramsey. Who done it!? I mean, in all honestly... it drives me NUTS that still no-one knows what happened to Amelia Earhart.

But in each of these case I always find myself wondering... What happened to the family? How did they move on? How about the accused? Could they move on whether they did it or not? THIS book was just what I needed to fill that hole I didn't know was even there.

You follow all parties involved in this story after the girl goes missing. Mom, Dad, little sister, the accused, the questioned, other people vacationing at the resort, so many POVs - everything I've always wondered after the news stories die down, the internet stops posting, the police stop looking.

I loved it. It scratched an itch I didn't know I needed scratched and it's a unique peek into the families, the communities, and even the curious like me - that are affected when just one life goes missing.

Saint X was exactly the type of book I thoroughly enjoy. Although it was a slow burn, the intense characters and thought provoking storyline kept my attention throughout.

A family vacation to a tropical island turns into a nightmare when their teenage daughter Allison is murdered. Although there is an investigation, the case is never solved. Years later, Allison’s younger sister, now living in New York City, runs into the very man police questioned and suspected of her sisters murder. She makes it her mission to find out exactly what happened on that fateful day.

This story was well-told with descriptive narrative and touches on many issues such as racism and privilege. I think this is an important book and I am so thankful to the publisher and Netgalley for the review copy!

Saint X on the surface appears to be a murder mystery but I found it to verge more towards literary fiction, which was perfectly fine with me.

The central character in this book is Claire. When Claire was around 7 years old, she went on a vacation with her family to a resort on Saint X, an island in the Caribbean. On the last day of their trip, Claire's college-age sister Alison goes missing. Eventually she turns up dead on Faraway Cay, just offshore of the island. Initially, 2 young men, Clive & Edwin, who work at the hotel are arrested but the evidence is just not there so they are released. The book alternates narrative perspectives, but most of the story is told from Claire's point of view. In "present time" Claire is working as an editor in NYC. One day she gets in a cab that happens to be driven by a man with the same name as one of the men initially arrested for her sister's murder. Claire becomes obsessed in finding out what really happened with her sister and pretty much starts stalking the man.

I enjoyed this book. It was a slow burn but I definitely wanted to see what happened and the story kept me on the hook. We see Claire's obsession leading to the unraveling of her life. The author does a great job portraying Claire's mental and emotional state. We feel her grief over the loss of her sister and her feeling of loss of never really getting to know Alison. Schaitkin also did a great job setting the scene of Saint X as and the divide between the people who live and work there and the wealthy resort guests.

The story also feels familiar because of high profile cases like the Natalee Holloway case (killed in Aruba) and other instances we hear of people meeting a tragic end on vacation. I recommend this book to fans of literary fiction featuring family dynamics, grief etc.

Saint X was a big surprise to me. It wasn't the story I expected, but in the week since I finished this one, it has grown in my head and stayed with me. I loved the beautiful writing and have come to appreciate that this book doesn't fit easily into a category.

What I assumed was going to be a thriller about an unsolved mystery turned into a commentary on our collective obsession with the mysterious deaths of wealthy young white women and girls. The story that I thought was going to be about Alison's death turned into a story about privilege, class, and racism. I loved that this story was such a unique read with its many points of view and found the full-cast audiobook to be a perfect fit.

My only complaints about this book were the fact that it seemed to linger a bit too long at times and that I wish there had been no references to it as a crime thriller in blurbs. If you're looking for a true crime book, you'll more than likely be disappointed, but if you're looking for something that sticks with you and is a great discussion piece, I highly recommend this one. It would be perfect for a book club or buddy read.

Thank you to Celadon Books, NetGalley, and Libro.fm for my advanced reading and listening copies.

I have a strange relationship with this book. I really enjoyed the writing style and at the same time was absolutely driven crazy by the structure, it was all over the place and at times felt random as opposed to thoughtful. I did enjoy a lot of the characters, especially Allison who reminded me of myself when I was her age (making me extremely grateful we didn’t share the same fate). Also Claire, her younger sister was strange and obsessive, however I really appreciated the author depicting how she worked though her grief which kind of ran parallel to Clive and how he dealt with losing his family and essentially his life. Overall this is close to a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read for me.

Saint X has been one of my most anticipated reads! Diving in, it was different than what I had expected. Instead of the fast-paced thriller I had imagined (not sure what gave me this idea of it), it was definitely more of a slower character driven story than it was plot based. Throughout, it was very scenic and atmospheric - the descriptions of the characters, places, etc. were all very detailed, which was great for pulling you into the story. It was interesting to learn about all of the characters, and about the lives of everyone who was impacted by Alison's death. The ending was pretty unexpected, but felt a little out of place. If you're a fan of mysteries that are more character driven and descriptive, this may be a great one for you to check out!

I expected this to more of a true crime style of crime novel and instead it's more about how a crime ricochets through people's lives and affects them. I didn't like the alternating chapter views and it was a lot slower than expected.

If you know going in it's more about the aftermath and everyday life and not a thriller you might like it more than I did.

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy. This book is a very solid three stars for me. It was good. Not spectacular and definitely not terrible. I actually think the book had a lost of promise--the central mystery is good and well-constructed and the melding of Clive and Claire's lives is very compelling. However, there are just too many side threads that distract from the main story and, as a result, the relationship between Clive and Claire doesn't receive the attention it deserves. If it had been more deeply explored, I think the novel would've been better for it. As it stands, I didn't feel like I got to know much about Claire herself (which, on one hand, makes sense since she becomes so overwhelmingly occupied by her sister's death) or why she and Clive were continuing to meet and speak with one another. I guess I would say that the book was too shallow in the parts that mattered and too deep in those that didn't. Again, I found this solidly good and would look forward to anything the author writes next!

DNF at 5%. I was initially intrigued by the synopsis of this one and was looking forward to being drawn into the story. However the writing style didn’t work for me and after reading through other reviews I’ve decided to pass on this one. Thank you to Celadon, Netgalley and Librofm for the advance copies.

There is... a lot more to unpack with this book than I expected. I went in to Saint X expecting a pretty typical mystery-thriller. It was that, but it was also a pretty cutting commentary on the privilege that accompanies tourism, and grief – while simultaneously being a coming-of-age tale.

Saint X in simplest terms, follows a family reeling from the loss of their oldest daughter during their annual tropical vacation. The family enjoy a pretty typical vacation to the fictional resort island of Saint X – but on the last day, their eldest daughter Alison goes missing. Local authorities search for days, but ultimately she turns up dead. The search for a culprit goes cold when it's found the prime suspects have a solid alibi. The story then follows the family - focusing on the youngest daughter, Claire – through the years, as they come to terms with Alison's unsolved murder. Interestingly, we also follow the life of one of the prime suspects, Clive, and how Alison's death irrevocably changed his life forever.

I'll be honest, the first third/half of this story drug a bit for me – there is a lot of exposition, particularly in the first couple chapters, which are told in a third-person perspective, giving the reader every single possible detail about the island of Saint X. It isn't until Claire is an adult, living on her own, that things begin to pick up. A chance encounter while living and working in New York sets Claire on a dangerously obsessive path. When this begins, I was absolutely hooked – I had to know what was going to happen and what answers Claire was going to get about Alison's death.

This book goes deep – almost voyeuristically so – into grief, and how each person handles it differently. We read how Claire herself, and her parents deal with the fact that Alison is not only dead, but dead in an inexplicable manner. So many unsolved mysteries focus on the murder itself – but reading this was like a behind-the-scenes look on how unsolved murders affect the loved ones. I was especially chilled when Claire and her parents choose to spend a day away from home at the same time a docuseries premieres about "girls who took risks and got murdered." This is something a lot of us would binge-watch on Netflix, yet when you consider the affect of such a show on the loved ones... there is a certain darkness to supporting such television.

There are two main perspectives in this book – that of Claire, and Clive. We get to know both of them intimately. However, I had a hard time feeling connected, or sympathetic to Claire. I can't quite put a finger on it, but her character fell a little flat to me, and at times she was simply unlikable. Clive on the other hand – my heart ached for Clive.

Born and raised on Saint X, Clive knew the island from before it was a resort attraction. He only wanted the simple life, he wanted to stay on the island – yet everything that happens to him leaves him with dreams dashed. At the same time, I felt conflicted about Clive because of his involvement with the events surrounding Alison's death – this made reading through Clive's eyes much more interesting for me.

Clive's perspective was eye-opening in another way – the author delves quite frequently throughout the novel on the topic of tourism, and the effects of that on island life. Clive's early life is simply magical – things weren't easy living on an undeveloped island, but there was more innocence, more honesty, more tradition. Then, tourism comes, and it's good because it brings money, electricity, modernity – but an authenticity and simplicity is lost. Now, the people native to the island have to cater to a crowd of rich people who just want to spend money and relax. Especially telling is a scene where it's revealed the resort sweeps the beaches clean of its natural debris every morning for the sake of the visitors, who expect a pristine paradise.

Despite feeling disconnected from Claire – it was fulfilling to read all the way to the end, to see what she discovers and how much she learns and what she comes to terms with about Alison. As one of my favorite quotes say,

"In my parents' version, Alison was buffed like a piece of sea glass, her edges and points worn away over time and yielding to a pleasing smoothness."


And how true this is – we embellish what we think is best about people we adore when they die – glossing over known or possible faults, as if it would be a blasphemy to remember anything bad about them. Yet the truth is, even though we miss them desperately, they were still human. As Claire slowly discovers this about Alison, she finally begins to go through her own growth.

Saint X is full of cutting tidbits such as this – it is truly a beautifully written book, I felt like I highlighted every couple of sentences. So many of them hit hard. Despite some (possibly excessive) exposition, this book was stunning and a breeze to read. Not only did I want to know what was going to happen, it was a haunting and absorbing journey.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this one – I wouldn't say it was wholly satisfying in terms of being a mystery-thriller; if anything this is mystery that ends up being a character-driven coming-of-age tale, with a dash social commentary under the guise of mystery-thriller. Regardless of what I expected going in, I really enjoyed this one.

In the movie in my mind, Alexis Schaitkin’s “Saint X” begins with a one-track shot of a group of Caribbean islands taken from an aerial drone. Slowly, the camera descends lower and lower so you get a glimpse of what it might look like from the window seat of an airplane or helicopter as it flies over churches and restaurants and beaches and resorts.

You can see this movie very vividly because Schaitkin writes like a screenplay writer, director and film editor, painting a portrait of every frame, shot by shot: “Look. A girl is walking down the sand. Her gait is idle, as if it is of no consequence to her when she arrives where she is going. As she walks, heads turn ….”

See what I mean.

You have no trouble imagining Schaitkin’s debut novel as a movie or television show (the kind you binge in one sitting, of course); its film adaption may even win awards, attract a cult following or inspire ballads.

After all, shows like David Lynch and Mark Frost’s “Twin Peaks” and Rob Thomas’ “Veronica Mars” and Brian Yorkey’s “13 Reasons Why” certainly did.

Schaitkin, who may have been inspired by the “Twin Peaks” formula or the 2005 disappearance of teenager Natalee Holloway, creates her own version of “Laura Palmer.” In the case of “Saint X,” this is a beautiful and complicated 18-year-old Princeton student named Alison Thomas (never Ali). Alison’s dead before the end of the first chapter. Clive “Gogo” Richardson and Edwin Hastie, the two men last seen with Alison, are never held responsible for Alison’s death. And the questions of who was Alison Thomas, who killed her and how did she die propel the rest of the novel.

But if you think this book is about Alison Thomas, you’re not quite wrong. But you’re not quite right either. Yes, “Saint X” is about the tragic death of an American teenager on a family vacation on a fictional Caribbean island, but this thriller/noir is mostly about Claire “Clairey” Emily Thomas — Alison Thomas’ kid sister — who grew up in the shadow of Alison’s death.

By the time the second chapter picks up, Clairey has surpassed the age of her perfect older sister, ditched her childhood nickname and lives a life her sister never got to. Alison becomes an almost forgotten memory to even those who knew her. But an unexpected encounter with Clive — one of the last humans to vividly remember Alison’s alive (because her death changed the course of his life just as much as it changed Claire’s) — in a New York City cab brings Claire closer to the answers she’s been wondering about for the majority of her life: Did Clive kill Alison?

“Saint X” is a powerful debut worth obsessing over.

This book started off strong with beautifully written descriptive words on the Caribbean island and the resort, as well as a complex character study in 3rd person. Then, after Alison is found murdered, the book goes into the future as Claire grows up in the shadow of her sister's death. Claire becomes Emily, using her middle name to separate herself from her family tragedy. On happenstance, she ends up in a taxi driven by one of the suspects in her sister's murder. Emily becomes obsessed with following Clive around, his routines the same every night. She stops doing her job competently to catch Clive doing something that will somehow prove his guilt. The problem is the pacing and slowness. I lost interest in finding out what happened.

This one started off strong! I was really enjoying the island vibes and the mysterious disappearance that was reminiscent of Natalee Holloway, an 18-year-old woman that was in Aruba with others from her high school graduating class who disappeared in 2005 and has never been seen or heard from again.

Around the last 50% mark, the book slowed way down – which I don’t mind at all! I enjoyed the writing and I was completely invested in how the story was going to play out. Then around the last 25% of the book, it took a very unrealistic turn and the climax that was building throughout the story was completely disappointing. Because of that ending, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the book overall…I’m going to have to let it be for awhile and see how it sticks with me over time.

On paper this should be a book that worked for me, a Caribbean setting with a murder mystery as the backdrop along with a little bit of coming of age and obsession on the part of the sister who survived. However, this didn’t at all work for me. I found the audio to be slightly more tolerable than reading it, although by the midway point I wanted to DNF both due to the incredible slowness of the plot which felt like it meandered all over the place. As for Claire, who became obsessed with finding out what happened to her sister Alison who was murdered while on their family vacation, I didn’t connect with her. In fact, I found her character to be surface-level at best. Maybe this was a case of misplaced expectations because I expected this to be a mystery when really it was a super slow-burn character study in my opinion. As for the ending, I’ll only say I felt extremely disappointed and cheated.

Very well written, fast moving plot, developed characters. I could not put down this book once I started!

Thank you to Celadon Books and Netgalley for this ARC!

Claire's family never though they would be leaving the island of Saint X without their eldest daughter Alison.
When a grown up Claire runs into one of the suspects in her sisters death, she opens up a wound that was forced closed many years ago, in the hopes of finding out what really happened. 

The most shocking thing about this book, is that this is a debut novel. 
When you read this book, you will feel as though you are slipping into a world created by a seasoned writer.

There was something very voyeuristic about the first few chapters. 
Schaitkin has a beautiful and haunting writing style, and I am really excited to see what comes next for this gifted author.