Rating: 3 Stars
Well, Saint X, by Alexis Schaitkin, was not what I expected. I was thinking this would be a thriller with lots of action to pull the story along. I was very wrong. It read more like literary fiction and the plot was agonizing slow.
The story opens on the fictitious Caribbean island of Saint X. Where Claire, age 8, arrives with her older sister Alison, age 18, and their parents. The vacation precedes along uneventful and the family is enjoying the five star resort and all the amenities until Alison goes missing.
The small island is combed for clues to no avail. After numerous days of searching, two tourists take a short boat ride to the uninhabited island just off the coast of Saint X and discover Alison’s body. The key suspects in the case are two employees of the resort where the family is staying. After questioning them, they are released because at the time of the Alison’s death they were in jail. Therefore, Alison’s death just becomes another unsolved mystery.
Skip forward a number of years and Claire is now an adult and working for a publishing company in New York City. Life seems to have moved on for her. All that changes with a chance encounter with one of the suspects, Clive, or GoGo as he was known on the island. Claire is haunted with the past and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth. She stalks Clive and then inserts herself into his life. Will Clive be able to give her the answers she is seeking?
Can a story suffer from over development? Absolutely! This is what happened here. I understood Claire and her desperate need to have answers. The author gets the reader inside the characters’ heads. Yet, it became too much in the end.
The rich descriptive prose that I started out loving became burdensome in the end. I got to the point I just wanted the story to move on. I only finished this book because I wanted to know what happened to Alison. In short, too verbose for my tastes.
I have read some of the other reviews and know that a lot of people loved this book. I just was not one of those people. I think it was of case of the wrong book for me. I suggest you read some other reviews before you decide if this is a book for you or not.
I received a free copy from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.