Sinner's Retreat by Victoria Ellis

So I got asked by the author if I would consider reviewing an ARC of this book. This is the first time I've been sought out rather than me requesting it and I was pretty nervous. What if I hated the book? How honest could I be without hurting their feelings? Thankfully my fears were unfounded because I absolutely loved Sinner's Retreat.

This book was described to me as 'Saw meets And Then There Were None' which got me pretty excited about the premise and was the main reason I agreed to read it. This is a story about five couples who get invited to a mysterious weekend retreat only to find upon arrival that they are being held captive by a killer intent on punishing them for their 'sins'. One half of each couple represents one of the sins and they are forced to confront their spouse one by one. Their spouse must then make a life or death decision-kill them or themselves. It borrows heavily from the basic premise of And Then There Were None but apart from that this stands as its own story and was all the better for it. There's not a whole lot of Saw in it to be honest and the violence is on the milder side but that wasn't a bad thing at all. The resulting tone is a mix of horror and thriller which works really well.

In terms of length, this book is pretty short and I read it entirely in a day because of that. The pace is great and it results in a fantastic binging experience. I will say that you can tell it is a debut novel. Certain details could have been expanded upon and I would have liked more of the book in general.The characters are strong but a longer book would allow for them to be explored in more depth. However, I am someone who loves a lot of character focus and so this is probably down to personal taste. As it stands, the characters work really well for the kind of story it is and they're a lot more solid than the kind you usually find in horror novels.

Maybe the weakest element of the plot is the sins themselves? Again, this is another element which was still very strong overall but it felt odd that there were seven sins and five couples. The seven deadly sins are kind of hard to define in terms of acts people can commit to embody them and the connections between sins chosen and the acts committed didn't always translate well to me. Ellis does a fantastic job considering how hard a task that is and it does result in a very cool premise for a book. I understand it's the hook but even without the sins, I think the book would have stood strong.

Overall, I was very impressed by this debut novel. It's a great read for anyone who likes thrillers, horror or both and it absolutely delivers on the kind of story you'd expect from the blurb. I will definitely be keeping an eye out for Ellis's future work.

Overall Rating: