This suspense/thriller follows a group of 10 people who all sign up for a clinical trial to test out a medication. They get to spend the month at a luxury resort in the Canary Islands. All they have to do is take a pill every day, sit through a battery of tests, and keep a diary. If they complete the trial, they get paid £20,000. It all seems to be going well at the beginning, then some of the subjects start getting increasingly severe headaches and having some mood changes. The staff assure them it is not the medication - but then a body is found.
TW/CW: financial abuse by a parent, emotional abuse, animal death
There were a lot of characters in this and I think Masters did as good a job as possible helping introduce the reader to all of them in a memorable way. However, I still had a hard time keeping them all straight in my mind. I mixed up 2 of the men constantly and most of the women blended together in my mind. I took a quick skim through reviews that have already been posted and I wasn't seeing this as a wide complaint so this might just be a personal issue with how I process characters. I will say that I didn't find it necessarily impacted my understanding or enjoyment of the story which was good. Even if I got character A and B mixed up, in each scene, there was enough context to remind me of the key characterization points that will be important in the scene. So, for an example, if I was thinking that Adam was the super tall character but the scene I'm currently reading is with Ben, Masters would always throw in a mention about how tall Ben was. This way, even if I was mistaken at the beginning of the scene, I was quickly corrected and could just continue reading.
Despite having all these characters, we are only following Elle's POV in the story. I thought her introduction and background were really interesting and gave me enough details for me to completely buy into the premise that she would sign up for this trial without going overboard and getting too much background. Once she got to the trial location, she did feel like more of a wallflower observing some of the more colorful characters there. There were a number of red flags early on in the process that she brings up but then brushes aside with some rationale that I completely believed were accurate to her character (even if I didn't brush them aside). However, the other characters have different opinions and levels of concern that I think do a great job of mirroring different readers and what their reactions to these red flags are. I thought Elle was a really great POV to follow because Masters does a fantastic job setting her up as a sort of 'other' in this experiment. I think it would be natural for almost anyone to be put in a similar situation and think to themselves "I'm not like these other people". But slowly, as the trial and the whole situation begins to break down, we see some of these seams where maybe Elle isn't as different from these other characters as we (and she) initially thought.
The pacing was really great in the first 1/3 and last 1/3, but really slowed down in the middle for me. I did find this a little odd because the middle is where things really start to go sideways. However, I think we spent just a little too much time in the phase where characters were getting suspicious but the staff at the facility were consistently assuring them everything is going okay. The pacing in the beginning of meeting Elle, getting selected for the trial, and then meeting the other participants goes by really quickly so the reader is just thrown into this situation with Elle. We do have some great moments of all the characters getting to know each other and feeling out this whole situation. Then we start getting some gradual tension increase as characters begin to act strangely. I wanted that tension and pacing to keep gradually increasing, but instead it seemed to come in waves. We get a few waves of this increase in tension or suspicion and then Elle would calm down and trust the doctors and each time, it felt like Elle would almost relax too much after the doctors tried to explain things away. I didn't get as much worry or fear out of Elle and since she's the one character we're following, it meant that the whole churning middle of the book just felt more slow than I would expect. The pacing really picks up once things go absolutely bonkers in the last 1/3 and then I feel like Elle really comes out of her shell and starts being a more active participant in the whole situation.
The ending, I found, is really interesting but will probably be the most divisive part of the book. We do find out some details behind the trial but it is done is a really odd way that worked for me. Instead of getting some super long info-dump or villain monologue, we get a sort of stand-off situation where characters are asking and answering questions back and forth. It was set up really well that both sides have information that the other side wants so there's a delicate balance going on. However, I think as the questioning goes on, this initial tension is lost and we take a left turn into info-dump territory. The ending reveal was one that I think a lot of readers will end up guessing but I still found it interesting. I especially liked how there was one aspect of this big reveal that isn't agreeing with one of the characters. To avoid spoilers, I'll be vague, but we are told X and one character specifically says that is not true because of Y. Then the initial reveal says that character thinks Y is true but actually based on evidence X is true and the character is just in denial. So then, depending on if the reader thinks X or Y is true, it sort of changes the whole framework of the story. I really love ending reveals that make the reader immediately look back over the story and events suddenly become more/less important or get colored in a certain light. The X vs Y ending reveal gives two slightly different readings of the overall story that I think are both really interesting.
Overall, this was a really fun read that had a great hook and interesting premise. I think the pacing and tension faltered in the middle 1/3 but picked up enough by the end to be satisfying. Too many characters for me to keep them all separate, but since we were really only focused on Elle any mix-ups I had didn't really impact my reading experience that badly.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper 360 for the ARC
Expected publication date is July 7, 2022
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