By Jack Adams
Published on:  August 2, 2019

Set in Australia, Asylum is a mystery story involving two young friends – Adam and Nate and a man who lives at a nearby Asylum that they meet and become friends with – Joe. Years later, Adam and Nate receive an inheritance from Joe, which then leads to questions such as “What happened to Joe?” and ‘What really went on at that asylum?”

When the story starts, the first several chapters are spent weaving between “Then” and “Now”. Sometimes this type of storytelling can frustrate readers and you will want to get back to a certain timeline, or you find you don’t want to leave a timeline. So it was very refreshing to find that in Asylum, I found the balance between the two to be perfectly executed. I can appreciate how much time the author must have spent trying to find this balance, because I am sure that it wasn’t easy.

Eventually, the story says mainly in the ‘Now’ as the characters work their way through the mystery and hunt down all the clues. The main story itself is very compelling and interesting, but what really sells the book are the characters. All the characters and not just the main 2 are interesting and feel real. You can tell that a lot of time and effort was spent in developing backstories and personalities because of how casually the characters were able to converse about current and past events with each other. They all just felt natural and real, which I really appreciated. While all the conversations and personalities were well written, a small thing that didn’t quite grab me were the romantic-ish relationships. I didn’t quite pick up on who was liked or wasn’t liked as the characters saw them.

I really enjoyed this story and would definitely recommend it to others to read. I will also add that I felt the end of the story was a bit rushed, or perhaps felt incomplete; however, I noticed that this is only the first book in a series so perhaps some of that is continued over into the next book – which I am looking forward to reading.

Rating:  4.5 stars