#BlogTour ‘The Retreat’ by Sarah Pearse

About the book…

Most are here to recharge and refresh.
But someone’s here for revenge . . .

An eco-wellness retreat has opened on an island off the coast of Devon, promising rest and relaxation – but the island itself, known locally as Reaper’s Rock, has a dark past. Once the playground of a serial killer, it’s rumoured to be cursed.

DS Elin Warner is called to the retreat when a young woman’s body is found on the rocks below the yoga pavilion, in what seems to be a tragic fall. But the victim wasn’t a guest – she wasn’t meant to be on the island at all.

When a man drowns in a diving incident the following day, Elin starts to suspect that there’s nothing accidental about these deaths. But why would someone target the retreat – and who else is in danger?

Elin must find the killer – before the island’s history starts to repeat itself . . .

I feel very blessed to be able to be on the tour for ‘The Retreat’, which is being run by the amazing Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours.

This book is amazing. Yet again Sarah has taken a space which is made for relaxation, recuperation and reflection and turned into the stuff of nightmares.

Picking up from the debut novel,’The Sanitorium’, protagonist Elin Warner is back on her home turf,off the coast of Devon in the home she shares with architect partner, Will.

Struggling to come to terms with recent bereavements and trauma, she is keen to show that she can get back on track as a detective.

The opportunity comes sooner than she thinks when a body is discovered at LUMEN, an exclusive resort designed by Will, up for a prestigious award so the death of a guest could not come at a worse time. It is personally invested in by Will as he is desperate to reclaim the history of the island which has been marred by plague victims being abandoned there, the collapse of the local school and a serial killing Caretaker on a Outward bound centre.

A tall order then to bring peace and a sense of a future to a place known for its distinctive outcropping known as ‘Reaper’s Rock’.

Especially as the concurrent storyline deals with a fractured family of 3 sisters and a cousin who have been gifted the chance to physically and mentally retreat by middle sister Jo, a media content maker.

The chance to reconnect, put to bed rivalries and sorrow all sounds too good to be true.

And indeed it is as first, older sister Bea cancels in favour of a business trip sending her boyfriend Caleb along to get to know his prospective in laws better.

The discovery of a body turns what should have been an idyll into a hellscape of recriminations and arguments as accusations fly, and the mystery of how this person was able to arrive incognito at such a remote place deepens.

Using the opportunity to bond with her partner and his sister, the manager of LUMEN, Ellin is desperate to prove her personal and professional worth.

With 2 richly convening stories,digging deeper into the over arching background to Ellin’s career, ‘The Retreat’ shows that ‘The Sanitorium’ was no mere flash in the pan.

Sarah Pearse continues to be a writer who takes the mundane,the every day and paints it in chilling shades of suspense, mystery and the fatal consequences of inaction.

A chilling and unstoppable read,once begun,this book shows that the places where we think we can go to get away from our lives are not the safe spaces we wish they were.

About the author…

Sarah Pearse lives by the sea in South Devon with her husband and two daughters. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Warwick and worked in Brand PR for a variety of household brands. After moving to Switzerland in her twenties, she spent every spare moment exploring the mountains and still has a home in the Swiss Alpine town of Crans Montana, the dramatic setting that inspired her novel.

Sarah has always been drawn to the dark and creepy – remote spaces and abandoned places – so when she read an article in a local Swiss magazine about the history of sanatoriums in the area, she knew she’d found the spark of the idea for her debut novel, The Sanatorium. Her short fiction has been published in a wide variety of magazines and has been shortlisted for several prizes.

Twitter @SarahVPearse @BantamPress @Tr4cyF3nt0n