Asylum by Madeleine Roux
4 OUT OF 5 STARS.

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”

Goodreads Description: For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, New Hampshire College Prep is more than a summer program—it’s a lifeline. An outcast at his high school, Dan is excited to finally make some friends in his last summer before college. But when he arrives at the program, Dan learns that his dorm for the summer used to be a sanatorium, more commonly known as an asylum. And not just any asylum—a last resort for the criminally insane. As Dan and his new friends, Abby and Jordan, explore the hidden recesses of their creepy summer home, they soon discover it’s no coincidence that the three of them ended up here. Because the asylum holds the key to a terrifying past. And there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.

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I recently finished Asylum and it definitely spooked me! More on that later at the end of this post! Stay tuned!

Asylum is a pretty quick read, because it’s only a little over 300 pages and some of those pages have pictures and the start of a chapter takes up a whole page as well. The chapters are also short, so it’s easy to just keep reading and reading. For it being a short book, it was definitely VERY enjoyable and spooky! I was looking for the spook factor, because HELLO…it’s October, it’s almost Halloween. I WANT TO BE SCARED!

I enjoyed this book so much and I loved the creepy pictures! Although, a lot of the pictures weren’t that “scary”,  there were a few super creepy ones. I think they tied in well with the story though and it was cool reading it and seeing a picture to kind of get a better idea of what was going on. There were tons of weird things going on and trying to figure out what was happening was fun! It was creepy and crazy what was being done to the people in the asylum long ago.

I really enjoyed the characters in the book and it was interesting how they all fit into the entire story. I don’t want to give too much away, but it was really cool. Dan and Jordan were really great characters, especially Jordan! He’s definitely my favorite of the group. Then there is Abby and while I do like her, she kind of annoyed me a little bit. I didn’t like the bit of insta-love that Dan had for Abby, but everything else and their friendship was good to read.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book! There wasn’t too much I didn’t like besides how some of the characters acted. I love the way that it was written and how everything came together in the book. Everything was a puzzle and it just all fit together in the end. There are lots of twists throughout, which makes it even better! It’s definitely a spooky read. I can’t wait to read the second book!

For those of you that are off at college and stay in dorms, you might want to make sure it wasn’t once an insane asylum! 😛

“A truly great life. That is what humanity deserves. Not an average life, not even a normal one—a life in which genius is not an anomaly but an expectation.”

Have you read Asylum? If so, what did you think? If not, do you think you’ll be picking it up?

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SO, do you guys believe in ghost stories? The butterfly that started it all…

The boyfriend and I were watching TV Sunday night and our cat jumped onto the window sill because he seen something outside. We both looked at the window and this monarch butterfly landed on our bedroom window. I thought it was so strange, because I’ve never seen a butterfly at night and it stayed so still. It did flutter its wings some, but did not leave that spot for a few minutes. So strange. Eventually, it went away and I decided to read my book (Asylum) around 10PM. Everything was cool, I was enjoying it and happy I was actually getting a lot read (I finished over 140 pages that night).

And then…as I am reading and a pretty creepy part is happening in the book and the lights in my house flicker off really quick. So it was pitch black in the house for a few seconds. Of course that scared me almost to death, because Asylum was getting creepy. I read a little longer until about midnight and then decided to stop reading. I wanted to watch a funny TV show before sleep, so I wasn’t creeped out when going to sleep. The boyfriend shut the outside hurricane shutters on our bedroom window (we don’t currently have a curtain/shade, so at night we close the outside shutters) and he went to sleep. I stayed up watching TV.

I was still pretty creeped out, but decided to attempt to go to sleep at 1AM. I woke up at 2AM and the outside shutters were OPENED! OPENED!!! At that point I was beyond freaked out. I woke the boyfriend up, he didn’t care (LOL) and said it was nothing. I told him I was going to go sleep on the couch, because I didn’t want to look out the window and see any faces staring back at me. I laid on the couch for 45 minutes still scared to death and texting my sister asking her if she opened it as a joke. She said no. It was strange, because they are SO LOUD when opening and closing and Dax (my dog) always barks when he hears them and that didn’t happen and we didn’t hear it to wake us up.

After 45 minutes I decided to wake the boyfriend up to go close the shutters. I wasn’t about to go outside, LMAO! So I still can’t sleep, so I decided to Google what butterflies meant and it was coming up as they can mean “hope” and….loved one/someone that has died having a message for you. THANK YOU, GOOGLE, FOR FREAKING ME OUT MORE! So it’s after 3AM and I text my mom to see if she was alive (LMAO) and she said she was okay, but that she also been up since 2AM with weird stuff happening to her! So I just did not sleep much at all that night.

Yes, Asylum definitely made me 100% more terrified than I probably would have been and actually probably the only reason why I questioned anything that happened to begin with. So, THANK YOU, ASYLUM and Madeleine for making me scared. I am not going to deny that this other crazy stuff didn’t happen though, it did, Asylum just made it worse in my head! Also, the next day at work, I get a text from the boyfriend saying that a canary (bird) randomly landed on our window. I don’t believe in stuff like this, but maybe it’s good luck because I know we have been having the crappiest luck of all-time this year.

Well there you have it! My thoughts on Asylum and my “ghost” story. 😛 Feel free to check out some of my other posts linked below!

Mini Review||Don’t Stay Up Late, Doll Bones, Stolen Children.
Top Ten Tuesday||Bookish Genie Wishes.

Have a great day! ❤