Asylum- Madeleine Roux

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.

Featuring found photos of unsettling history and real abandoned asylums and filled with chilling mystery and page-turning suspense, Madeleine Roux's teen debut, Asylum, is a horror story that treads the line between genius and insanity.

When I picked up Asylum at a local privately owned bookstore I was really happy. I am desperately trying to find a YA novel that has a good creeptastic feel and is dark and scary…You know ghosts, haunted places…SPOOKY!

While this novel did have SOME of the things I was looking for: strange backdrop, unnerving history, disturbing imagery and pictures and murder mystery.
When the author writes about the asylum and the patients it was good, seriously eerie and was able to grab my attention and hold onto it.
The characters were pretty well written and the setup of the plot wasn’t half bad either.

The writing was mediocre at best, not great and not horrible, nothing to make the author stand out.

However the author spent SO much time on the teen drama and angst that it was almost ridiculous. I didn’t need pages upon pages of the MC bemoaning that his friends of two weeks act like they don’t like him, or mooning over a girl he just met. I wanted more STUFF! Give me more slinking around in the basement of a possibly haunted asylum; tell me more about the inhumane practices that went on and the serial killer who resided there.

There was a fairly decent plot twist involving the MC’S bio parents, but it wasn’t enough for this to garner more than three weeping angels.