Asylum by Madeleine Roux

This book follows 16 year old Dan Crawford.  He attends a college prep program in New Hampshire.  This is Dan's chance to finally make some friends who share some similar interests as Dan is considered an outcast at his high school.  Dan's hopes for friends starts diminish when he meets his awkward, and somewhat robotic, roommate.  

The summer turns into a bigger adventure then Dan ever dreamed when the college prep program is housed in an old asylum that the college is renovating into dorms.  Luckily, Dan quickly makes two friends, Abby and Jordan, who go with him to explore the old wing which still houses some of the original things from when the dorm was an asylum for the criminally insane.  After a few trips down to the old wing things start to get strange for the three friends.

I found this book the be very interesting and a very quick read.  I managed to get through this book in two afternoons.  I liked the concept and how the author talked about some of the more unethical practices that asylums use to employ on patients.  This was brought to life even more by some of the pictures included in the book.  This book also kept you guessing, trying to figure out what or who was causing all of the weirdness that Dan was experiencing.   

While I enjoyed the book I will not be continuing on in this series.  The reason for this is because I am not a huge fan of horror genres.  I am one of those people that scares very easily and if I watch a horror film it has to be in daylight giving me hours to forget the film before I go to sleep.  This paired with the fact that I do not enjoy being scared, like some people do, turns me off the horror genre.  If you enjoy the horror genre then you should definitely give this book a try.  Now, while this book is considered horror it is also a YA book.  This means that, thankfully, it is not as scary as it could have been.  This also makes it a good read for people who want to dip their toe in the horror genre.  For those people I would still recommend reading this book during the day because there were still some bits that gave me the creeps.   

Now while I won't be continuing this series I would be very interested in reading something else from this author, in a non-horror genre, because the writing was very good.  This author is very talented and I look forward to trying something else she has to write.  

If anybody else has read this book or this entire series, please let me know your thoughts on this book.  If you have any other suggestions for books by this author then let me know in the comments.  I will definitely look into those books.  

For those of you who haven't read this book then give it a try.  Come live a thousand lives with me.