Review; You Are Invited by Sarah A. Denzil

Last year I was fortunate enough to recieve an ARC of the horror novel You Are Invited by Sarah A. Denzil through Netgalley. I read it shortly afterwards and today I'll post my review.

Description from Goodreads

"There are those who claim the ghosts walking the corridors of Sfântul Mihail are not ghosts at all."

During a midnight journey snaking through the Carpathian Mountains, these are the words whispered to Cath Fenwick. It is the warning she will later wish she'd taken more seriously.

When Cath receives her invitation to The Event--a monetised retreat for social media influencers--she can't believe her luck. Irene Jobert is the most famous influencer in the world, and now Cath will be one of the five participants chosen to stay with Irene in a renovated Transylvanian monastery.

The catch? Their every move will be live-streamed to millions of people around the world. Patrons pay for constant access to their favourite social media stars: Irene, the model, Nathan, the gamer, Jules, the blogger, Daniel, the fitness guru and Cath, the writer. Nestled halfway up a mountain, surrounded by forests teeming with nature, the five are isolated, with nothing but the internet to connect them to the world. That is, until eagle-eyed live-stream followers all around the globe notice a sixth participant. A dark figure lurking in the background. Who--or what--is in the monastery with them?

Wolves roam the nearby forests. Shadows haunt the long corridors of Sfântul Mihail. Slowly, five lonely people begin to lose their minds. You are invited to The Event.

My Thoughts on the Book

Oh my god, I absolutely loved You Are Invited. The writing style and descriptions are amazing and they just sucks you into the book/story, which makes it even more haunting. The characters are complex and well written, which makes it even more fun to read. To make things even more interesting, there's the trope of unreliable narrator, as Cath suffers from schizofrenia, although it bugged me a little bit that a mental illness was just in that trope in such a way. In terms of horror and ghost stories, You Are Invited also use the trope of being isolated in a spooky place, in this case a renovated monastery with a dark past.