I took too long to write this review and it’s probably going to show. I finished the book earlier this week and well, because of the weird schedule I have, I am pretty sure I am forgetting to add some part, the notes I made don’t indicate that but the feeling is still there. So…I apologise for that.

I think Saint X is a brilliant little gem of a book that I am so glad that I read. The book starts with a family vacationing on some non-existing island but goodness, the author did such a great job of detailing everything and painting such a picture that I almost Googled the island. The story really starts when Alison is, first missing and then, found dead away from her family and leaving behind a devastated family. Alison is perhaps not likable and I kinda like that? She’s a privileged teenager and it shows.

Claire, her younger sister, really cared for her sister and is absolutely devastated to hear that her sister is not coming back. Claire is seven years old when her sister dies. The story really gets going when Claire is an adult and living in New York. She actually ends up bumping into one of the suspects from her sister’s case and that catapults her into a discovery of many things. Just as Alison wasn’t a likable character, Claire isn’t a perfectly likable character and I am seriously glad of it.

In fact, now that I remember I didn’t like any of the characters but I liked that they were interesting and the author’s writing really did wonders for keeping my attention engaged. I think for a debut novel, the author really put together such a great character study that also included thoughts on race, privilege and class. Schaitkin’s writing is such a huge part of why I liked the book and it’s a pity that I can’t explain in words how much I loved it. So, I can only say that, please, if you can, read this book.

I am so glad that I got an early access to the book despite the fact that I am very, very late to reading and reviewing it.

Saint X is not a fast paced, full of action and suspense thriller by any means, it is more of a slow burning mystery with an excellent character study. The book was not what I expected however it surprised me in a good way.

Our protagonist Claire is seven when her older sister Alison is found dead on the island of Saint X while vacationing with the family. Two male resorts employees have been arrested but shortly released due to no involvement in her death. 20 years later Claire accidentally bumps onto one of the suspects and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth behind Alison’s murder.

One thing I can most definitely say about this book is the brilliant character development and portraying of the complexity of multiple themes: race, upper class privilege, aftermaths of the death. The novel does not really focus on a murder mystery, it’s more an exploration of the grief and an impact of Alison’s death onto the life of many people. I also really enjoyed the description of the island itself and and the local life, I felt almost transported to the beach of Saint X.

My only concern is that at some points the novel was overly descriptive and some parts felt a bit too lengthy to me.

I would definitely recommend picking this one up if you are looking for a unique thriller.

Alexis Schaitkin's accomplished and impressive debut , Saint X , is a memorable ,slow burning mystery that combines beautifully descriptive writing with strong characterisation and an ability to touch on complex issues of race, social class and privilege. Seven year old Claire has spent a wonderful holiday with her family on the idyllic Caribbean island of Saint X , but on the last day of their trip, her older sister Alison is nowhere to be found. It appears that she sneaked out of her room and then vanished , but when her body is found in a remote spot and two young local men who worked at the resort are arrested , it becomes a media sensation.
Years later Claire is in New York city, working in publishing, when she gets into a taxi one fateful day and recognises the driver as one of the men who was accused of killing her sister, but was not charged with the crime. This sparks a determined effort on her part to find out what really happened that night, and she becomes almost obsessed with the driver, stalking him and striking up a friendship to try to get him to confide in her.
While this might not seem the most original premise for a book, I can honestly say I have never seen it done quite so well as it is here. The narrative moves from past to present seamlessly and the occasional chapters from outside perspectives add a wonderful extra layer to the story, The writing is simply beautiful, evocative and descriptive without ever being too much , and the character development is second to none.I could feel the tropical sunshine on the island and the hustle and bustle of the city leapt from the page. I applaud how well Schiatikin describes the grief experienced by Alison's family, so many little moments ring true in a way that really resonated with me. I will admit that I found the ending a little disappointing, but not so much that it spoiled my enjoyment of the book.
I read and reviewed and ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the Publisher, all opinions are my own.

This was a really well-written slow-paced, character-driven thriller. I enjoyed reading it a lot. There are many themes in it and the writer reflected the emotions so well.
I'd definitely read from him again.

Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

This was a slow burner, the books comes from many angles and many narrators. Thus providing a rich narrative of many voices. Although it’s extremely descriptive, at times a detriment to the story line, I thoroughly enjoyed the plot and eventual retelling of the main characters subsequent demise. A clever and unanticipated twist to the end of the story, cleverly done.

Straight away I knew this writing style was not for me. I can't put my finger on what but I just didn't like it.
Going in I expected something different. A short section on the past before jumping to the future. But instead I felt like the book was dragging even though I was getting through it.
By 25% I felt like the story had yet to start. Even though I know it had. Something was missing to grip me.
In the end I DNF at 40%. I didn't care enough to force myself to carry on.

This is what not quite what I was expecting and certainly not another ‘dead white girl’ crime thriller, more focussed on the aftermath and impact of an unsolved crime in everyone else involved. The characters are nuanced and engaging and somehow the exposition and flashbacks are intriguing rather than cheesy or clunky here. The descriptions and observations of the fictional Caribbean island are particularly strong. Really good read that pulls you in a range of different directions and manages some genuine plot surprises.

I was given this book in exchange for an honest review.

I was really excited to be given this book as I had seen it posted with great reviews on social media and the synopsis intrigued me.

That’s where it starts and ends for me. The book is a VERY slow burner and I found I lost interest very quickly. I didn’t like that the book jumped from Claire’s point of view to a random snippet of someone on the island then back to Claire. Sometimes it took me a couple of reads to figure out who was speaking.

I liked the character of Clive and his perspective but I was disappointed that when he realises it’s Claire he tells his story straight out and then disappears? Where is the turmoil and the struggle with a story he’s kept secret for so long?
I also absolutely hated the ending I’m afraid. No conclusion. No answers. Not even a hint of an answer.

I’ve given this a 3 star rating as whilst the writing in parts was good I did not enjoy the story.

Claire is seven years old when her 18 year old sister Alison is found dead on the last day of their family holiday to the fictional Caribbean Island of Saint X. Two locals who worked at the resort they stayed were accused of her murder but are released as there wasn't enough evidence to proceed. Years later while living in New York City Claire (now using the name Emily) gets into a cab driven by Clive Robertson, one of the suspects in Alison's murder which sets her on an obsessive pursuit of the truth.

I was really drawn in by the premise of this book thinking it would be a fast paced murder mystery/thriller. However I DNF'd it around a third of the way through. It just wasn't for me. I found the plot to be slow and I just didn't like any of the characters enough to keep on reading to the end. Sadly a disappointing read for me.

This is the story of Claire, who was seven when her idolised older sister Alison was found dead on a family holiday. As an adult, she jumps in to a cab which just happens to be driven by one of the men suspected of Alison's murder, and an obsession to discover the truth takes over Claire's life.

I'm just going to jump right in an say it - this book is brilliant. It had me gripped right from the beginning and I thought it was intelligent, layered and incredibly well written. This is not your average mystery novel, it is so much more. How people cope with loss, how circumstances shape a person, how family dynamics play out and how our perceptions of people evolve as we ourselves develop are all explored in this book, so well that the whodunnit aspect almost becomes secondary. I adored the stories of both Claire and suspected killer Clive, Schaitkin has a real talent for crafting complex characters and backstories.

This book is a slower pace of mystery, but that is what makes it such a great read. As each layer unfurls you get more involved. I love a book with depth, and this certainly has that. One of my favourite reads of the year so far.

This book is unlike anything I have read before.

The story is about a luxury island that Alison and her sister who is besotted with her, Claire.
Claire is 7 years old when Alison disappears and that memory stays with her forever.

There are strong class privilege and racism issues in this book as two islanders are accused of being involved in the disappearance.

This novel switches seamlessly between narratives, including reports and autopsy findings and never misses a beat.

It is definitely more a of a slow burn but definitely worth sticking with.

I found this book absolutely incredible and will definitely be re reading!

The Thomas family from New York are very privileged and comfortably off. When daughter Alison is 18 and Claire(y) is 7 they go for a holiday to the beautiful Caribbean island of Saint X. Alison is attractive, clever, flirty and like so many of her age group, a boundary pusher. On the very last night of their holiday Alison goes missing and several days later is found dead. Although two local men - Edwin Hastie and Clive Richardson are arrested and they admit to being with her on her last night, they are released through lack of evidence. The family are understandably haunted by Alison’s loss and Claire, who changes her name to Emily, becomes obsessed with trying to find the truth about what’s happens to Alison. This takes over her life when she moves to New York to start her working life. The story is principally told from the perspectives of Claire/Emily and Clive who is also haunted by the past.

The book is about the impact of loss on a family and others who are affected by it. We witness the different stages of the Thomas family’s grief, the changing relationships within the family and how it affects them. However, it goes deeper than that as it is also about race and racism, class differences between those who live on Saint X and those who vacation there and the stark comparison of their privilege. The racism may not be intentional but it is none the less present and this is thought provoking and uncomfortable.

The parts of the book that I like the best are those on Saint X. The island and it’s people are beautifully described in language as languid as the visitors become. The sections which describe the family’s grief are very moving especially the impact on Claire as she feels like she lives in Alison’s shadow. As she grows older though I feel less connection because she stops living her life and lives vicariously though her obsession with finding her sisters truth. As we learn more about Alison I find I like her less and less. This is a real slow burner and at times I find the pace to be too slow and I’m unsure of the point of so much depth with Clive’s back story. That being said, it is an intriguing and worth while read.

Overall, a powerful, well written and thought provoking read.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Pan MacMillan for the ARC

Thanks to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Saint X is not your typical thriller. It is far more than that. A literary mystery, maybe, but however we categorise this compelling novel, it is, without doubt, a tour-de-force of the imagination of its author, Alexis Schaitkin. The narrative begins with a murder of eighteen year old Alison on the idyllic island of Saint X. Intriguingly we are given a birds-eye view of events leading up to the death, and the location of the book's main protagonists, before and after the murder. It is at this point in the novel that Schaitkin really goes through the gears as the impersonal tone of the opening scenes takes a more personal turn. We are the privileged voyeurs in the first person narratives of a number of the main protagonists - most notably Alison's little sister, Claire. Years later Claire is in the back of taxi driven by none other than Clive, who was initially implicated in Alison's murder. The fortuitous meeting, urges Claire on to find out the devastating truth of her much adored big sister's murder. The narrative holds tight to the so-far enduring mystery of the identity of Alison's murderer, but it is the contextualisation of the murder and its aftermath that really elevates this novel about others of its type. Yes, we have an eminently satisfying mystery at the heart of story. This emphatically ticks the box for lovers of crime fiction, but Saint X has more to it than that. Schaitkin writes compellingly of the very really human consequences of violent crime on those left behind nursing their unending grief. The concentric circles of violence that social theorists and novelists have written so intimately of. Not exclusive to this panorama of loss and the consequences for individual identity, is the whole fetishization of murder that has spawned the genre of true crime. This morally ambiguous universe of serving up murder for entertainment is explored forcefully here, too. Yet again, one must think, if you are reading this book you are part of this cycle, too. Food for thought....

Sublime and brilliant. I have been waiting for a novel like this for a long time.

The resorts in the Caribbean often fall into a trap, by well-meaning but unobservant tourists, of being part of some indistinguishable mass, a ‘lovely nowhere,’ as Alexis Schaitkin terms in the opening of this literary mystery. Saint X, a fictionalised Caribbean island, is the generic paradise where the Thomases have escaped to for a week of rest and relaxation, with their two daughters – Allison, eighteen, and Claire, seven.

A privileged, white middle-class family, they revel in the hospitality of the island. They sip on endless cocktails and soak up guaranteed sunshine, revelling also in their rapport with the staff, the questions about the best places to get local cuisine that are painful in their self-consciousness. But in the lap of luxury, tragedy strikes. Schaitkin has atmospherically drawn out the paradisiacal setting to a point where it seems untenable. The beautiful, self-possessed older daughter goes missing, and her body is found a few days later.

Prime suspects in the case are Clive and Edwin, two local men who work at the resort and were seen with Allison the night she disappeared. But without solid evidence to convict, the men are released and the case turns cold.

Decades later, Claire – now going by the name Emily – is living in New York and working for a publisher. One day, she happens to get into the back of Clive’s cab. This chance encounter takes hold of her imagination, and leads her down a path of obsession with this man, her sister’s disappearance and a desperation to get answers.

‘We see so little of people. We forget how much submerged darkness there is around us at every moment. We forget until we are forced to remember.’

Through Allison’s death, Schaitkin explores the morally nebulous exploitation of murder for entertainment. When Claire begins to lift the lid on what happened to her sister, she discovers numerous documentaries, Reddit threads, conspiracy theories and even a guided tour on the island, exploring the last sites Allison was seen alive. Being witness to this shaping and reshaping of a narrative for titillation and curiosity’s sake, from the point of view of a loved one whose life has been forever altered by the tragedy, certainly gives food for thought about our current culture’s obsession with true crime as entertainment.

Claire hardly knew her sister, she realises, beyond the point of view as an adoring child in awe of her older sibling. It is through parts of the story told in Allison’s point of view – both real and imagined – that her layers are revealed to us. Schaitkin explores the facets of our identity – race, class, family, tragedy – that makes us who we are. Because there is a part of Claire’s identity inextricably wound up in Allison’s life – and more precisely, Allison’s death.

‘At times, it could be very difficult to distinguish where my authentic pain over my sister’s death ended and where a performative emotionality, a giving over to the drama opened up by Alison, began.’

Pieced together between narratives from Saint X, New York, and across different characters and moments in time, Schaitkin stitches together the elements to form an immersive, visual and complex novel. This isn’t a fast-paced mystery, and the ending is not necessarily neat or satisfying. But it is a well-accomplished slow burn of a novel, interrogating important truths about how we see ourselves – and how the world sees us.

‘The longer he walked, the more the city receded, until the world around him rendered itself invisible and he began to hear water lapping against the edges of the metropolis, which became water lapping at the edges of another island, and then he was not walking through New York anymore, but through the landscape of that other world, that other life.’

Saint X starts off as the story of Claire, whose older sister dies on holiday on the Caribbean island of Saint X, but it ends up being so much more than that. As Claire grows older and adopts the identity of Emily, in an attempt to distance herself from her tragic past, she continues to question what really happened to Alison. When she happens to get a taxi driven by the man who served time in prison for her murder, she finally sees an opportunity to find out what happened.
Claire/Emily is a compelling character but it was Clive (the man accused of her sister’s murder) who really stood out to me. His story is just as tragic as that of Alison, and I felt Alexis Schaitkin did a beautiful job of weaving his story alongside Claire’s.
Schaitkin has a particular skill for creating an image that sticks with you- I was struck by her description of Claire entering her late sister’s bedroom and finding her mother sat alone in there, cradling a clump of hair pulled from a brush. These quiet moments of grief reflect painfully well the lifelong impact of such a tragic event.
I look forward to reading more by Alexis Schaitkin- this is an impressively accomplished debut.

Saint X by Alexis Scaitkin- ⭐️⭐️⭐️ I almost didn’t finish this one because the beginning was so weird. It started out being told as a narrative of what everyone was doing up until the Alison’s Death. I finally got hooked when it switched to Claire/Emily’s point of view and was anxious to find out what really happened to Alison. I was horribly disappointed because sadly I never really did found out what happened to her. It was more about how the tragedy changed the life of everyone in the story.

Claire is only seven when her older sister, Alison is found dead on the last day of their family vacation. Two locals who worked at the resort they stayed at were the prime suspects but after little conclusive evidence they are released and no one is formally charged. The island writes it off as a terrible accident.
Claire never recovers from this. Along with her family she moves to California and begins going by her middle name, Emily. After college she moves to New York City where a chance encounter has her in the back of the cab driver by none other than one of the main suspects in her sister murder, Clive Robertson. She becomes obsessed with him and stalks him for many months until finally befriending him. She lets the rest of her life fall away, her job her friends and her family. But a once she has the chance to find out the truth will it bring her the closure she desperately seeks or will it change the way she sees everyone, including herself?

2.5 stars. The writing is a joy; lyrical and quotable, but the main character is a train wreck whose bad choices create most of her problems. Lots of uncomfortable situations that made me squirm .

This book makes you think.
It's a story that touches on the bond you have with siblings, even if circumstances beyond your control kept you apart.
Reading this makes you think about privilege and how we as individuals perceive it and how we judge others based on it.
If you are looking for a thought-provoking book with a solid and engaging plot then this one to add to your reading list.

DNF 30%

The missing/dead sister is a popular trope. There are countless of titles out there featuring this tired premise. Saint X promised to be something more...and in some ways it is. It seems more self-aware in that it questions why the dead girl is always white, pretty, and charming. But it also seems to be doing the same exact thing as all those other 'dead sister' books.

Sadly, I'm finding Alexis Schaitkin's writing style, her characters, and the forced satirical tone of her narrative to be incredibly aggravating.

Thanks to Netgalley and Pan McMillan for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

DNF @ 22%.

I thought this book would be great...a murder on a fictitious Caribbean Island. I love the Caribbean and an interesting location can add a star to a mediocre book. Nothing can help this one as far as I am concerned. I started this book 5 days ago, and have been sheltering in place that whole time. I have managed to make it to 22%. Even when I am busy, I can read a good book in a day or two. This book is extremely wordy, with pages and pages of description that are pointless and unnecessary. I hated the writing style and have come to the realization that even a good story and a conclusion, if there is one here, would be lost in all of the needless additional words. I hate to DNF, and rarely do it, but life it too short and too many other good books are waiting to be read. I'm done.