Sanctum (Asylum, 2)
In the chilling second book in the New York Times bestselling Asylum series, three teens must return to the asylum that still haunts their dreams to end the nightmare once and for all. With the page-turning suspense and horror that made Asylum such a standout, and featuring found photographs from real vintage carnivals, Sanctum is a mind-bending reading experience that's perfect for fans of the smash hit Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
Dan, Abby, and Jordan remain traumatized by the summer they shared in the Brookline asylum. Much as they'd love to move on, many questions remain, and someone is determined to keep the terror alive, sending the teens photos of an old-timey carnival, with no note and no name. Forsaking their plan never to go back, the teens return to New Hampshire College under the guise of a weekend for prospective students, and there they realize that the carnival from the photos is not only real, it's here on campus, apparently for the first time in many years.
Sneaking away from sample classes and college parties, Dan and his friends lead a tour of their own—one through the abandoned houses and hidden places of a surrounding town. Camford is hiding a terrible past, and the truth behind Dan's connection to the asylum's evil warden is more terrifying than Dan ever imagined.
Don't miss Madeleine Roux's all-new gothic horror novel, House of Furies.
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Community Reviews
So Dan is having all kinds of hallucinations and he goes to visit creepy Felix (who was possessed by "The Sculptor" in the first book and was killing people and making them pose, kind of like Body Works except more homicidal). Felix gives him a picture with numbers on the back which are, duh, coordinates. Dan gets together with his old friends Abby and Jordan, who were there for the first round of shenanigans, and they go back to the college to do some investigating. Long story short, the coordinates are to houses that hold clues to the key of the whole thing. Turns out, the warden was doing a combo of brainwashing (using a weird stone) and lobotomies and also LSD to bring people under his control. He brought the whole secret society of the Scarlets under his control and also Professor Reyes, who he then used as a puppet to keep going with his works. Eventually, Reyes corners them all and wants to know the keyword that will undo everything. Apparently it's "Sanctum" and everybody is briefly freed before she burns to a crisp. They really ought to go back to Felix and tell him "sanctum". Poor fella. Anyhow, Dan now has the key to the madness but also the stone. Hmm. A little too like your predecessor, eh, buddy? So the third book will be about the stone and him wrestling with its implications.
Anyhow, it wasn't the worst book I've ever read but certainly far from the best. I'll probably still read the last one, because, hell, why not? Yay summer!
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