After watching the Hulu series, I recently read Saint X by Alexis Schaitkin. The series definitely captured my attention enough that during the middle I purchased the ebook (without even looking at Goodreads star rating).

After finishing the TV series on Hulu (and being disappointed) I read the book, thinking it would be the same pace. Unfortuley, I really struggled reading this book.

Here is a quick summary of the book, from Goodreads “Claire is only seven years old when her college-age sister, Alison, disappears on the last night of their family vacation at a resort on the Caribbean island of Saint X. Several days later, Alison’s body is found in a remote spot on a nearby cay, and two local men – employees at the resort – are arrested. But the evidence is slim, the timeline against it, and the men are soon released. The story turns into national tabloid news, a lurid mystery that will go unsolved. For Claire and her parents, there is only the return home to broken lives.

Years later, Claire is living and working in New York City when a brief but fateful encounter brings her together with Clive Richardson, one of the men originally suspected of murdering her sister. It is a moment that sets Claire on an obsessive pursuit of the truth – not only to find out what happened the night of Alison’s death but also to answer the elusive question: Who exactly was her sister? At seven, Claire had been barely old enough to know her: a beautiful, changeable, provocative girl of eighteen at a turbulent moment of identity formation.

As Claire doggedly shadows Clive, hoping to gain his trust, waiting for the slip that will reveal the truth, an unlikely attachment develops between them, two people whose lives were forever marked by the same tragedy.“

It took me about 3 weeks to read this book. I gave it a one-star on Goodreads.

I didn’t feel that there was any lead, any climax, or truthfully any ending to the book. It felt like it was missing a lot of the emotional story, a lot of the feeling. There was a lot of dis-attachment from the words to the characters. I didn’t connect to any characters, actually. It felt like I was an outsider looking in, and not fully emersed in the book, as I usually am when I read.

I really feel if you cut out the middle portion of the book you would not miss a lot of it of crucial information. There were a lot of details. I mean A LOT of details. Reading became quite tedious. There were just so many details that the book became boring, the words became irrelevant.

The “chapters”, maybe because I read it on Kindle, just seemed to go on for ages. No actual chapters with numbers made each section seem to drag on forever. I just couldn’t see an end. More and more characters, viewpoints starting coming in, and there were irritating jumps in chapters with no identification as to who is talking.

I was pretty close to not finishing this book. But as odd as it sounds, I HATE not finishing a book, so I trudged through.. Really really slowly.

There are so many other good books that I can recommend if you want thriller or mystery, or even romance. Comment below if you’d like any recommendations!

What did you think of Saint X if you have read it?