Title: THE WRITING RETREAT
Author: Julia Bartz
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Read: February 2023
Expected publication: 2 March 2023
My Rating: 🌟🌟
Book Description:
But when the attendees arrive, Roza drops a bombshell—they must all complete an
entire novel from scratch during the next month, and the author of the best one
will receive a life-changing seven-figure publishing deal. Determined to win
this seemingly impossible contest, Alex buckles down and tries to ignore the
strange happenings at the estate, including Roza’s erratic behavior, Wren’s
cruel mind games, and the alleged haunting of the mansion itself. But when one
of the writers vanishes during a snowstorm, Alex realizes that something very
sinister is afoot. With the clock running out, she’s desperate to discover the
truth and save herself.
A claustrophobic and propulsive thriller exploring the dark side of friendships
and fame, The Writing Retreat is the unputdownable debut novel from a
compelling new talent.
My musings:
I think that I am about two decades too old for
this story! The premise of THE WRITING RETREAT immediately appealed to me – I love
stories about writers and the “book within a book” theme, especially if it also
contains a remote, atmospheric setting. Bartz’s novel has all that, plus some
intriguing friendship dynamics that most of us will be able to relate to,
because who hasn’t ever had a fallout with a best friend and had to suffer the
heartbreak and awkward moments that follow. I was fully engaged in the story up
to the moment the group of young writers were pitched against one another, each
trying to write the story that would catch Roza Vallo’s eye and land them a
publishing deal.
Then things started going wrong for
me. Even before the story took a turn into the realm of the unbelievable, I
felt that Alex as a main character was inconsistent and quite frankly a mess! In
fact, the whole group of women acted like a bunch of boarding school teenagers
rather than the almost-30’s they were described as. I am neither a fan of the “I
was drugged so I acted out of character” theme that excused some of the bizarre
behaviour, nor of explicit sex scenes thrown in just for – what exactly? Shock
value? At times I felt like the author was trying too hard to include multiple
themes (feminism, LBGTQ, peer pressure, friendship issues, supernatural themes,
etc) without properly including them into her characterisations and storyline. The
“book within a book” also didn’t fit in with the main story and distracted from
the trying-to-be-claustrophobic atmosphere rather than add to it.
I conclude this review by conceding
that I am probably not the right audience for this novel, because from the halfway
point onwards it was just a struggle to stay connected. I am definitely an outlier
here, so if you find the premise as intriguing as I did, give it a go and make
up your own mind.
Thank
you to Netgalley and the publisher for the free electronic copy of this novel and
for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.
