A Madness So Discreet
Author: Mindy McGinnis
Genre: Mystery? History? Thriller?
Grade: C
A Madness So Discreet was the Owlcrate book of the month for October and it was supposed to be one of my scary book reads. While it was intriguing and in some places maddening I’m not really sure what it was but it wasn’t scary or spooky or anything else.
The beginning starts off super promising. Grace Mae is institutionalized not because she is crazy but because the people around her have done horrible things to here and unfortunately she is powerless. This has some atmosphere. This has some great elements. A horrible asylum head. All the questionable and down right criminal ideas about treating people back in those days. And a creepy dude in a dungeon like area of the hospital that seemed to have some sort of ability to see people. I’m liking it. It doesn’t last.
Grace winds up in rather a nice asylum pretty quickly making good friends and trying to put her past behind her while helping a Doctor try to solve the murder of several local girls.
The problem from this point on is that it pretty much doesn’t go anywhere. I don’t want to get into spoilers but this mystery is wrapped up super quick and while eventually I did come to appreciate the ending I had some major problems with how it was playing out and while I thought Grace was an interesting character I could also never really get a feel for her.
So that pretty much sums it up for me. It has a lot of intriguing ideas but it felt all over the place. I’m not unwilling to say that maybe the book was marketed poorly and I had certain expectations but even taking that into account it was potential with very little to no pay off.
Recommend: Honestly, I’d skip this one unless maybe you tend to like historical stories about asylums. FYI, trigger warnings below….
Rape, Sexual Abuse, Child Molestation and a Miscarriage