The Clinic by Sally – Anne Martyn

Would you go to a beauty clinic that promises to transform your life? If you’re prepared to put the work in.

It seems like the opportunity of a lifetime. An all-inclusive stay at a top-of-the-line wellness retreat for a month of pampering and luxury. Not just anyone gets in. Guests are hand selected.

They promise big results: a total transformation.

All you have to do is take a few pills every day. Join in the activities. Make some new friends.

But then you start to lose track of time. The meals get smaller. Everything is taken away from you.

And the guests start disappearing . . . Will you be next?

Review

I am OBSSESSED. This exact book made me start believing that I may have a favourite sub-genre of books. I would say that those are medical thrillers, but those are different, less exact.

Medical spa that specialises in perfection has weird things going on. That’s it. That’s the tweet.

I’m not going to lie, there are quite a lot of characters in here, mainly the women that are chosen for the clinic’s programme, and I actually think that the third-person narration didn’t help the case of keeping up with all the names, but somehow, you grow to manage it all. We mainly follow three women, though: Amy, one of the lucky few to participate in the wellness programme this year; Jenny, a reporter commissioned to get the inside scoop of what really goes on in the clinic; and Doctor Rebecca Cavendish, the director of the clinic.

While my favourite parts were the ones where we focused on Doctor Cavendish, Jenny’s (the other lead) were full of mystery and tension, so I didn’t feel like the book dragged at all. The imagery written by Anne-Martin of the clinic and its hidden intentions was so, so very well exposed and entertaining that it feels like the perfect example of what clinic thrillers should be like. There are a lot of books (mainly sci-fi) that play with the thought-provoking theme of the obsession with beauty and weight, so while The Clinic may feel like a drop in the bucket in the never-ending list of criticism media, the book is unique in its storyline, and where the author takes you, we see the same problem from different sides of the coin. I’m not going to lie, I related way more to the doctor than the patients. There is something just so peculiar and fascinating about seeing the side of the “villain” when they are victims of the same pain they inflict.

Relatability galore all around.