Madeleine Roux, the author of Asylum, tried to make her novel a successful thriller for young adults, but the book did not turn out as she had planned.

Asylum is about a supposedly bright, but extremely shy, seventeen year old boy named Dan.  When he attends a summer college-prep program in New Hampshire, he instantly falls in love with an artistic girl named Abby.  Dan befriends Abby and, as a result, meets her friend Jordan a gay and brilliant mathematician.  The students’ dorms are in an old asylum, which had been shut down because of the gruesome activity that had been going on there.  As the novel progresses, Roux reveals that all three of her main characters have had psychological connection to the asylum.  Dan starts to see strange apparitions such as an operating room and anonymous notes that he begins to receive.  The three friends seem to be at the program to further their education, but they often recklessly disregard the rules and risk getting thrown out.  For example, they often go down to the basement of the asylum where they see the warden’s office and operating rooms.  As they visit the basement more frequently, they begin to unravel the dark history of the asylum including a murderer who might possibly be on the loose.  The three main characters begin to turn against each other. As the book races to the finish, the reader becomes unaware of what is real and what is imagined.

The book has some bad qualities to it. There was no character development in this novel whatsoever, and characterization is the key in a thriller. The characters also seemed cliché and were hard to connect to. Dan and Abby’s romance seems forced and, as a reader, it felt awkward to me. The characters’ reactions aren’t right. Abby and Jordan overreact over nothing. The plot is choppy and feels disconnected, and the romance between Abby and Dan doesn’t need to be there. It just doesn’t fit and makes the book worse! However, even though the plot was all over the place, there were points toward the climax of the book where Roux made my palms sweat and kept my eyes glued to the page.

Asylum by Madeleine Roux wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read, but it definitely wasn’t the worst.