The Graceview Patient

This one is a slooww burn. (If that's not your jam, skip it.) The horror sneaks in initially as glimpses, possibly hallucinatory snippets. It's unclear and the main character doesn't trust herself to know what's real and what's not. The "reality" of what's happening is unveiled late in the book.

As someone who has spent more time than I'd like in medical facilities recently, this book, unnervingly, did resonant. The author's attention to the medical details made it very real: the indecipherable chart notes, the constant needle poking, the bruising, the uncertainty of what day/time it is when you're half sedated, the weakness you feel, the churn of nurses but hardly ever seeing your actual doctor, etc. Above all though, the amount of trust you need to immediately hand over to complete strangers when you're in a hospital is uncomfortable to say the least. You're at their mercy. This book takes it to the extreme but the crux of it is the same. (If you can, always have an advocate with you!)

For a while, this book did give me Misery vibes. The patients are both authors. Their friends and family don't really know where they're located. They're isolated and confined against their will by someone who "has their best interest" in mind -- doing this for "their own good". Of course, the motives are very different. But the result is the same: they must escape their captors who become increasingly monstrous.

The audiobook narrator, Xe Sands, does an excellent job of making the prose come to life with the hesitation in her voice, the fear, the uncertainty with aptly timed pauses and trembling utterances.