Thank you, Celadon Books for sending me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. In the novel "Saint X" by Alexis Schaitkin, a parent's worst fear comes true. While on vacation, their daughter Alison goes missing and turns up dead. Claire, Alison's younger sister, has lived her life looking up to her big sister, and when she discovers her sister's fate, her life is turned upside down. Claire must live her life with everyone knowing the sad, tragic story of her sister. There was even a tv crime series created after it.
Years after her sister's death, Claire chances to find the man suspected as her sister's killer driving a taxi in New York City. Claire realizes that she didn't really know her sister as well as she had thought and spent most of the novel rediscovering who Alison was. Claire becomes obsessed with discovering who Alison was and what happened to her. Schaitkin did an excellent job of showing the effects on a family after a family member dies and the grief of those who knew them and how their death changed their lives.
Tension dripped out of this novel, the way she ended her scenes and strung the reader on the edge of their seat to find out what happened to Alison. She moved back and forth in time. It was eery to learn everything about Alison, we discovered big moments in her life and secrets that died with her. Only to then remember that Alison was dead the whole time.
Claire allows the obsession of what happened to her sister to consume her, she needed to get Clive to admit that he killed her sister. She put off everything in her life to discover the truth at any cost.
Schaitkin is a beautiful writer. The images and language that she used throughout the book demonstrated her skill and shows that she is a very talented writer. The novel is full of gorgeous imagery that I stopped a couple times just to reread how beautiful it was. Schaitkin also did a fantastic job with character development. She weaved together each character's backstory, even secondary characters, and presented everyone as a fully fleshed-out person. The pacing of the novel is on the slower side, but I needed to see how the book ended. I look forward to seeing what Alexis Schaitkin writes next!