A review by novi
The Writing Retreat by Julia Bartz

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes

4.0

This reminds me of Rachel Hawkins' The Villa, but with much darker twist and longer (but effective) portion of darkness. The latter half of this book also reminds me of a popular gothic vampire book, but The Writing Retreat did it better (despite having longer portion of it, again) because I care more about the characters and the relationships between them here.

I finished this book in 2 sittings and that's rare lol. The beginning felt just like other books about aspiring writers' life in new york, but the next part I couldn't put this book down.

I was mad and frustrated several times reading this, just like this book wanted me to. There are a lot of "woke" discussion here that felt natural (except the she/her part, idk). I actually predicted the main idea of the ending but the way it played out was beyond my imagination. Like this would be a horror film.

My most favorite part of this book was the relationships between the characters. I think it's done really well with all the complexities of it. My least favorite part was some of the sex parts. I'm not a prude but
Spoilerthe placing of our main protagonist's sex actions just felt so bizarre and selfish to me although i think it's intentional. When Poppy tried to show something important to the mc and then she randomly having sex right then and there like I was so maddddd lol also i think what Wren did to Alex in the past could count as rape, but it was never discussed to that far of territory in this book.
. There are some excerpts of a book here and I was surprisingly not bothered by it at all (usually I don't like a book within a book). 
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