ARC Review: The Patient

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion of the book or my review itself.

Title: The Patient

Author: Jasper DeWitt

Publication Date: July 7, 2020

Genre: Horror

Recommended If You Like: Creepypasta, internet stories, chapters set up as blog posts, authors that get discovered/published through unique means

The Book:

Structured as a series of online message board posts, this quick read centers around a psychiatrist who took on an asylum patient everyone else had seemed to abandon--because everyone else who had worked with this patient was either dead or committed to an asylum themselves.

What I Liked:

This book is a page turner that goes by really quickly. There's a lot of suspense, and the horror is really amped up, especially towards the end. I like that the author is playing with a more unique format with the fictional message board posts.

What I Didn't Like:

The message board format left me feeling somewhat disconnected, because the psychiatrist character was clearly talking to the other medical professionals online and so not to the readers. If I had been able to read at least some of the comments constantly referred to, it maybe would have made me feel more part of the story's world.

Also, the ending fell apart for me a little bit. It had some really scary moments, but it felt a little confusing, and a little cliched.

So...?

Everything about this book made more sense when I learned that it was originally written as a Creepypasta story on Reddit, which is where the format of the book then came from. Having read the original ending on the Reddit thread, I preferred that one a lot more than the one we got in the actual book.

This is not a bad read, it's an okay read. It's got some really scary parts, but doesn't hold up for me personally when I compare it to other spooky asylum books I've read in the past.