When trying to find something to read, I thought maybe I would need something frothy and fantastical. Given everything going on in the world right now, it seemed like the best solution. It worked during the pandemic, so I thought it would work now too. But nothing seemed interesting.
Then, I was going back and forth between really angry and really depressed one day, and decided that if I was going to keep feeling these unpleasant feelings, I might as well find something to make me remember that things could be worse. So I rifled through a list of domestic thriller reads, and wound up checking out The Writing Retreat.
Amateur writer Alex receives the opportunity of a lifetime when she is invited to attend a month-long writing retreat at the isolated mansion of her favorite author, Roza Vello. Alex finds camaraderie among the other women attending the retreat, except for her ex-best friend Wren, who still has an icy chip on her shoulder. The pressure is on, though, because Roza expects everyone to produce a brand-new manuscript with the chance to win a seven-figure publishing deal. But the retreat is peppered with mysteries, and Roza’s erratic behavior doesn’t help. Especially not when one of the writers mysteriously vanishes, unleashing a series of strange and terrifying events.
One could say that The Writing Retreat is a pretty trophy thriller. We have a group of people forced into a strange situation inside an old isolated house, an enigmatic proprietor pulling the puppet strings, drug trips, rising rivalries, and supernatural mysteries, among others. But is it compelling? Oh yes.
Alex, while not the most interesting character in the cast, is at least relatable in her jealousy and resentment toward her ex-friend Wren. Wren is the kind of girl who will turn all your problems around on you and make everything about her, not taking accountability for anything. It is Alex’s resentment and anger toward Wren that drives her desire to win the lucrative publishing deal, and it’s a desire you can really get behind after Wren pulls one mean-girl stunt too many.
I like the other women attending the retreat, Taylor, Kiera, and Poppy. They have just enough personality to distinguish themselves, but I like most how they don’t choose sides in Alex and Wren’s petty rivalry. Wren may be a mean girl, but she is not so manipulative that she immediately somehow wins all the other girls to her side.
No, the most manipulative person in the whole mansion is Roza Vallo herself.
Roza is someone who pretends like she knows the secrets of the universe (writing in particular), and she goes pretty far to “help” the women produce their best work. She gets the writers to trust her enough to open up, telling her things they’ve never told anyone else. These women have only known Roza for a week or two at that point, and you can just feel Roza love-bombing them into thinking she really cares about them and their work. No matter how relieved Alex is at telling Roza her darkest secrets, you just know that Roza will use such knowledge against them at some point.
This book does have interesting things to say about writers and their methods. For example, Roza asks each writer to pitch their novel idea to her, and you can see how each idea is influenced by the writers’ life experiences, interests, and their circumstances at the mansion. Wren’s idea involves an actress who goes to a remote island for a great opportunity, only to find it is not what she expected and the director is a madman. I could not help the grim flicker of foreshadowing, not to mention noticing the similarity between that idea and the book as a whole. An opportunity at a remote location where the director is crazy…hmm…a remote mansion with an aggressive author leading a retreat…
Of course, you can say that, with such an obvious similarity, you can see the author’s hand at work. Another example of this is when Alex notices a tiny glass bottle of wolfbane around Taylor’s neck. She explains that it is one of the deadliest poisons on earth, and one of the women cracks a joke about it being a murder weapon. I instantly thought that sooner or later, that wolfbane would be ground up and used as a poison. No way would they draw attention to something like that and not have it come back in some way.
Maybe it’s the author showing their hand, but it also helps keep you engaged enough to create a file folder of clues for what could come later. I guess you decide.
There’s also a slight supernatural cant to the story, with the ghost of a woman named Daphne who was obsessed with the occult and channeling a powerful demoness possibly haunting the mansion. Alex, trying to write something that Roza would like, digs deeper into Daphne’s story, and draws some intriguing parallels between herself and Daphne. And you can see these parallels in the novel that Alex ends up writing: how she uses the novel to cope with the intensifying situation in the mansion. It’s always so interesting seeing how an artist’s life experiences translate into art: how each book or painting or any other work of art is an extension of the artist’s mind, making the art that much more precious and almost sacred.
That said, the supernatural stuff almost drags the book down. I realize I go back and forth on whether supernatural scares work for me, but this was a case where the ghosts made things cheesier rather than scarier. It’s amazing how the way one single aspect of a story is handled can change the tone of everything else.
Once the cat is out of the bag and things get dicey in the final act, it’s a pretty fun ride. It’s a little predictable and things don’t get as crazy as they could, but it’s still a gripping final act. I think I like this book more for the things it has to say about writers, writing, and publishing more than the actual thrills. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still fun, but I don’t think it’s going to haunt anyone’s nightmares except for writers.
The Library Key 