Review: Sanctuary

Sanctuary 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

The small Connecticut town of Sanctuary is rocked by the death of its star quarterback. 

Daniel's death looked like an accident, but everyone knows his ex-girlfriend Harper is the daughter of a witch - and she was there when he died. 

Then the rumours start. When Harper insists Dan was guilty of a terrible act, the town turns on her. So was his death an accident, revenge - or something even darker? 

As accusations fly and secrets are revealed, paranoia grips the town, culminating in a trial that the whole world is watching . . .

You all are well aware of how much I love Vic's books so I've been anticipating Sanctuary a lot, stalking the GoodReads page for any information about it and then practically going feral at the Gollancz Blogger Evening whenVic told us all about the book, her inspirations for it and so on. I was ready for this...but still not entirely sure what to expect, and I was surprised multiple times throughout the book. 

With an opening chapter that grabs your attention, you'll soon find yourself hooked in to this as the plot builds up alongside things within the town building up and coming to a boiling point. It's easy to find yourself lost in this book as you visit the town of Sanctuary and become hooked on the lives of the townspeople, let alone the murder mystery itself. There's never a dull moment, things never slow down and even in the quieter moments of the book there's something...insidious creeping in to the narratives, something dark starting to stir. 

The POV's for this book surprised me, as we didn't get Harper's which made things all the more intriguing, and meant that I wasn't entirely sure how I felt about her for a part of the book. You're left to wonder...did she really do it? And if so..why? With a few things mentioned about her that definitely leave you unsure as to her guilt, until of course a certain reveal. My heart broke for her, to be honest, even more so as she's being vilified for what happened. 

Sarah is one of our main POV's, she's Harper's mother and the magic she uses is certainly interesting. She knows a lot about the people of the town because they're all more than happy to go to her for help with their problems and she's very serious about not using her power to hurt people, even if she does seem to stray in to a grey area a time or two when it comes to helping people. 

Maggie was my favourite character, she's our investigator. Something was so clearly up with her from the start and I had money on the fact she'd been made to forget something...but what. Which was another little mystery alongside the main one. What I appreciated, was that she was willing to listen to what everyone had to say...but not necessarily take it face value, and she was so compassionate when it came to Harper and wanting to help her. She did her utmost to help Harper and Sarah, and to fight in their corner and I loved her character. I also kinda loved Remy too who was absolutely hilarious and had me snorting with laughter! 

Our final POV is Abigail, Daniel's mother. Don't get me wrong, I really felt for her. She's left her career behind, her husband is more interested in his work than anything else and now she's just lost her child. Her grief about his death was so raw and vivid, but while I understood her and the way her mind was working, she eventually lost my support when she started her witch hunt against Harper and started her little campaign. She truly believed she was the hero, and ignored the fact that Sarah has done nothing but help her whenever she needed it. I could understand her...but she still frustrated me. 

As is usual when it comes to Vic's books, the writing is so very clever. We get Harper's POV in the beginning...and then not again until the end. Then for the entirety of the book we get the adults POV's, and they're three very different ones at that. You have the cool, level headed detective who's impartial although you could say she's a little bit biased towards Harper at one point, then you have two different ends of the scale. Sarah who's trying to defend and protect her child and prove her innocence, and the rage and grief of Abigail and her vendetta, and of course the characters are so wonderfully written that even if you don't agree with the characters and their actions...you can understand where it's coming from. I also enjoyed the police interviews, news articles and so on that were also included as part of the storytelling. 

There's also a lot of diversity seamlessly included throughout this book, with a non-binary character (something I very rarely see and there was a nicely handled conversation on pronouns included), f/f and m/m couples, and black and POC couples and I enjoyed getting to see such a nice range of diversity included, especially as some of them were in powerful positions. 

The world of the book had me in mind of Pretty Little Liars, it's a nice town, everyone knows each other, everyone's friendly and it seems all quaint and cheerful on the outside...but once you scratch the surface you start to see the darkness within, along with all the drama and scandals, some of which are brought to light thanks to the murder mystery. I feel like the town becomes more and more tainted as the book goes on and the insidious hate created by Abigail starts to take over, thoroughly destroying its image as a 'sanctuary'. 

The world has been subtly twisted to allow for magic to exist, being written in to laws and so on and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the magic in this book. There's no hand waving, magic powers kind of thing, it's a lot more natural and earth based with the rituals and the ingredients used and it was interesting to read about, along with its limitations and various rules. 

Vic mentioned at the Blogger evening that some of her inspirations for this was the Women's March as well as the Brett Kavanaugh Case, and she talked about the Me Too movement along with the question is an accusation enough? I feel like Vic did an excellent job of bringing this real world issue to the world of her book and examining it. I felt so incredibly sad reading this, that Harper had suffered so much yet people turned on her for being brave enough to speak out about it, and found it easier to do so than believe her. Also it was actually quite scary to see how easy it was for the entire town to just turn on she and Sarah because of their fear of magic. It was easy to see how such things came about in the Dark Ages, but to see how swiftly it happened in the book, with just a few words here and there and a heavy dose of fear...it was terrifying. 

Everything unfolds nicely, and it draws you in with high levels of intrigue and the everyday drama and gossip of the town. There's the mystery of the murder, and the mystery of what happened that night a few years ago...not to mention some mentioned activities of Daniel that already had me side eyeing him and feeling somewhat...queasy when it came to him because I knew. Things step up even more when Harper makes her accusation and things really spark off in a dangerous way. I have to be honest, I got pretty mad on her behalf as I was reading, I was on her side, I believed her and I know that no-one wants to get a hard, nasty truth about their kid but it was just...frustrating to see her trauma brushed to the side. 

Sanctuary was so very easy for me to binge read, it reaches a particular point when you just can't put it down and it's one hell of a powerful read that leaves you thinking even once you've put it down. The writing lures you in, as does the subtly twisted history and world, but the issues we see in this book are very, uncomfortably real. There might be magic thrown in but it's still problems and issues from the real world that are present and Vic shines a light on them in this book with her excellent writing, along with well crafted characters that you can understand even if you don't agree with them or like them. 

The themes are dark, with rape, sexual assault of a minor, substance abuse and more, there are a lot of hard issues tackled in this book and we get a hard look at what happens when herd mentality takes over in this book...and it's horrifying to watch. This is by no means a YA book, it is an adult book, and while it is dark in it's themes, it's also very powerful and I feel like there's plenty of much needed conversations to be started because of this book and the issues that are highlighted.