Review: Insanity by Susan Vaught

Insanity

By: Susan Vaught

Pub. Date: February 18, 2014

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA Children's

Pages: 384

Source: Netgalley

Never, Kentucky is not your average scenic small town. It is a crossways, a place where the dead and the living can find no peace. Not that Forest, an 18-year-old foster kid who works the graveyard shift at Lincoln Hospital, knew this when she applied for the job. Lincoln is a huge state mental institution, a good place for Forest to make some money to pay for college. But along with hundreds of very unstable patients, it also has underground tunnels, bell towers that ring unexpectedly, and a closet that holds more than just donated clothing....When the dead husband of one of Forest's patients makes an appearance late one night, seemingly accompanied by an agent of the Devil, Forest loses all sense of reality and all sense of time. Terrified, she knows she has a part to play, and when she does so, she finds a heritage that she never expected.

With her deep knowledge of mental illness and mental institutions, Susan Vaught brings readers a fascinating and completely creepy new book intertwining the stories of three young people who find themselves haunted beyond imagining in the depths of Lincoln Hospital.

I received this galley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you Netgalley and Bloomsbury USA Children's.

While the premise of this book sounded creepy and amazing, I ended up finding the story just ok. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad either and I am glad that I read it. I felt that there were just too many things going on. The prologue was from one point of view, then the first half of the book was from someone else. Then another POV was added. Usually I love different point of views, but I just didn't like the way this one was done. I also didn't like that essentially Insanity was actually three different stories. I am not a huge fan of short stories, and I wish I would have known that going into it.

Insanity is set in a mental hospital in Kentucky. This mental hospital is home to many ghosts and demons. The stories are very creepy. Each story has a set of characters having to go against a particular ghost or demon. I did enjoy the characters. They were well written and I enjoyed the romance in the story as well.

Insanity was very different from other YA stories out there today. If you are a fan of the creepy, then I definitely think this one is for you!