Julia Bartz

When Alex is invited to an exclusive writing workshop with superstar author Roza Vallo she is thrilled. She has worshiped the writer of feminist horror novels since she was a teenager. There are only two catches. The first -- since her best friend Wren ghosted her a year ago, Alex hasn't written a word, and second -- Wren will be there. But this is her last and best chance to chase her dreams and so of course Alex goes to the writing retreat. Awkwardness with an ex-friend turns out to be the show more smallest of the problems Alex will face at the retreat, because Roza's house is hiding more than nervous writers and Roza has a plan of her own.

This is the kind of thriller that starts strong and then just keeps piling on new elements until it all becomes ridiculous. But if you read the first chapter, in which a feminist woman author of horror novels is a star, complete with covers of fashion magazines and appearances that sell out in a matter of minutes, who is nonetheless described as "reclusive," you've already agreed to suspend all of your critical facilities to this book. Julia Bartz left nothing on the table when she wrote this thing and you've got to appreciate how she manages to keep raising the stakes. Is this a good book? Absolutely not. Is it a good thriller? Not if you need your thrillers to make sense. Is it a fun read? Yes, it is, as long as you keep turning the pages without thinking too deeply about what just happened. And you've got to like a novel in which an author (I imagined Silvia Moreno-Garcia in the role) is a celebrity made unimaginably wealthy through her handful of feminist horror novels. show less

Thea is a social worker at a psychiatric unit in New York who is barely holding herself together — drinking too much, carrying unresolved trauma, and struggling to maintain professional distance. When a catatonic Jane Doe is brought into her ward, Thea has a strange, visceral feeling she knows this woman. She's right: the patient turns out to be Catherine, a celebrity who starred in a show called Stargirl that Thea watched obsessively as a teenager — and who seems to share an uncanny show more resemblance to Thea herself. Just as Thea starts connecting dots about Catherine's past and her own, Catherine is signed out of the hospital by people claiming to be her parents. Determined to find her, Thea follows a trail of clues to a remote wellness retreat in the New Mexico desert run by two charismatic shamans called Moon and Sol — the Center for Relational Healing.
[May contain spoilers]
Once inside the Center, Thea discovers that Jonah — a man she'd almost slept with back in New York — is also there, and he reveals he's actually a PI hired by Catherine's family to find her. The retreat's sessions grow increasingly bizarre and invasive, involving group therapy, orgies, and rituals designed to access past lives. The ceremonies start to feel specifically targeted at Thea — Moon and Sol seem to be steering her toward believing she and Catherine are destined sisters from another existence, and that Thea is meant to fulfill some kind of world-changing prophecy. The whole thing tips into a psychological fever dream where it becomes genuinely hard to distinguish what's real, what's manipulation, and what Thea's own trauma is projecting onto the situation. When they finally find Catherine, things get darker rather than clearer. show less

Didn't live up to the hype.

A group of young women writers are invited to attend an exclusive writing retreat at the remote estate of a best-selling author, and things slowly begin to go south.

Billed as supernatural (think "The Haunting of Hill House"), it's more a psychological drama, and most of the characters are so unlikeable that it's hard to care about them. Things move from unlikely to oh-come-on - seriously? (I'm still wondering how the Chief Villain managed to plan for the show more mid-February blizzard that finalizes their isolation.) show less

The Writing Retreat Julia Bartz is a so-so psychological thriller.

Alex wants to be a published author, but with writer's block she hasn't written anything lately. Then a friend sends feminist horror writer Roza Vallo one of her previous stories. Roza loves the story and invites Alex to the exclusive, all-female writing retreat at her Adirondacks estate, Blackbriar. Even though she learns that her former best friend, Wren, will be there, Alex can't turn down this opportunity. When she show more arrives, Alex learns the rules. All the five women invited must write a complete novel in 28 days and are required to write 3,000 words a day. Roza's editor will publish the best manuscript and pay a million dollar advance for it.

There is no doubt that the quality of the writing is good, but this was not quite the novel I was expecting based on the description. The premise is very compelling. Yes, there is a high pressure writing competition, there are cruel mind games, and, okay, the mansion might be haunted, but I wasn't prepared for all the focus on the occult as well as the drugs, sex, and other actions of the women. It also seemed a bit too predictable and I didn't care for the ending. Somewhere after the opening the idea of a writing competition and a book about writers went down a totally different rabbit hole and one I wasn't interested in.

I'm an outlier here. Many people love this novel. I just didn't enjoy the novel beyond the opening premise. While I forced myself to finish it, I should have just left it DNF and kept working through the many novels on my to be read list. 2 stars, one given for the quality of the writing beyond the plot and that I read it.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Atria/Emily Bestler Books.
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