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The Patient

--Staff Picks

The Patient

Jasper DeWitt
Published: 2020
Age Range: 16+
Genre: Horror, Psychological Horror

Told through a series of online posts, “The Patient” follows Parker, a psychiatrist who is reflecting on a horrifying encounter from the beginning of his career. In order to be close to his fiancé, Parker takes a job at a psychiatric hospital in New England. But on his first day he meets a baffling patient; a 40 year old man who has been confined to the hospital for more than three decades with no diagnosis, and no current effort to help or cure him. As Parker delves deeper into the mystery surrounding the man he finds that the patient and the hospital is not what it seems.

This book is one of those incredibly creepy stories that gets under your skin. The format of internet posts makes it a breeze to read; I didn’t want to put it down in the short amount of time it took to read since it’s more of a novella than a whole novel. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart since there are graphic descriptions of gore and assault. But worth checking out if you want something that will stick with you.

TW: s/a, self harm, depictions of mental illness, violence