Hello everyone!
I am back with another review from The Program series, today it is The Remedy by Suzanne Young.
This book follows Quinlan, a closer. She seamlessly transitions into the role of a deceased person, helping the family grieve and accept the loss of their daughter or sister. She's been closing since she was a child and sometimes it's hard to remember what memories are even her own. Quinn's latest assignment seems, at first glance, just like any other. But then she learns it will be two weeks long, much longer than the 7-day limit that is usually enforced, and she will not only be helping the parents of Catalina Barnes, but also her boyfriend, Isaac. What's more, the assignment is coming straight from the head of the corporation, Arthur Pritchard. As Quinn struggles to remain tethered to the real world in this assignment, she learns that perhaps reality isn't quite so real, and she may not be able to trust those closest to her.
As I mentioned earlier, I was really interested in seeing how this book relates to the main books in the series. Reading it right after The Treatment helped shine some light on the similarities and references. Most glaringly, the inclusion of Arthur Pritchard, the creator of The Program in the later books, who makes an appearance in this book as the creator of The Remedy. There were also portrayals of some of the behaviour shown by some of the teens in the later book who were sent to The Program, including mood shifts, depression, and the social aspect of the later epidemic.
I did like, however, that this book had a really interesting concept. Even without reading the rest of the series, it's a really unique story. I think that is one of the things I like best about Young's novels, the concepts are always quite different from other books I've read, and this series is no different.
It took me a little bit to get into this book, I think some of that was just adjusting to the fact that there wasn't any Sloane/James in this book. I knew it was a different cast of characters but it still took a minute for me to accept that and really get invested in this story with new characters. It's tricky to talk about the characters themselves because they spend so much of the novel 'playing' other people. I don't really know what part of Quinn was real because she spent so much time playing someone else.
Once the story got going, however, things really picked up. The last half and the last quarter especially was super intense and I couldn't stop reading. We find out what was going on behind the scenes of Quinn's assignment and there are some shocking revelations. Even though I'd read it before, I completely forgot what happened at the end and was, I think, just as shocked as I was when I read it originally.
Overall, a very necessary addition to the background story of The Program that also stands well on its own.