The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman

 

-From Goodreads

In the fall of 1918, thirteen-year-old German immigrant Pia Lange longs to be far from Philadelphia’s overcrowded slums and the anti-immigrant sentiment that compelled her father to enlist in the U.S. Army. But as her city celebrates the end of war, an even more urgent threat arrives: the Spanish flu. Funeral crepe and quarantine signs appear on doors as victims drop dead in the streets and desperate survivors wear white masks to ward off illness. When food runs out in the cramped tenement she calls home, Pia must venture alone into the quarantined city in search of supplies, leaving her baby brothers behind.

Bernice Groves has become lost in grief and bitterness since her baby died from the Spanish flu. Watching Pia leave her brothers alone, Bernice makes a shocking, life-altering decision. It becomes her sinister mission to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable, planning to transform the city’s orphans and immigrant children into what she feels are “true Americans.”

Waking in a makeshift hospital days after collapsing in the street, Pia is frantic to return home. Instead, she is taken to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum – the first step in a long and arduous journey. As Bernice plots to keep the truth hidden at any cost in the months and years that follow, Pia must confront her own shame and fear, risking everything to see justice – and love – triumph at last. Powerful, harrowing, and ultimately exultant, The Orphan Collector is a story of love, resilience, and the lengths we will go to protect those who need us most.

-My review

In a parallel to today's COVID-19 pandemic, Ellen Marie Wiseman takes you on a journey starting in the middle of the first wave of the 1918 Spanish flu.  It is easy to see the similarities Pia experienced in 1918, and those being experienced today.  The quickness of the death with the Spanish flu did tear families apart and have the potential for someone to take advantage of the those who are less advantaged, and those who are grieving.  I found this book to be a compelling lesson in the horror of that time in history.

Asylum by Madeleine Roux

 

-From Goodreads

For sixteen-year-old Dan Crawford, New Hampshire College Prep is more than a summer program—it's a lifeline. An outcast at his high school, Dan is excited to finally make some friends in his last summer before college. But when he arrives at the program, Dan learns that his dorm for the summer used to be a sanatorium, more commonly known as an asylum. And not just any asylum—a last resort for the criminally insane.

As Dan and his new friends, Abby and Jordan, explore the hidden recesses of their creepy summer home, they soon discover it's no coincidence that the three of them ended up here. Because the asylum holds the key to a terrifying past. And there are some secrets that refuse to stay buried.

Featuring found photos of unsettling history and real abandoned asylums and filled with chilling mystery and page-turning suspense, Madeleine Roux's teen debut, Asylum, is a horror story that treads the line between genius and insanity.

-My review

I recently read Asylum by Madeleine Roux.  I was intrigued as both a psychology teacher and a lover of mysteries.  I wanted to love it.  It was interesting read with engaging characters.  I thought it was compelling with the history of the psychiatric hospital (of course, as a psychology teacher, I found things that were not completely accurate.....I know, I know...FICTION).  It was still quite a page turner.  I'm not sure if I want to continue on to the sequel.  But, who am I kidding...I know I will.