Blurb:

The future of law enforcement has arrived, courtesy of private health contractor Janus Justice. Their ground-breaking ‘Offender Treatment Programme’ has been hailed as the most effective way of tackling crime yet.

As offenders move through the four-tiered system, their needs are dealt with, each tier more drastic in its methods:

Tier One: Low-risk crimes. Physical therapy encouraged

Tier Two: Trauma and addiction. Emotional and psychological reasons for offending are examined

Tier Three: Aversion therapy & moral punishment

Tier Four: Siberia, where all hope is lost

But Grace Gunnarsson, one of Janus’ most highly regarded rehabilitation psychiatrists, has uncovered a terrible flaw in the system, one that is allowing people to get away with murder…

Review:

I read The Treatment for my September reading challenge because although this novel crosses several different genres, I do not often read dystopian fiction. I think this is because I sometimes struggle to become immersed in a world which doesn’t resemble the one in which I live. However, this was not a problem for me here. Sarah Moorhead is a fantastic writer and she has created an environment that I could easily visualise and characters with whom I could relate and sympathise. 

I found the premise of The Treatment to be very interesting and particularly relevant to current issues in society, given the scrutiny of the justice system in the news at the moment. It definitely gave me something to think about as I was reading, and this added extra depth to the novel for me. 

The protagonist of The Treatment is Grace Gunnarsson. We see straight from the prologue that she is a character with a complicated background, and it’s clear that this influences her behaviour and decisions throughout the novel. She is a character with whom I found it easy to sympathise and I rooted for her as the story progressed, particularly as the two different parts of her life started to come together. 

There is so much going on in The Treatment: the novel has several layers and I was engaged by every single one. I love how the tension escalated and there was a definite sense of danger which kept me hooked until the final page. The ending does have some surprises and I was keen to find out how the situation would be resolved. 

I am looking forward to reading more by this author in future! 

The Treatment is available from Amazon.

You can still sponsor me for my September reading challenge for Teenage Cancer Trust here.