The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Hello everyone.

Have you ever gone to one of those old roadside motels? No? Me either. Hubby always wants to stay at them, referring to them as "mom and pop" places instead of something corporate owned. I agree it is a lovely idea, but I can't get the picture out of my head of sagging mattresses, rusty, dirty bathrooms, and bugs. Yes, I've seen those things in big chain hotels.  I don't know, maybe one day.

I recently read The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James. I couldn't wait for this to be released. A haunted old motel, what is not to like?  For me, it wasn't all pleasant. In this story, a young woman, Viv, works at the motel in 1982 and goes missing. In 2017, Viv's niece who is obsessed with the story of her aunt's disappearance, also works at Sun Down so she can investigate what happened years ago.  It's an interesting premise but for me, the ghost story takes a back seat to the mystery that both girls are trying to solve. Timelines that shift are often an excellent way to tell a story and I love when they come together in the end but in this case everything just gets too jumbled, the story isn't clean enough. The ghost story could be expanded on and much scarier and the mystery could be much less. In fact, I correctly guessed the answer to the mystery after the first few pages of the book.

If you love Simone St. James, read this, by all means, you might love it as so many people do.  If she is a new author for you, I suggest Broken Girls, a great ghost story. Even though The Sun Down Motel wasn't my favorite, I'll be in line to purchase the next St. James novel.