The Sun Down Motel | Book Review
The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
Berkley Publishing – February 18, 2020
*An advanced reader ebook copy was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review*
For a complete 180, this week I’m back with a suspenseful mystery with plenty of paranormal elements! If you follow me on Instagram, you may know that my friend Kendall at The Geeky Yogi and I have been #buddyreading a number of books during the past several months! We’ve demolished the Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire, Renée Ahdieh’s The Beautiful, and this month we tackled Simone St. James’s The Sun Down Motel, which we were both hyped for. Previously, we’d read The Broken Girls by St. James and really enjoyed it so we figure why not give the new book a shot!
About the Book
Something hasn’t been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why in this chilling new novel from the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.
Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary.
Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt.
My Thoughts
I devoured this! If you’ve been following my blog recently, you’ll note that I’ve been mostly gravitating toward romances and historical fiction with the occasional fantasy. So reading a thriller with paranormal elements has not been my go to for several months. However, I’m so glad I picked up this page-turner.
I’ll admit that I am not a true crime fan. I know shocking to admit for a woman in her late twenties. So many woman I know obsess over true crime shows, books, and podcasts. I am not one of those women. for the most part I actually find the obsession quite repulsive and unsettling. Despite my qualms I ended up being completely enthralled by this book.
I ended up really enjoying this novel for the feminist perspective: vengeful female ghosts, women setting out to make things right, and women looking out for and remembering women’s stories when the rest of the world would rather forget.
First, this book is told through dual perspectives – so know that going in if that’s not a writing style you like. I find that St. James does well switching between 2017 and 1982 and I kind of like that it was a more modern story rather than throwing it back to the early 1900s. We see the story through both Viv and Carly’s perspective and I like both and never felt that impulse to get back a particular character’s perspective. I thought each POV and character was dynamic on their own, which I always appreciate in a novel that switches perspectives.
I loved the atmosphere of a creepy small town and the weirdness of working the night shift. I can’t tell you a whole lot more without giving away spoilers, but I can say the ending is quite satisfying even if I guess the outcome.
I think this bestselling novel is well worth a read and I want to read more of Simone St. James’s work!
About the Author
Simone St. James is the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of The Sun Down Motel, The Broken Girls, Lost Among the Living, and The Haunting of Maddy Clare. She wrote her first ghost story, about a haunted library, when she was in high school, and spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time.
