The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James
I got this book as my Book of the Month Club selection back in January. I hadn’t heard of it before but once I started it, I couldn’t put it down. It was absolutely riveting and I read it in a span of about two days.
— Mild spoilers ahead —
In 1982, Carly’s aunt disappeared while working the night shift at a roadside motel in upstate New York. She was never seen or heard of again, but presumed dead. Now, in 2017, after her mother dies, Carly sets off to solve the mystery of her missing aunt. But what she finds is more terrifying that she ever could have imagined.
The motel is haunted. Let’s start there. I know I’ve written before that for a good horror novel, you have to keep the monster out of sight. But this book plays it just right. You see the ghosts from time to time but you don’t know why they’re there. There’s no sense of whether they can hurt you or not. And you don’t know when they’re going to show up. It’s that perfect balance of showing what’s out there but keeping it mysterious and horrifying.
The other part of this is a serial killer story. One that preys on vulnerable women. I have lent this book to a male friend as an experiment. Because I think a portion of the terror this book induced in me was due to the fact that I am a single woman who lives alone. And this book made me very nervous while I was reading it at home, at night, in an otherwise empty house. I will report back once he finishes it whether it unnerved him in the same way it did me.
This book ticked so many boxes for me. It was the perfect blend of mystery whodunnit and horror. The tone and tenor of it was spot on. The one quibble I have with it is that the ending is terrible. It doesn’t jive with the rest of the book. It’s a problem I’ve had with a number of books, where 99% of it is absolute perfection only to be soured on the last ten pages. However, if you can ignore the ending (really, the denouement, if we’re technical), I highly recommend this book.
In the end, I have to give it 4.5/5 stars. It had all the things I wanted in a horror novel. If the ending hadn’t been so off-kilter (to my mind), it would have gotten a 5/5.
KT Byrde Writes 