Book Review: ‘The Sun Down Motel: A Novel’ By Simone St. James

Following her last great novel The Broken Girls, author Simone St. James is back with her next thrilling novel The Sun Down Motel. It’s a twisty story of murder, disappearances, ghosts and shocking reveals.

The year is 1982 and Viv Delaney has fled her home town on the way to New York. She ends up in Fells, a small town in New York. She gets a job as the overnight clerk at The Sun Down Motel. Working overnights is different than anything else. She sees strange people, hears strange things and has to deal with the ghosts of The Sun Down Motel. A mysterious person is smoking, doors are being opened and closed and young women have been murdered and have disappeared. And now Viv has vanished without a trace.

In 2017 Carly Kirk has left home and college and made her way to Fells. She wants to see if she can figure out what happened to Viv, who was her aunt. She follows the same path as Viv. She gets a job as the overnight clerk and even rents the same apartment Viv lived in. She starts her investigation and starts to learn little things. She also smells the smoking, sees the doors opening and closing, seeing a strange woman and a child, who she later figures out are ghosts of people that died at the motel.

The more she digs, the more clues she finds and also finds people from that time hard to get information from. Soon she figures things out and her life is in danger and the only thing that might save her are the ghosts of the past. And she finally learns the truth of what happened to Viv and the girls.

You can pick up The Sun Down Motel in stores on Tuesday, February 18th from Berkely.