James wanted me to, I finally began to put the pieces together and form a clearer picture. For the first two-thirds, I gathered puzzle pieces and tried to keep them organized, frustrated when none of them fit together. I stayed up until three am, unable to take my eyes from the page for more than a minute. You’re immediately presented with the mystery in the prologue. The hero, a cop who I don’t believe was ever a soldier, isn’t all that helpful. There’s a ghost story and a murder mystery with roots in WWII that the heroine has to solve. In contrast, The Broken Girls is set in northern Vermont in America, one storyline in 1950, the other in 2014. Her novels to date have been set in WWI-era England, gothic ghost stories with plots rooted in the war and a heroine who has to solve a murder mystery with the aid of a traumatized ex-soldier hero.

Guess I’ll be rereading her other books in the meantime.

Then I realized it’ll be just that much longer until I can read the next one. Getting to read this book so early was like a dozen Christmases rolled into one. She’s on the premises, interviewing the landowner, when the crew makes a shocking discovery… And soon Fiona finds herself digging up the past to uncover the present. When construction begins on Idlewild, the place where Deb’s body had been found, Fiona decides to write a piece on the restoration. In 2014, Fiona Sheridan still can’t stop thinking about her sister’s murder. In 1950, four girls band together to survive the cold, dreadful place-and the ghost that uses their darkest secrets against them.

Idlewild Hall is a girls’ boarding school where the illegitimate, the mentally ill, and the troublemakers are swept under the rug. James, Berkley/Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review. A spooky, intelligent, character-driven thriller

Lost among the living simone st james