Peace In The Margins

“Some of us like the dark. It’s what we know.”

Oh how I love a good ghost story, and this one is better than good. The last great ghost story I read – you know the one where you become so immersed that every thump and bump in the night causes you pause – makes the knife piercing tingle leap from your belly to attack your flesh…the kind that makes you turn every light in the house on – was Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. And before that was Stephen King’s Christine (yes, I know it’s about a car…and a ghost).  The Sun Down Motel lived up to that kind a great scare.

A motel with secrets…and ghosts. A 35 year old crime that still hung over all involved and one who has been thrown head-long into the aftermath. And the entire time, the Sun Down’s permanent residents did everything they could to provide clues and warnings to the living. These ghosts also bring the story to a climatic end. 

St. James gives us a deliciously atmosphere driven creepy mystery, one that many readers have declare impossible to put down. While I did indeed put it down every night, I looked forward to my time in Fell, NY. I thought about Viv and Carley throughout the day, wondering if they’d wait patiently for me to begin their story again. 

The alternating perspectives, the subtle and quiet progression, takes the reader on a non-stop spiral forward. I found myself not realizing how fast I was reading, how quickly the next scene hit me, or that I was in my own bedroom and not the office at the Sun Down. 

My only regret with this novel is that I didn’t wait until October and binge it in one fell swoop. 

I’ve never read St. James before, and now I want to read her back list.