After loving The Broken Girls by Simone St. James I was extremely excited to be one of the first in the library queue to borrow The Sun Down Motel. A run-down motel in a small town, a young lady escaping the big city questioning her future, murders, missing girls, and ghosts? Yes, sign me up for all of that.
About The Book 📚
Publication Date: Feb 18, 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Horror
My Review
› November 1982 in upstate New York. Vivian, a twenty-year-old, starts work at 11 pm, by 3 am she had vanished.
› November 2017. Twenty-year-old Carly lost her mother to cancer and is now questioning her life goals. It’s been thirty-five years since her mother’s sister, Vivian, went missing. So, Carly does what any curious, questioning young woman would do, and travels to Fell, New York, in hopes of finding her aunt.
› The dual-perspective/dual-timeline is the perfect way to tell this story. I love how we start in November 1982 then flip to before Vivian’s disappearance, learning more about her and what she was like. Like Carly, Vivian was also trying to solve a mystery of who killed Betty, Cathy, and Victoria.
› The characters are AMAZING. Carly, Vivian, their roommates and the ghosts who haunt the motel…the young boy ghost, oh man he broke my heart. I was attached to all of them. I want more stories with these characters.
› The Sun Down Motel is a page-turning mystery that will creep you out and boggle your mind. I couldn’t put this down and stayed up way too late finishing it. One tiny complaint I have is the love interest, it felt unnecessary, however, it did not impact my overall enjoyment of the book.
› Weird thing I’d like to mention just because it creeped me out. So, before reading this book I took a trip with my husband to Toronto, Canada where we rented a hotel room after watching the Toronto Maple Leafs NHL game. Our room number was 217. Then I read a book (I think it was The Other People) and the main character stayed in a hotel room…217. No joke. THEN I read The Sun Down Motel and guess what. Someone stays in room 217. Well…talk about goosebumps!
› Final Thoughts
• Atmospheric, haunting, and unique, The Sun Down Motel is a compelling mystery that you won’t be able to put down. Kinda reminded me of The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell. Highly recommend! ★★★★★
Smitten For Fiction 