Book Review: "The Sun Down Motel" by Simone St. James
“The Sun Down Motel” by Simone St. James
Synopsis: Something hasn’t been right at the roadside Sun Down Motel for a very long time, and Carly Kirk is about to find out why in this chilling new novel from the USA Today bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls.
Upstate New York, 1982. Viv Delaney wants to move to New York City, and to help pay for it she takes a job as the night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. But something isnʼt right at the motel, something haunting and scary.
Upstate New York, 2017. Carly Kirk has never been able to let go of the story of her aunt Viv, who mysteriously disappeared from the Sun Down before she was born. She decides to move to Fell and visit the motel, where she quickly learns that nothing has changed since 1982. And she soon finds herself ensnared in the same mysteries that claimed her aunt. - Berkley
Rating (out of 5): 3.75
Trigger warnings: murder, mention of rapes, violent descriptions of crimes, ghosts
Review: I have a healthy respect for and belief in ghosts. I went to law school in New Orleans — easily one of the most haunted spots in the US — and my lovely camelback apartment had a mischievous ghost. His name was Bruce, and he wasn’t totally malicious, but he did move things around and turn on lights in the middle of the night, and once, knocked a giant mirror off the wall. It took me about a year living there before I got up the nerve to ask my landlords WTF was happening, and they very nonchalantly confirmed Bruce’s existence and that he was mostly a friendly ghost. Why am I telling you this, you may ask? Well, there are several ghosts (who I think are mostly friendly) in this book, and so I want you to be able to accept that premise before you even pick up the first page. If that’s not for you, this book really isn’t either.
In a somewhat out-of-character move, I chose this as my January Book of the Month pick — I was lured in by the synopsis and the catchy cover art. When I started reading it, I thought I was in for your standard true crime-inspired thriller — Carly was going to get to the bottom of Viv’s story, and we were going to see Viv’s side of things. That is definitely not how it played out, and I am glad to have been surprised!
I may be getting a little ahead of myself — let’s start again with the basics. There are two main characters here — Viv, a young, somewhat lost woman who goes missing in 1982, and Carly, her niece who goes back to the scene of the disappearance to try to get to the bottom of it. They aren’t only connected by family bonds; they are connected by the mystery at the Sun Down Motel, where they both end up working the night shift. In Viv’s timeline, she becomes fixated on three unsolved murders of women like her, and she follows it down a dark rabbit hole. Carly, whose focus initially is only on Viv, ends up in the same place as her missing aunt, following her footsteps to follow this decades-old mystery.
As you well know, we are spoiler free around here, so I don’t feel like there’s much more I can besides that, while there were some twists I saw coming from a mile away, most of the book wasn’t totally predictable. One of the things that I am glad was missing from this book was the “unreliable narrator” trope that seems to have taken over the suspense and thriller space. Both Carly and Viv were strong women, completely in control of their faculties, even if they were better detectives than most lay people. The book did wrap up annoyingly quickly, and in a little bit too tidy of a bow for my tastes, but all in all, it was a good mystery that kept me up later than it should have at night.
TL;DR: Part murder mystery, part ghost story, and mostly enjoyable! I am definitely not the target audience for this one (I have a healthy respect for ghosts), but I am not mad I picked it up. If you enjoy a good spooky psychological thriller, this one ‘s for you!
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