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More than sixty years after one of four friends in a reputedly haunted boarding school goes missing, journalist Fiona Sheridan resolves to learn her sister's fate before a harrowing discovery is made.
Vermont, 1950: There's a place for the girls whom no one wants: the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town of Barrons, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears-- until one of them mysteriously disappears. 2014: Journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death twenty years earlier; Deb's body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. Now the Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, and shocking secrets are uncovered-- secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past ... and a voice that won't be silenced.… (more)
I loved this book.! It's not my usual read, but it captured my interest from the beginning and held it all the way to the end. It was a good mix of mystery and ghost story. This was my first book from this author, but I will look for more. ( )
THE BROKEN GIRLS was an amazing book, combining many elements I love: mystery, ghost story, historical fiction, dual time periods, and crime drama. I loved it – yes, it was dark and unsettling, but I was glued to the pages.
The story alternates between the early 1950s and 2014 in a tiny Vermont town. In the past, four teenage girls attend a local boarding school for troubled girls called Idlewild Hall when one goes missing; in the present, a journalist named Fiona investigates the death of her sister whose body was found on Idlewild’s abandoned property two decades earlier. Fiona agrees to write an article on the restoration of Idlewild when it’s purchased by a mysterious buyer. During renovations, a shocking discovery pulls Fiona into the unsolved case of the missing girl. Will it also lead her to answers about her own sister’s death?
This was an atmospheric and creepy read, with some definite chilling moments. Like many Gothic novels, the house, Idlewild, was a haunted, complex character itself, and the tale of its resident ghost was heartbreaking. The mystery was complicated, and I enjoyed how the well-researched historical elements were woven into it. I love Simone St. James’ storytelling, and I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes a spooky story full of emotion and depth.
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. ( )
This was a good read, not gripping enough to merit a 5 star, couldn't put it down rating, but it kept me engaged until the end.
Although the characters are well written, I didn't find any one of them strong enough for me to be truly invested in. What I did like was the way the two timelines seamlessly worked with each other. Something's the an Author does this, things can get a little muddled; not in this case. I also have a feeling that this could be read on the older timeline first, in it's entirety, and then the more modern one. Unfortunately, as this was a library loan, I don't have the time to test this theory. ( )
This book is for my mother, the greatest heroine of my life. I love you, Mom.
First words
The sun vanished below the horizon as the girl crested the rise of Old Barrons Road.
Quotations
Barrons consisted of some well-preserved historic buildings in the center of town, used to draw the few tourists who came through, surrounded by a hardscrabble population that hoped those same tourists didn't notice their falling-down porches and the piles of firewood in their driveways.
He had left off his hat, and the wind tried to tousle his hair.
"I came to apologize," she said. He raised his eyebrows. "For what?" "For freaking you out last night. For leaving." His eyes narrowed. "You're not actually sorry," he observed. "Still, I'm apologizing," she said, holding his gaze. "I mean it. Okay?"
That trip to Old Barrons Road had shaken something loose. Idlewild had always loomed silently in the back of her mind, a dark part of her mental landscape. She'd done her best not to talk about it for twenty years, but talking about it out loud now was like bloodletting.
Jamie had pulled up the stool next to her—handsome, muscled, glorious in a jaded way, a guy who looked like he'd been a college athlete before something had made him go as quiet and wary as a wild animal.
He was smart, quietly funny. What he saw in her, she was less sure of, and she didn't ask; maybe it was the sex—which was particularly good—or companionship. All she knew was that she'd rather amputate her own arm with a rusty handsaw than have the where are we going? conversation.
she waited for him to call up the information from somewhere in his circuitry
"You could have found all of this stuff out yourself, you know." "I know," Fiona replied, and she felt herself smiling at him. "But it's more fun to get information from you."
Cindy Benshaw shifted in her chair and scratched her ear, the motion of her arm revealing the circles of sweat stains on the armpit of her blouse, like the rings of an old tree.
The details were shaky and juddery in places, like a film coming off its reel.
An unused sitting room sat primly on the right, old figurines and knickknacks growing dust on its fussy shelves.
The trees waved in the wind, the bare branches overhanging the car wafting like a sultan's fan. Fiona shivered and sand farther into her coat, unwilling to move for the moment. She had done this the other night, too—sat in her parked car at the side of the road, staring at nothing and thinking. There was something soothing and meditative about the side of a road, a place most people passed by. As a child she'd spent car rides looking out the window, thinking of the places they passed, wondering what it would be like to stop there, or there, or there. It had never been enough for her just to get from one place to another.
"The police don't have all the answers, and neither does the government. The people are where you find things. Like those records you just found. The people are the ones who keep the memories and the records the power that be would rather erase."
he had been so painfully, vibrantly alive it had almost hurt to be around him. The air had crackled when he walked into a room.
That twenty-year-old fear was buried deep in the tenor of his voice, but Fiona could hear it. It was like a whistle on a dog's frequency.
The other girls got out of bed and huddled around, even Sonia, all four of them in white nightgowns like ghosts.
Fiona closed her eyes to the blacktop flying by, to the stark trees and the gray sky, to everything.
The memories weren't the overwhelming ones she'd had that had made her sick. These were like a violin bow grinding along the edge of a single string, shrill, waiting for some kind of resolution to make it stop. The only thing that worked was writing.
After so much speculation, so much searching, here was Sonia's living history, sitting across from her in a coffee shop.
"She's still there, isn't she?" she said. "Of course Mary is still there. You've seen her." "Have you?" Fiona asked, her voice a rasp. "Every girl who went to Idlewild saw Mary. Sooner or later." Spoken quietly, matter-of-factly, the madness of seeing a ghost turned into an everyday thing.
"I don't know the answer, Fiona, but I lived at Idlewild for three years, and I can tell you what I think. I think Mary was there before the school was. I think she is part of that place—that she was part of it before the first building was even built. We were in her home. I don't know what shape she took before the school was built, but it's what she does—takes shapes, shows you things, makes you hear things. I have no doubt that she was a real person at some point, but now she's an echo."
"You could have found all this stuff out yourself, you know." "I know," Fiona replied, and she felt herself smiling at him. "But it's more fun to get information from you."
He knew who she was. Of course he did. If he didn't know she was Malcolm Sheridan's daughter, dating a fellow cop, she'd eat her journalism diploma.
Fiona looked at him. Jamie: tall, broad shoulders, dark blond hair worn slightly long and brushed back from his forehead, scruff of gold on his jaw. She'd missed him—but when Jamie wore his uniform, he was less familiar to her, less like the man who had first said Hi to her in a bar on a Friday night. The uniform did that, made him a different man.
This close to Christmas, very few families visited; mostly girls got a visit home during the holidays, at least briefly, which made the December visit extraneous. You wouldn't want to see your daughters too much, CeCe thought with unfamiliar bitterness. How awful that would be, especially when you took the trouble to send them away.
Lighting a fire under the cops was his God-given talent.
"I hope no one is going to be sick," Anthony said. He was standing next to CeCe, watching the coffin come out of the ground, and he was clearly talking about himself.
Last words
And then there was nothing but the windblown field, the blank winter sky, the breath of cold wind. And silence.
More than sixty years after one of four friends in a reputedly haunted boarding school goes missing, journalist Fiona Sheridan resolves to learn her sister's fate before a harrowing discovery is made.
Vermont, 1950: There's a place for the girls whom no one wants: the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town of Barrons, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears-- until one of them mysteriously disappears. 2014: Journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death twenty years earlier; Deb's body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. Now the Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, and shocking secrets are uncovered-- secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past ... and a voice that won't be silenced.
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