If you are in the mood for a creepy story that makes the hairs at the back of your neck stand, I suggest you read ‘The Sun Down Motel’ by Simone St. James. It’s a bit slow and there aren’t many jump scares but it feels like watching a good suspense thriller movie. The vibe is kind of like that of ‘The Shining’ by Stephen King, perhaps the ultimate horror book/movie set in a hotel. The Sun Down Motel is a family drama, ghost story, and murder mystery all rolled in one. The initial few chapters feel a bit bleak and that might make you want to stop reading. But once the story picks up pace—after a 100 or so pages—you can’t put it down.
Told in two different timelines, The Sun Down Motel takes you to a small town in upstate New York. The setting is very eerie. In 2017, a young woman, Carly Kirk, arrives in Fell. She wants to find out what happened to her aunt, Viv Delaney, who disappeared from The Sun Down Motel in the 1980s. Carly’s mother never talked about her sister but Carly could sense that she was haunted by Viv’s disappearance till the day she died.
For that reason, Carly has never been able to let go of the past and is determined to figure out just what happened to her aunt. She takes up the same job—as a night clerk—that Viv had when she disappeared and starts poking around. She finds out that nothing much has changed in Fell and at the motel since 1982 and is quickly ensnared in the same mysteries that apparently claimed her aunt.
I don’t usually read books with ghosts and otherworldly stuff but I quite enjoyed this one. Maybe that’s because the supernatural element is just one aspect of the story. The plot moves forward even without it; the story’s mystery isn’t explained by the supernatural events. The ghosts give you goosebumps but the story is grounded in reality. Trigger warning: There are mentions of rape and some of it is horrifyingly graphic. The reason it’s a three-star read and not a four-star one is because the story wraps up a little too tidily for my liking. Otherwise, it’s a great book with just the right amount of twists and turns to keep you hooked.
Three stars
Fiction
The Sun Down Motel
Simone St. James
Published: 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 342, Paperback
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45885644-the-sun-down-motel
