It’s spooky season, so this week, I’m going to tell you about one of my favorite spooky books. Contrary to my previous Favorites Friday posts, you may have heard of this one! I am talking about The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James.
The Sun Down Motel takes the traditional haunted house / haunted hotel theme and puts a modern twist on it. The book, which blends mystery with horror, is told from two viewpoints across a timespan of 35 years. In the present (2017), we follow Carly Kirk. She becomes fascinated with the disappearance of an aunt she’s never met. In the past (1982), we follow Viv Delaney, Carly’s aunt.
Viv is a night clerk at the Sun Down Motel in Fell, New York. She took the job to help pay for an eventual move to New York City, but it isn’t long before she discovers that something isn’t quite right at the motel, and the mystery draws her in.
Carly is a college student when her mother, Viv’s sister, dies. With that event, she realizes that there is nobody left to hurt by anything she might dig up related to Viv’s disappearance. So, she leaves school and heads to Fell, New York to see what she can find. When she arrives, she finds herself unknowingly falling into almost the exact same life her aunt Viv was living. She takes the night clerk job at the Sun Down Motel and gets sucked into the same mysteries Viv was pulled into.
Mysteries like phantom cigarette smoke, disembodied footsteps, and the lights turning off room by room as the doors to the motel open, one by one, in the middle of the night.
Sounds good right?
Add to all of that the fact that both Viv and Carly are strong, intelligent women, and you get a spectacular spooky season read!
Have you read The Sun Down Motel? What did you think of it? Let me know in the comments!
Melissa L. Freeman - Author 