Review: The Sun Down Motel by Simone St James

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 New York Times 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.

Review: Well I expected this to be a straight up thriller but what I got was part murder mystery and part horror and once I had adjusted my expectations for the rest of the book I really enjoyed it.

I love the fact that this was a dual narrative dual timeline, I find that kind of structure so compelling because you need to get back to each timeline to find out the impact of what you just read in the past/present! The fact that the two women are related and are in the same location gives it even more interest and intrigue.

Viv and Carly are interesting as main characters because you don’t necessarily like them but they are just so intriguing and cause so much trouble they really stir up the storyline. I really like the fact that these characters have a connection but aren't so closely related that we feel that that ties them into being the same person. There are a host of other very 'intriguing' characters, none of whom I especially liked but all of whom lend something to the atmosphere of this novel. 

In terms of being scary or thrilling I think this book walks the fine line in having a balance of both. You have to suspend your disbelief a little so that you can take on the idea of ghosts and strange goings on but I think that that is a good thing because not enough books push readers to do this under the guise of a thriller or crime in this way. 

As I say, this was an unexpected genre for me but I really enjoyed this one and it definitely gave me the thrill I was looking for. 

To order your copy now, just click the link: UK or US

Review: There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins

Over a year after her parents sent her away from Hawaii to live with her grandmother in landlocked Nebraska, Makani Young is still adjusting to her new life. She's made a small group of close friends and even flirted with romance, but her past in Hawaii is still hard to forget. And then . . . one by one the students of her new high school begin to die in a series of gruesome murders. Makani doesn't know who's next on the list. Between this, and a secret scorching relationship with the school weirdo, this school year may turn out to be one to die for . . . literally. There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins will have you swooning with fear and romance, and is the perfect page-turner for fans of Scream Queens and I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Review: Wow, I loved this book so much more than I thought I was going to! Now that makes it sound like I went into reading it with a negative attitude but I have just never read a book from the horror genre before, YA or adult so I was a little worried but boy was this a fab read. Stephanie Perkins just has this way of engaging you in her worlds and getting you to love her characters that works whether it is in the romance genre or in the horror genre. I really loved that this book was a young adult book but it has definitely encouraged me to read a little more into the horror genre!

This book features Makani and the other teens who attend her high school in rural Nebraska. The setting of this novel was perfect for what takes place at the  plot unfolds and it was really well described so i could picture myself there in the town with all of them. The storyline is generally fast paced. There is a balance of scene setting and then horror action with Makani takin every other chapter or very 2 our of three chapters so that we really get to know her as the main character, as well as what is going on with the murders. 

Makhani was a good choice of the main character because she is easy to like but shed also is a little different from the people in her high school. The fact that she stands out and also that she has some sort of secret to hide made her interesting to read about. I would say that Ollie is the supporting character in this book and I really liked him and reading about him. Him and his brother are not only key players in the novel, but also key players in the town where the novel is set. 

There are some other diverse characters in this novel, which is great to see because we definitely need to be reading about more diverse characters and more diverse books in general obviously, but I just felt at times that these diverse characters were accepted almost too easily by the town, I would have loved to have known the impact that they had on the community and how they managed to live so freely and be so welcomed by the community in this way. 

This book definitely scared me in part and really does compare well to the film suggested in the synopsis. I normally sleep with the window open, but the night that I read this novel, i got up to close the window, not that I was affected or anything! This had some great suspense but also some really storylines about each of the characters that made for a great read. As I said above, this author really knows how to engage an audience, whatever genre she is writing in and i would definitely recommend this book even if, like me, you are not usually a horror reader!

To order your cop now, just click the link: UK or US