THE SUN DOWN MOTEL by Simone St. James
B&B RATING: 3 / 5
MOOD: If you’re looking for a weird ass unrealistic ghost story (yes, I know how that sounds), then this one is for you.
Synopsis
Carly has a family secret - that her Aunt Viv up and disappeared from her job at a motel 35 years ago. Vanished, without a trace. No one has been able to find her, much less had the courtesy to look. With the recent passing of Carly’s mom who refused to speak about Viv, Carly decides to take the investigation into her hands and find out what the f*%$ happened to Aunt Viv. She lands herself some rag-tag friends who are determined to help her find out what happened, Carly starts along the same path as Aunt Viv.
Told from two points of view - Carly’s and then a play-by-play of events from Aunt Viv herself, a near mirrored story unfolds before your eyes. Set in the 70s, Viv is desperate to get away from her vanilla existence and is destined for New York. Along the way she lands in a blip of a town called Fell, accidentally lands the night clerk job of The Sun Down Motel. Something was not right with the hotel, and it catches Viv up before the first night ends. Things get more complicated the longer she stays, until one day, she no longer exists. Just Vanishes.
At the end of the day the question remains - What happened to Aunt Viv?
Review
Um. Snore. Seriously? I know Simone St. James as a cult following for her books, and hey, that’s awesome. For me though, thins one struck all of the wrong chords. There were too many things that that didn’t seem to add up and were unrealistic beyond reasonable liberties. For one, no one moves into a stranger’s apartment within ten minutes of meeting them, becoming instant best friends. That just doesn’t happen, at least not in my world, not the world here in America. Men don’t come out of the woodwork like that. No one is that obsessed with their teeny tiny hometown. Not to mention the plethora of other logistical issues and useless sub-plots that didn’t add to the story.
What really got me were the mistakes in the writing. Not punctuation or verb tense, but issues with the story itself. There were several times where a character wouldn’t have their cell phone on them, but were able to check the time…. on their phone. Or scorning certain reading material, only to fall asleep reading it because it gives nostalgic comfort from being read so many times about 200 pages. When things like that happen I start I find I’m unable to let go of it, and then I start looking for them. It gets to be one of the few things I can think of, not allowing me to concentrate on finer aspects of the book.
I would have given this a two-star rating, but, there were some parts that were pretty clever and I enjoyed. There is some of the ugly side of mental illness (not enough to be a trigger warning in my opinion, but as always, be cautious), that I will always respect authors for including. Overall, this one wasn’t for me, thought it deserved that third star
Drink Pairing:
Several glasses of Spumanti Andre so you physically feel how terrible this book mentally makes you feel.