Book Review | The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Horror

The secrets lurking in a rundown roadside motel ensnare a young woman, just as they did her aunt thirty-five years before, in this new atmospheric suspense novel from the national bestselling and award-winning author of The Broken Girls. Upstate NY, 1982. Every small town like Fell, New York, has a place like the Sun Down Motel. Some customers are from out of town, passing through on their way to someplace better. Some are locals, trying to hide their secrets. Viv Delaney works as the night clerk to pay for her move to New York City. But something isn't right at the Sun Down, and before long she's determined to uncover all of the secrets hidden… (Description via Goodreads)

I wasn’t a big fan of this one. I don’t know if it’s because I had high expectations, or because I’m stir-crazy, but I was more annoyed than entertained.

The book really did have potential, and there were definitely parts that I liked! It’s a thriller with a Twilight Zone vibe, and it features female protagonists solving a mystery. However, it happened to touch on a pet peeve of mine… I can’t stand the snobby, “I’m not like other girls,” attitude that is sometimes given to female main characters. Carly was written this way, and it annoyed me throughout her sections of the book. Lines like this bothered me:

“Maybe she’d expected an air-headed twenty-year-old dunce who liked to twitter.”

I also thought it was bizarre that the author took the time to convince us that Carly was independent and had no interest in boys, only to turn her into the typical, babbling, blushing gal from a poorly written YA novel (I’m looking at you, Twilight). The first guy she meets who is around her age automatically has her tripping over her own two feet. And you know how I knew he was going to be THE love interest and not just another character? He had the eyes. I’ve been noticing that many YA/NA writers use highly detailed ocular descriptions whenever we are supposed to acknowledge that a male is attractive. This guy had “icy blue eyes” that were mentioned repeatedly, so I knew he was going to stick around.

Carly’s roommate, Heather, was my favorite character. While I didn’t like Carly, I did like their friendship. I would definitely read a spin-off that featured Heather! She was effortlessly quirky and unique, and I wish that she had been the main character. I wanted more of a resolution for her story. It seemed as if she had simply faded out by the end of the book.

The mystery aspect of this book was kind of…meh. There were parts that were creepy and interesting, but the investigating was very convenient. I’m not sure if this is laziness on the author’s part, but the phrase, “she just knew,” was used far too often to help solve this crime. We were expected to believe that the gut feelings of young adults (with zero training or experience, mind you) were the primary means of catching this serial killer. Also, I literally face-palmed when they dropped a borderline personality disorder diagnosis on the murderer. Granted, I’m in the mental health field so I might be a bit more sensitive to this, but that’s such an offensive cop-out on the author’s part.

I kind of liked the use of ghosts in this book! While they were a little bit boring and repetitive (boooooo I opened a bunch of doooooooooors 80 times), they were certainly more interesting than reading about Carly.

So that’s my very mixed review of this book. I’ve been reading that the author’s other books are much better. Oh well! On to a better one.