The Sun Down Motel gave me mixed feelings.
I’d been eagerly anticipating this one for months, especially after seeing SO much love for it from readers and other book bloggers. I was so excited when it came in from my local library just before they closed down because of COVID-19. I was quarantined, but I figured, Hey, I got THE book I was waiting for, so NBD.
Ehhh, not quite. The Sun Down Motel is a good book; the story it delivers is solid and keeps you guessing. It had a hard time keeping my interest, though, up until a certain point. While I came to appreciate it in the end, it’s not as gripping as I thought it would be.
What I do really like about The Sun Down Motel is the overall message author Simone St. James conveys through her kick-ass female protagnoists and supporting characters. More on that in a bit.
It took me awhile to get into the first half of the novel, quite honestly. Much like St. James’ previous novel, The Broken Girls, there are two narratives, past and present, and the ones in The Sun Down Motel eerily mirror each other. It’s a good set up, but the time periods parallel each other so closely that sometimes I had a hard time remembering which one I was in, or which character was telling the story. I was constantly flipping back through pages, going, Wait, who did that happen to? What year am I in? Didn’t this already happ — oh, wait, no, no, that was in the other narrative….
The second half of the book sucked me in, though, and once a major twist was revealed, I grew way more interested in what was happening. After that point, I raced through the book. So, if you find yourself stalling a bit, just keep going. It does deliver in the end.
Since my first introduction to St. James was The Haunting Of Maddy Clare, I was expecting her new book to deliver another bone-chilling ghost story. And, yes, there are definitely ghosts haunting the Sun Down Motel. There’s no doubt about that, and some parts of the book are pretty damn creepy. I mean, there’s a ghost child, and we all know how creepy those can be just by standing there and staring at you, nevermind speaking to you.
While the paranormal activity level in The Sun Down Motel is pretty high, it didn’t quite do it for me. I admit, though, that I’m horribly desensitized, so people who don’t read ghost stories as obsessively as I do will probably be plenty scared by the spooky activity in this book.
For me, though, human nature is always scarier than the supernatural, and that’s the part of this book that freaked me out the most. While The Haunting of Maddy Clare was primarily a ghost story, The Sun Down Motel, much like The Broken Girls, is primarily a murder mystery. The main characters in both narratives are trying to find out what happened to a bunch of murdered girls, so there’s lots of research and sleuthing and piecing together of puzzles across timelines. So, if you’re into all that true crime-detective stuff, this is probably a good book for you. (It will also make you glad that door-to-door salesmen have mostly gone the way of the dodo.)
Okay, let’s get to what I really liked about The Sun Down Motel: St. James is clearly railing against the daily injustice women face when it comes to raising suspicions and allegations against predators, and being taken seriously when voicing their often-valid concerns. It hammers home the message that all women are potential victims, and that what happened to the girls in the story could happen, quite easily, to any woman. It’s all very timely and #MeToo.
I appreciated this grim little message because, unfortunately, it’s true. No matter how much has changed — and, a lot has; I’m not denying that — women are still fighting an uphill battle against the dangers lurking around dark corners, empty nightime parking lots, and even public parks on sunny days.
Most of us are lucky — nothing ever comes of the uneasy feelings we get from that guy looking at us just a little too long, a little too hungrily as we pass him on the street. But, some of us aren’t so lucky, and The Sun Down Motel is for those girls — the ones who never stood a chance, and the ones who spoke up but no one believed until it was too late.
For that alone, I think The Sun Down Motel is worth the read.
What do you think? Have you read The Sun Down Motel? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
