Title: The Broken Girls
Author: Simone St. James
Series: n/a
A spooky, intelligent, character-driven thriller
I would like to thank Simone St. James, Berkley/Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Idlewild Hall is a girls’ boarding school where the illegitimate, the mentally ill, and the troublemakers are swept under the rug. In 1950, four girls band together to survive the cold, dreadful place—and the ghost that uses their darkest secrets against them.
In 2014, Fiona Sheridan still can’t stop thinking about her sister’s murder. When construction begins on Idlewild, the place where Deb’s body had been found, Fiona decides to write a piece on the restoration. She’s on the premises, interviewing the landowner, when the crew makes a shocking discovery… And soon Fiona finds herself digging up the past to uncover the present.
Getting to read this book so early was like a dozen Christmases rolled into one. Then I realized it’ll be just that much longer until I can read the next one. Guess I’ll be rereading her other books in the meantime. A real hardship, that.
This is a slight departure from St. James’ usual tale, mostly in setting. Her novels to date have been set in WWI-era England, gothic ghost stories with plots rooted in the war and a heroine who has to solve a murder mystery with the aid of a traumatized ex-soldier hero. In contrast, The Broken Girls is set in northern Vermont in America, one storyline in 1950, the other in 2014. There’s a ghost story and a murder mystery with roots in WWII that the heroine has to solve. The hero, a cop who I don’t believe was ever a soldier, isn’t all that helpful.
You’re immediately presented with the mystery in the prologue. I stayed up until three am, unable to take my eyes from the page for more than a minute. For the first two-thirds, I gathered puzzle pieces and tried to keep them organized, frustrated when none of them fit together. Then, precisely when St. James wanted me to, I finally began to put the pieces together and form a clearer picture. I enjoy a narrative that challenges my wits, and I value an author who trusts me to be intelligent enough to understand what’s going on without having to stop and explain things to me.
This review may be a bit superficial; I don’t dare include any spoilers. It’s one thing to reveal details a few days before release, it’s another to do it six months in advance. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s anticipation.
This was much freakier than her last book, Lost Among the Living (though that remains my favorite because Alex is a force of nature.) In LAL, the horror takes a back seat—way back, like the third row in an SUV—and the characters drive the story. Here, the characters are driving the story, but the creepy horror is right there in the passenger seat…staring… *shudders* Now I’m imagining being stuck in a car with Mary Hand. Yep, I’ll be sleeping with the light on again tonight. I think I’ll send St. James my energy bill.
Fiona was a great character, both vulnerable and strong. She had virtues and flaws—her determination falling under both categories—and she was very relatable. She had crappy eating habits, she exercised if she felt like it, and she wasn’t any kind of homemaker. I loved that she was bad at “the girlfriend thing.” Not that she cheated or anything immoral, she just liked to keep things casual and didn’t need to be romanced. She wasn’t at all needy and seemed reluctant to become attached to anything—or anyone.
If there was one thing I didn’t care for, it was Jamie, Fiona’s boyfriend. He didn’t begin to fill Alex’s shoes. I found him confusing and somewhat useless. In the first half, I was certain that he loved Fiona and was patiently waiting for her to be ready to become more committed, more involved in each other’s lives. When he took her face in his hands and kissed her, begging her to come to dinner with his parents, my heart melted. But then she and his father argue, and it didn’t seem like Jamie gave her an inch of slack. He got mad at her for not “getting along,” like she was an incorrigibly discourteous child. I wanted to smack him and scream, “You gutless company man! Grow some balls and do the right thing!” And after that, there was little that was endearing or heart-melting about him. So I guess he didn’t love her, or he wouldn’t have driven away.
I didn’t like the Idlewild girls as much as I liked Fiona, but then I didn’t relate to them as much. Nevertheless, I sympathized with them and was happy when they got the answers they’d spent their entire adult lives looking for. Likewise with Malcolm, Fiona’s dad.
It got a teensy bit annoying switching back and forth from past to present. I liked Fiona and wanted to stick with her, but the chapters in the past were important, and they were deliberately positioned to provide new information just before you needed to know it. The story was well-structured, in my opinion, and the pace was steady. Oh, and this is funny—in my head I read the book with a British accent. The exposition, the dialogue, all of it. I don’t know why; maybe I’ve listened to the audio versions of her other books too often, but somehow a British accent seemed to suit her writing. I tried forcing an American one, but it wouldn’t stick.
Overall…I wish St. James wrote faster.
Scratch that. I won’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
Overall, The Broken Girls is a spooky, intelligent, character-driven thriller that’ll keep you up at night.
Enjoyed….