6.8.2023 | Thursday

Ghost 19

category: Book Reviews
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Ghost 19title: Ghost 19
author: Simone St. James
published: 3 January 2023
publisher: Berkley
genre(s): historical, horror, thrillers
pages: 92
source: library
format: eBook
buy/shelve it: Amazon | B&N | Goodreads

rating: four-half-stars

the blurb

A woman moves to a town where she becomes obsessed with watching the lives of her neighbors while stuck in a house that refuses to let her leave in this first ever short story from the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases.

Is there something wrong with Ginette Cox? It’s what everyone seems to think. When a doctor suggests that what she might need is less excitement, she packs up and moves from New York City to a house in suburban NY: 19 Howard Ave.

The town offers Ginette little in the way of entertainment in 1959, but at least she has interesting neighbors. Whether it’s the little girl with her doll or the couple and their mother-in-law, Ginette watches them from her window and makes up names and stories for them.

But it’s not all peaceful in suburbia. Ginette finds it hard to sleep in her new house. There are strange and scary noises coming from the basement, and she is trapped, either by a ghost or her own madness.

But when Ginette starts to think a murder has taken place and a mysterious man starts making terrifying appearances outside her window, it’s clear she must deal with whatever isn’t allowing her to escape this house…


❗❗ content warning: references to murder, pedophilia ❗❗

a few notes

steamy rating: 0 🔥s
language level:
0 🤬s

POV: 1st person
HEA: yes
keywords/phrases: murder, ghosts, redemption

my review

I became a huge fan of Simone St. James’s thrillers after reading The Book of Cold Cases, The Sun Down Motel, and The Broken Girls, so I had to pick up this short. It was so eerie, so dark, so atmospheric. It was the kind of story that draws a reader in and keeps them entranced. The concept, a woman trapped in the house by something unseen, was used well, making the reader wonder if there really is something, or it if it is a figment of a troubled imagination. Truly, until the very end, the reader is left wonder what exactly is happening. My only criticism… I wish it had been longer because I just wanted more!


About Simone St. James

Simone St. James is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases, The Sun Down Motel, The Broken Girls and The Haunting of Maddy Clare, which won two RITA awards from Romance Writers of America and an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada. She wrote her first ghost story, about a haunted library, when she was in high school, and spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time. She lives outside Toronto, Canada with her husband and a spoiled cat.

Rating Report
plot
four-half-stars
characters
four-half-stars
writing
four-half-stars
pacing
four-half-stars
Overall: four-half-stars

reading challenges:

  • 2023 Library Love Reading Challenge
  • 2023 Linz the Bookworm Reading Challenge
::spread the love::

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