A Watered down Mystery that Left Me with more Questions than Answers

So to start off, I don't want to bash this book too much for I didn't hate reading it, I just disliked it. And if I could rate it 2.5 out of 5 I would. Now I am going to go at this book piece by piece for there is a lot of elements to it that I just can't address it fully.

Now as you may have noticed this book is focused on two-time lines 2014 and 1950 in Vermont, USA. Not a bad thing for it gives you needed backstory and a peek into the past along with the current day. The main issue that I noticed is that the 1950s parts (which switches perspectives between four different girls) were much more thrilling than the present day parts. The present-day parts, for me, seemed to water down the story until I got back into the 1950s.

Now onto the main ghost named Mary Hand. Mary, which I predicted in the first place, was a 16-year-old girl who got pregnant with a local boy's child out of wedlock and promptly lost the baby. Her father got angry and locked her out of the house in the freezing winter and then the next morning they found her dead and buried her next to the house instead of the family plot. And she now haunts the grounds of the school of Idlewild that was built on top of her house.

The first thing is she died in her nightgown I believe but she haunts the grounds with a mourning dress and a veil. Very stereotypical if you ask me, everytime St. James described her I always thought of The Woman In Black. The worst offense is that St. James never explains how the ghost can project each of the girl's experiences to the point where a woman from the 19th century can play Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive". And even though this not about Mary, at the very end of the book the girl who died in 1950 and the protagonist's sister's ghosts just come out of nowhere and they seem to be powerful for their ghost self-looks like they were alive and Deb spoke.

Now on to the protagonist's sister, Deb. Her sister has been dead for 20 years. And am not saying that I hated she was hurt by it for it was a shock to her 16-year-old self that her idol died at the hands of her sister's boyfriend. Now the thing that really gets annoying is that she brings her up, EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER. If she was really unsure about the specifics of her sister's death why would she wait for twenty god damn years to do something? I know some may argue that the plot of the 60-year Idlewild that has laid in ruin for all that time sent that in motion, but being a sister myself I wouldn't wait that long to get closure. And also not to mention the story of how the girl died in 1950 was a much better plot for unlike Deb's murder (which again you are reminded of the details every 10-20 pages), you have no clue who killed this mysterious girl or why.

Fiona's, the protagonist, relationship which the cop, Jamie. I honestly could not root for either of them. You are introduced to this relationship within its first year. Fiona is whiny about the fact that she doesn't want to talk about the future because it scares her or whatever. And Jamie obviously wants a wife and kids. This would be acceptable if the two where both in their early twenties but Fiona is almost past her biological clock at 36 and Jamie is 29. I also could understand if they were in it just for the sex but people normally in our century don't keep a permeant booty call for a whole year. I honestly felt bad for Jamie and there were multiple times that I wished that he would find a more decisive woman.

The ending. I just felt like it was rushed. It was just bam, Jamie's dad (a retired dirty cop) is trying to kill Fiona so his covering up of Deb's murderer's past won't get leaked. I just thought this was a poor attempt at connecting a parallel to Sonia, the girl who died in 1950. In Sonia's murder, she was an escapee from a concentration camp that held women and children specifically. As WWII came to a close the concentration camp seemed to evaporate into thin air. They were no records of the place what so ever. But Sonia was the only proof of this concentration camp and she became targeted by a former guard. Who was indeed her murderer. This, of course, was the guard's attempt to keep her real identity unknown. Also the three other girls, well now elderly women, appear suddenly to reveal why Idlewild was being restored. And the answer was simple; to find Sonia's body and give her a proper burial. The women also learn from Fiona that Mary Hand was buried in the garden of Idlewild, the one that terrified all the students who went there, and they decided to give Mary proper burial as well.

All in all, it was an okay read. If I could rewrite it, I would just focus on the 1950 plot for I felt that the 2014 plot was a broken record as it constantly reminded me that Deb is dead and this is how she died.

The Broken Girls - Likewise Book Reviews

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