Fell, New York, is a small town that has somehow escaped progress. A town where the library still has paper archives, cell phone reception is sketchy at best, and a town with a history of dead and missing girls.

As with all remote small towns, there is a motel. An old style motel where there are no computers, real keys for the rooms, and a pool which hasn’t held water for decades…

Oh… and did I mention?  This motel is haunted.

Two young women, thirty-five years apart, work at The Sun Down Motel as its night clerk.

A few years ago I read “The Broken Girls” by Simone St. James which made me very eager to read this, her latest novel, “The Sun Down Motel“.

Told in dual timelines, both of the female protagonists were empathetic characters. Both were driven, tenacious young women. However, both were so similar that at times I found it difficult to discern which timeline I was reading.

Set in Upstate New York, in a poorly maintained motel, the story was both a crime thriller and a ghost story. The eerie setting, with the almost unchanged motel, gives the reader the chills. Motel lights going off and on – motel unit doors opening and closing of their own accord… Creepy.

I thoroughly enjoyed the crime elements of this story, though the ghost story seemed far-fetched at times. That is not to say that it did not hold my interest, only that compared to this author’s previous book “The Broken Girls“, the ghost story element seemed less believable somehow.

All in all, I enjoyed the read, but found it a tad ‘hokey’ in parts. It would make an excellent horror movie. I recommend this novel to all readers who enjoy a good ghost story, and who don’t mind stretching your imagination that extra little bit.