Simone St. James

THEY WON'T FORGIVE. THEY WON'T FORGET. 'Clever and wonderfully chilling. It held me hostage' - Fiona Barton, Sunday Times-bestselling author of The Widow and The Child 'Haunting and memorable . . . mesmerizing' - Karen Dionne, author of The Marsh King's Daughter 1950 - At the crumbling Idlewild Hall school for unwanted girls, four room-mates begin to bond over dark secrets and whispered fears - until one of them mysteriously disappears . . . 2014 - Journalist Fiona Sheridan can't get over the murder of her sister twenty years ago, near the ruins of Idlewild. And when another body is found during renovations of the school, she begins to uncover horrors that were meant to remain hidden - and a voice that won't be silenced. For fans of Lisa Jewell and S.K. Tremayne, The Broken Girls is a chilling story of murder, revenge, and secrets that refuse to stay buried . . .

The Broken Girls

A journalist uncovers the dark secrets of an abandoned boarding school in this chilling suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel. Vermont, 1950. There's a place for the girls whom no one wants—the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the ones too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall, and local legend says the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their friendship blossoming—until one of them mysteriously disappears.... Vermont, 2014. Twenty years ago, journalist Fiona Sheridan's elder sister’s body was found in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And although her sister’s boyfriend was tried and convicted of the murder, Fiona can’t stop revisiting the events, unable to shake the feeling that something was never right about the case. When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during renovations links the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past—and a voice that won’t be silenced....

Kenzi Linton

I was debating on whether I would give this book a 3.5 rating or a 4, but ultimately decided to rate it a 4. It took me awhile before I really got intrigued by this book, but the last hundred pages really got me hooked. The writing was phenomenal and I think this is my favorite paranormalish book that I’ve read to date (although the list isn’t that long lol). It kept me curious until the end!

More than sixty years after one of four friends in a reputedly haunted boarding school goes missing, journalist Fiona Sheridan resolves to learn her sister's fate before a harrowing discovery is made.

Melissa Palmer

Book #72 Read in 2018
The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

This is a creepy good read.....part ghost story, part mystery, part romance. Two parallel stories are occurring. The first is about four girls at a boarding school in the 1950s. The second is set about 30 years later, detailing a journalist's search for details about her older sister's murder. Add a ghost that spans both stories and this is a good, gothic read. I recommend it for high school and adult readers.

Denaiir

A good thriller with a dual timeline, interesting characters, nice plot twists and a little sprinkle of supernatural.

I've read a few other books by St. James that I've enjoyed, so I was looking forward to picking this up. I love how all of her books seem to have a paranormal element. It makes for such compulsive reading. The pacing was so well-done, and I didn't want to put it down because I needed to know what was happening. I thought the dual timelines worked well. I liked seeing glimpses of the girls at Idlewild, and I loved following Fiona as she hunted down clues that tied everything together. I've seen a few reviews classify this as dark academia, which I don't agree with. Yes, part of it takes place at a boarding school, but it felt more like a classic ghost story than dark academia. Either way, I thought this was great, and St. James has solidified herself as one of my favorite thriller authors.

Heather Harrington

Colleen

4.5 Stars
 
*An atmospheric, slow-burn horror story that twists together suspense and mystery in a riveting tale*
 

The audiobook of The Broken Girls got me through a very long, boring car trip, and for that I am exceedingly grateful! My first experience with Simone St. James’ work was reading Silence for the Dead last year. I loved her creepy, atmospheric style and was eager to read more of her work. So when I was deciding what to listen to on my overly long drive, she was the first author that popped in my head.
 
The Broken Girls follows duel timelines in the same location. All of the POV are told in third person. If you’ve suffered through my rants before, then you know that multiple timeline rarely work for me. They tend to be tedious and anticlimactic. But St. James crafted a captivating story full of flawed characters that had me hooked from start to finish. It stood out in contrast to the other Historical Fiction novel I am concurrently reading (The Huntress) which also has to do with WWII and has duel timelines yet has so far been utterly unimpressive and dull.
 
One timeline is set in a small Vermont town in 1950. It rotates between four different girls attending Idlewild, a last chance boarding school for troubled girls. Each of the girls is damaged in their own way and carrying burdens that girls of their age shouldn’t have to face. But the girls are haunted by more than just their past. Idlewild is said to be haunted by a malevolent spirit called Mary Hand.
 

  “Mary Hand, Mary Hand,
Dead and Buried underland.
She’ll say she wants to be your friend.
Do not let her in again.”
 
The other timeline is set in the same town in 2014. The main character in that timeline is a journalist named Fiona Sheridan. Twenty years before, Fiona’s sister was murdered and her body found on the grounds of the now abandoned Idlewild school. Fiona never got closure for her sister’s death, but when she investigates the case, she finds far more than she was looking for. What really happened to her sister the night she died? And is Idlewild really haunted?
 
This isn’t a fast-paced story, but St. James is excellent at building tension and atmosphere reminiscent of Gothic Horror. Her style won’t appeal to everyone. It does linger on languid descriptions and slow burn tension rather than being fast-paced or action driven. And while the story is creepy, I wouldn’t exactly call it scary. Of course, “scary” is a completely subjective term. But there is more to this story than your typical haunting.
 
I won’t give spoilers, but the plot went a different direction than I was expecting. But I liked the direction that it went. And I enjoyed that the story explored the different types of “broken” that people are.
 
As with Silence for the Dead, there was some romance in the story. And it toed the line of being cheesy without quite going over the line. There were moments that got a bit angsty. But I liked that explored a nontraditional relationship since Fiona is eight years older than her boyfriend.
 
While I found the ending satisfying, there were a couple of things were a bit too much when everything was added together. And perhaps things tied up too neatly. But this isn’t a book that has to be 100% realistic (although the historical parts were well researched). So the overall effect wasn’t quite five stars for me, but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of St. James’s work!

 
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 5 Stars
Writing Style: 4 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 4 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 4 Stars
Level of Captivation: 5 Stars
Originality: 4 Stars

Apiecalypse Jen

Victoria

My first Simone St. James and my first paranormal thriller novel and I must say, I'm not mad at it. The story pulls you in right from the very first page and I couldn't stop thinking about it even when I'm not reading it.

It creeped me out but it also made me incredibly sad. (view spoiler)[I didn't think I'd read about the Holocaust and concentration camps and learn more about the horrors that a lot of these people went through in the hands of the Nazis but I'm not mad at it. (hide spoiler)] Simone St. James included those parts with class and respect and I appreciated that.

Can't wait to read more books by this author.

Jenna Pascale 

Can someone please explain to me how Simone St. James does it? Because I cannot wrap my head around it. 

SSJ is a genius and has easily become one of my all time favorite authors. 

The Broken Girls was an incredible read (like everything else I've read by SSJ). It's one of those books that you never want to end. 

I'm a sucker for alternating timelines and SSJ never disappoints in that area. Like most of her books, it contained the normal paranormal elements but they weren't overbearing. While I enjoy the paranormal, it's not something I would go out of my way to read about unless it's a book written by Simone St. James. 

As always, the suspense and thrill are there throughout the entirety of the novel, but so are the heartwarming and wholesome moments as well. 

Bonus points for a perfectly depicted New England setting!

Loved everything about this and will be seeking out more of her books for sure. 

Teara 

Beatriz Aguiar

so glad i picked this book up. it's so differnet from every mystery thriller I've ever read and made me so excited to read more of them. 
the mystery is just so fun to follow and i never saw the plot twist coming. 
just an amazing work. <3

  BOOKOPLATHON #1 - read a book with buildings on the cover

Kristen Claiborn

St. James is by far one of my favorite newly-discovered authors. This book is a ghost story, a murder mystery, a love story...a dark education...oh my gosh there's so much! This is everything I like in a book!

Jessica Ford

Cheri McElroy

Simone St. James has become a auto buy author for me. Part ghost story, part mystery, part exploration of trauma, The Broken Girls was 100 percent perfect for me.

Simone St James

A journalist uncovers the dark secrets of an abandoned boarding school in this chilling suspense novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Sun Down Motel. Vermont, 1950. There's a place for the girls whom no one wants--the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the ones too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall, and local legend says the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their friendship blossoming--until one of them mysteriously disappears.... Vermont, 2014. Twenty years ago, journalist Fiona Sheridan's elder sister's body was found in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And although her sister's boyfriend was tried and convicted of the murder, Fiona can't stop revisiting the events, unable to shake the feeling that something was never right about the case. When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during renovations links the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past--and a voice that won't be silenced....

Bonita

i was expecting to like this more, but it ended up just being fine for me. maybe i would have appreciated it more if i read it physically, since i pretty much zoomed through the audio & that can make it hard to follow especially since there’s so much back & forth between time periods & characters. the 2 books I’ve read by the author have kind of fell flat for me, but i am not completely writing off this author yet!

Kelsey Lynn

SO I read this a few months ago and have read a number of book since, therefore, this review will be short and simple. 
 I am a spooky person, I love horror stories and movies all year round, but especially during the month of October. I've had this book sitting on my shelf for some time having chosen it for my "Book of the Month" club at one point. This felt like the perfect opportunity to finally read it. All girls school, a tragic mystery, ghosts? Yes, please. Time to cozy up on a spooky dark night and get scared.
 
 Unfortunately, this book was not it. Another instance where the description of the book just does not really fit with the actual book, and in this case to disappointment. We follow Fiona, a two-bit journalist trying as she might follow in her famed journalist father's footsteps. Who has learned that the Idlewild Hall grounds have been purchased recently. This abandoned all-girls school for girls whose families would like to forget about them has been closed for years but holds a significance to Fiona as this was where her sister's body was found years prior. 
 The narrative splits its time between Fiona "writing" a piece on Idlewild, I put this in quotations because I don't think she ever actually writes something, it's just her obsessively researching her sister and the school under the guise of writing something, and the events that took place there decades before in a friend group of students. 
 We learn that the majority of the residents at Idlewild were just emotionally unstable castaways from rich families, illegitimate children, and grumpy old ladies. Of course, it wouldn't be a spooky book if there wasn't a ghost story. The students all believe the halls are haunted by "Mary" a ghost that asks to be let in. Rumors are all over the place with this ghost, she'll whisper to you and show you things that no one can understand unless they've seen her, she has a baby buried in the garden, etc, etc. For being just rumors, the girls we follow sure seem to experience the entire non-spooky gamut of Mary. Scraping of doors, knocks, whispers, gusts of wind, dark figures on the field. 
 We jump back to modern-day, and a body is found during the construction, which Fiona is allowed to get way too involved in, partially due to nepotism (she's dating a cop) unrealistic allowance (the guy handling the construction just likes her) and total reliance on her dad's connections. She becomes obsessed with this body and how it must be connected with her sister, obsessed with the ghost "Mary" and spends the remainder of the book just making people mad, injecting herself into people's jobs for her own self-satisfaction, and overall being very selfish. If you can't tell, I really didn't like Fiona. She was just the picture-perfect, itty bitty, fiery redhead, that really felt justified in everything she did and acted like anyone that called her out was wrong. I found the passages devoted to her to be formulaic and boring, she goes her and gets this info and was able to get this info because people just gave it to her cause she's special. I really wanted to go back to the story in the past.
 However, the story in the past wasn't terribly exciting either. The supernatural parts were, clearly, supernatural, so there was no opportunity to question if it was in people's heads or not. It was the equivalent of a horror movie showing the monster immediately so you lose the fear of the unknown. I think the major disappointing factor was this whole book was presented to be a haunting story, but you could easily remove all reference to the ghost and it wouldn't affect the story at all. I get that it was a vehicle for the story, but it didn't do anything for the story of progress it in any way or really play a role at all. So it was super secondary and unneeded. If you can take the scary out of your scary book and not miss it, maybe it wasn't needed in the first place. The author seemed like they had two books they wanted to write, one that was a mystery, and one that was a spooky all-girls school but didn't have enough story for either so they combined it. Only it wasn't a clean merge, they feel disjointed and incohesive. I was left with an unsatisfying ghost story and an unsatisfying mystery. So I'm not sure what I was left with. 
 
 So unfortunately for me, this was a miss. A promising cover and description, but just poorly executed and it just seemed the author was unsure of the direction they wanted for this book. Or maybe ghost story's just aren't their genre.

Kerry Kalinoski

Stop what you’re doing and read this book. It kept me on the edge of my seat, did such a good job at weaving storylines and history into this I’m so impressed. There is one aspect I should’ve guessed but honestly didn’t even care because this was so well done. I LOVE boarding school books for whatever reason and this one killed it

Elizabeth Neill

It took me a couple of days to gather my thoughts about this book. It is shelved under thriller and horror but it is much more than that. It had me laughing and crying along with being scared. It deals with friendship and grief that I think about the book even better. I loved the two timelines and the 1950 timeline worked well with the 2014 timeline. I really felt what Fiona was going through with her sister’s death, cause I am going through something similar but with my cousin's death. The difference is that I wasn’t young when he was killed but seeing her go through the anger and grief hit me hard. The horror elements in the book with Mary Hand had me on the edge of my seat and I felt the fear the girls were feeling. I liked that it wasn’t the main focus of the story but it still added to it. I will be getting St.James other books and reading them very soon.

Madhuri Sridhara

3.75: Though the writing is sloppy in places, this kept me hooked throughout. The concept seemed fresh and the characters so clear in my head, even though nothing was original exactly. I suppose St.James has a way of telling her stories. It was quite a satisfying read.

Riley

I ripped through this and loved every second of it.
The atmosphere is chilling, but not alienating. You really feel the girls' isolation from society, but contrasted with Fiona's wilful emotional isolation (while also being believably open to better things, unlike so many frustrating thriller protagonists), which feels more intimate, it's not overbearing. The switches between safety and terror are smoothly done, and the pacing overall is exemplary.

Getting into spoilers below:

ACAB. For a second there I was worried it was going to be like 'not all cops' (before I checked the date of publication and was like oh yeah ok she won't do that), and then I was a little disheartened at the thought of Jamie being complicit, but I definitely never fully trusted him, and I was surprised by how maturely the whole thing was handled, both by the characters and the author. It felt satisfying. A romance subplot is usually the most uncomfortable part of a thriller (for me, at least) because it inevitably ties into the plot, and I didn't realise how much I've longed for a fleshed-out (flawed but growing) and genuinely supportive romantic partner.

In this genre, if there's a solid friendship established, that's usually where you find that secure emotional connection, and I love that and love that it was also heavily represented here, but as someone in a healthy relationship, it's  just really refreshing to see it on the page, and to not feel it's in any way boring or dragging the protagonist or the plot down. Fiona never suspected Jamie, even if I had my doubts, and in the end she was RIGHT to let herself trust him. (Without giving up her agency or being robbed of it.)

Regarding the friendship at the core of the story, I really appreciate that the overdone tropes of the toxic-teen-girl and trauma-begetting-violence were acknowledged and smoothly moved on from. I was expecting a dark academia killed-by-friends angle from the blurb, and picked it up because I know I like the author's style and I do enjoy that trope if it's done well, but this was so much better. The Margaret connection was pretty obvious from the start (in my opinion), but that took nothing from the story for me - I enjoyed wavering between it being Katie or CeCe (after we first met Joseph, I thought it could be Katie married to Joseph Eden or that with Joseph's support and higher social standing, CeCe could have met and married an otherwise random, wealthy Mr. Eden).

Oh man, and that climax? It was so sensible. It made so much sense. It just all stacked into place and it felt agonisingly inevitable and not at all like someone had just made a silly decision, or even bravely (but still stupidly) walked into a final showdown.

One more thing: this book does for Ravensbrück what the characters do for it in the story. I cannot speak to the historical accuracy, nor even to the cultural sensitivity, but as a student of history I can say it seemed very well-researched, and as a reader, I can say that once that aspect was drawn into the story and the mystery itself, nothing felt trivial; it grounded the whole book in a very real horror, and one that hopefully more people will be aware of now.

Rucha Phatak

4.5 stars.

As often happens when I read a historical fiction novel with a past and present timeline, I found the past chapters much more interesting than the present ones for a good chunk of the book! That said, I did get into the present story about 1/3 of the way through, which is better than a lot of other books, so it's a win for me!

I've also found that mystery novels can often be formulaic and clues lead to the next clue awfully conveniently. This was somewhat the case here, but it wasn't glaringly obvious as I was reading, so I didn't mind.

I especially loved the atmosphere of the book. It is a bit of a ghost story, but there's so much more to it. The vibe is unsettling not just because of the ghost stories told at the school, but also the very real threat of the evil that men can do. I found it a very compelling juxtaposition, and there was some great but at times subtle societal commentary in the plot. 

Overall, it's a great book! A bit slow to start in the present chapters, but the past chapters had me hooked and I ended up loving the whole thing!

danielle bush

I love a good spooky, mystery 

I love the characters from both the past and present. The different timeliness work so well I couldn't put it down and read it in one sitting. The mystery was really good. I had no idea which way things were going after every twist and turn. 
So in the past we have a group of girls who are living in a boarding school in vermont. They are just trying to get through the day and avoid the ghost of Mary Hand. She comes along and help you to relive your most terrifying nightmare. 
In the present we are following Fiona, who sister was murdered, and her body left on the field of the abandoned boarding school called Idlewild. When she realizes the property has been bought and that the school will be rebuilt. She decides to write a story about Idlewild's past and possible future. When the body of a young girl is discovered in a well, we find out that she has been dead for a long time. She is one on the 4 girls from the past we have been following. 


Definitely a 5 star read and I want to read more of Simone st. James. I also loved the sun down motel, I think Simone st James might be becoming a new favorite author!

Mimi

The way you can tell a well-written, great mystery/thriller book is if you are surprised at the ending. Was I surprised at this ending? Yes, yes I was and that makes this a great book and a must read for fans of the genre.

The Broken Girls

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