The Sun Down Motel

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James, 327 pages

In 1982, Viv Delaney went missing after a few months working the night shift at a seedy motel in Fell, New York. Thirty-five years later, her niece Carly drops out of college and travels to Fell to see if she can figure out what became of the aunt she never met. Soon, Carly is living in Viv's old apartment, working the same shift at the same seedy hotel, and scouring the newspaper archives at the Fell library, hoping that something will reveal itself to her that investigators never uncovered. But as empty as the motel is, its ghostly residents may be the key to Viv's disappearance.

I'll admit that as I read this book I kept waiting for it to go either full Shining or full Scooby Doo. Thankfully, it did neither. It was a creepy, ghost-tinged thriller with an unexpected ending.