Simone St James - The Haunting of Maddy Clare

Sarah Piper's lonely, threadbare existence changes when her temporary agency sends her to assist a ghost hunter. Alistair Gellis—rich, handsome, scarred by World War I, and obsessed with ghosts—has been summoned to investigate the spirit of nineteen-year-old maid Maddy Clare, who is haunting the barn where she committed suicide.
Since Maddy hated men in life, it is Sarah's task to confront her in death. Soon Sarah is caught up in a deperate struggle. For Maddy's ghost is real, she's angry, and she has powers that defy all reason. Can Sarah and Alistair's assistant, the rough, unsettling Matthew Ryder, discover who Maddy was, where she came from, and what is driving her desire for vengeance—before she destroys them all?

Comment: This is the second book by the author I try and I think I can have a good idea of her style by now. I like the atmosphere and the plots but there's something about the characterization and the way we connect with the characters that still makes me wrinkle my nose...

In this book we meet lonely heroine Sarah Piper as she is hired to be an assistant to mr Alistair Gellis, a man who took the task of writing about all the possible haunting cases int he country. Of all the ones he has worked at, many were fake situations but he has a feeling this new case he got in hands might prove to be the most serious ghost haunting he has ever seen. He decides he can't waste time waiting for his usual assistant to return from an errand and he hires Sarah in particular fo she is a woman and the ghost he wants to pursue is said to hate men. What they didn't count on - as well as mr Ryder, the original assistant who comes back quicker than he imagined - is how far the revenge plans the ghost of Maddy Clare are really going to go...

I must say I liked this story better than the other I had tried by the author. For one, I liked the heroine better and then I felt the overall story line was much more intriguing. But I also thought the same issues I had felt weren't as much to my liking in the other book were visible here as well.

I liked the story as a whole but I feel the strongest element was the ghost itself and how it manifested. The descriptions the author used were well chosen and I think she was able to give the vibe intended, that the ghost was up to no good, that it was affecting the lives of those nearby and that it had to do with something from the past. The ghost is of Maddy Clare, a young servant girl who appeared one day at the Clare residence, coming from the surrounding woods in a terrible state. I think everything about Maddy (and her ghost) was well achieved and conveyed a well done atmosphere of some fear and unease, so much more thinking this was set in the 20s.

There's an explanation, of course, for why this girl one day killed herself and why her ghost remained to haunt the place. The setting is a village where everyone knows everyone, and we are slowly given the clues on how things were and how the other inhabitants felt and behaved. It was also an easy way for us to have access to others' opinions, since the narrator is Sarah and there were things she could not see or be present at. I think the tone and the vibe were well done but let me say that, from a certain point on, it became obvious who caused Maddy harm and contributed for her decision to kill herself. For me, the mystery wasn't so much the identity of the villain but why Maddy. She was a servant girl, had no close family...when we learn the real why, it made me sad...who knows how many other girls (and boys) were treated in a similar way...? (Still are...)

Nevertheless, the ghost haunting  - and hunting - was the most interesting part of the novel for me. I feel Sarah was a good enough narrator, she allowed me to have an idea of what was going on in a steady fashion but I can't pinpoint exactly why I didn't warm up to her as much as I wanted. There were traits I liked seeing in her but her vulnerable side wasn't explored in the way I imagined. She was a competent heroine for this story but not overly captivating.

I suppose I could say that part of my frustration with her is the same I had with the heroine from the other book. I also think there's a trend here, in the author's style, of writing things in a sort of detached manner, the words are there and say something but the feeling isn't always easy to convey. I also believe it would help if the romance between Sarah and her love interest was more...well.. romantic. I can imagine it might be so but we don't have enough scenes with tender/sweet/mundane scenes between them to convince me that, despite the stress and adrenaline of the situation, they would be a stable, strong couple after the story ends. I think the writing could help with this but I figure that's not the author's goal, that the romance is just a plus and not that necessary to develop better.

All in all, I liked this one better...still not as wonderful as I hoped for, but I think I wouldn't mind reading more by the author now I have an understanding of her style. In the right mood and with adjusted expectations, I'll certainly read more books by her one day.

Grade: 7/10

Simone St. James - The other Side of Midnight

London, 1925. Glamorous medium Gloria Sutter made her fortune helping the bereaved contact loved ones killed during the Great War. Now she's been murdered at one of her own séances, after leaving a message requesting the help of her former friend and sole rival, Ellie Winter.
Ellie doesn't contact the dead—at least, not anymore. She specializes in miraculously finding lost items. Still, she can't refuse the final request of the only other true psychic she has known. Now Ellie must delve into Gloria's secrets and plunge back into the world of hucksters, lowlifes, and fakes. Worse, she cannot shake the attentions of handsome James Hawley, a damaged war veteran who has dedicated himself to debunking psychics.
As Ellie and James uncover the sinister mysteries of Gloria's life and death, Ellie is tormented by nightmarish visions that herald the grisly murders of those in Gloria's circle. And as Ellie’s uneasy partnership with James turns dangerously intimate, an insidious evil force begins to undermine their quest for clues, a force determined to bury the truth, and whoever seeks to expose it...

Comment: Having seen so many positive comments on this story in the recent years, I added it to my TBR and only now did I finally get to it. I convinced my friend H. to read it with me and this was it, although I must say I expected a lot better.

In this historical fiction mystery, we meet heroine Ellie Winter, a medium/psychic who has the ability to see dead people and find things about them but who no longer does seances, especially since her mother died. Her mother, the famous "fantastique" had had only Gloria Sutton as a rival, and larger than life Gloria befriended her closer in age Ellie to find a way to erase the competition. Years after their fall out, Ellie now works as a simple consultant, helping people find lost things but she is as shocked as anyone when Gloria is found dead. Now, with Gloria's brother wanting to know what she can find out, being interrogated by the police and a reporter from her past wanting to prove her a fake, will Ellie be able to find what happened to Gloria before she becomes the target too?

I fully expected a sort of Gothic-type of story. I thought this not only because of the ghosts and the mediums and the seances but because the plot takes place in the 20s and it that is the time where these things seemed to have more impact on society somehow. I imagined complicated motifs, secluded arrangements, family secrets, fear of exposure, fear of the unknown...the kinds of things one might expect from stories where the supernatural could have had a specific meaning for most people.

It's true the plot is centered on these things. A psychic murdered when she was about to conduct a seance, one of the witnesses also ends up dead, the couple that requested the seance disappears... all clues that point out to scaring scenarios of people watching, of people hiding.. my imagination invented quite a lot and although some of these things can be found throughout the novel, I'm afraid I struggled to be interested. I can't help but saying that the element were there, but the overall feel I had while reading was one of boredom. The story is just boring or I wasn't in the right frame of mind, but the scary parts didn't impact me and the reveals felt very, very lukewarm.

I think the overall story isn't bad, sure I could do with different choices by the author and the end, when we find out who killed Gloria, was not the shock I suppose the author aimed for. But the mystery could have worked, I'd say, had the narrator been more compelling or with a different personality or able to find things in a different way, I'm not certain how to express myself. The thing is, for me, Ellie is a likable character but she is not easy to sympathize with. The fact the story is told by her in the first person turned me off from being more partial to what was happening.

The crimes committed and some of the clues we follow along Ellie to know what happened to Gloria are all fine but I missed more on society, more on those Ellie interacted with... Ok, this is a mystery so the focus is on that but I think more setting up, more on the characters and their family bonds, more on Ellie as person instead of just a psychic, more on her own family would have given more clues to understand everyone. It felt as if those characters were only there to fit the role they had to play and it could have been anyone.

There are also what was labeled "romantic elements", meaning the focus is not it, but there's a romance happening. Ellie has some history with her love interest and I thought that, at least, would be cause for conflict or evolution for Ellie, for instance, on how she could become better because she would develop a relationship with that man.Sadly, no, the romance is barely touched apart from some intimacy scenes and some others which we are to take as proof of their feelings but then, 1) being Ellie the single narrator we don't know what the man is thinking and b) the dialogues between them are supposed to let us infer things, not really see them happening.

I still think perhaps this was a case of "me, not the book", I might not have read this at the best time, and I will try another book by the author at some point. However, with such praise, I did expect all aspects of this novel to be superb but it wasn't so, after all.

Grade: 5/10