The Sun Down Motel was my favorite unexpected read this year. I don’t mean that I didn’t expect to read it, but I guess I should rather say that I wasn’t expecting to like it so much? As some of you have picked up on the pattern — I don’t look at lengthy reviews of books I haven’t read, and only rarely will read them after I decide I’m not going to finish a book (which also rarely happens). So, I had no idea how good this book was!
You all know I’m trying to read more contemporary literature. I have a hard time keeping up with the trends, nor do I really feel like I have to, but sometimes it’s fun talking about what other people are talking about. Hence — The Sun Down Motel, a novel by Simone St. James. Set dually between the early 1980s and 2017, the story is told from both the perspective of Carly (2017) and her Aunt Viv, who disappeared without a trace in a nowhere town in New York. The Sun-Down Motel is the last place Aunt Viv was known to be, having worked there for a few months on the night shift. After Carly’s mother, Viv’s sister, dies of cancer, Carly goes to Fell, New York to find answers.
There, she finds that Fell is the only place in the contiguous United States without a stable internet connection, many of the local newspapers haven’t been digitally archived, and in a town where multiple young women are murdered, not everything is so cut-and-dry. The Sun Down itself seems to hold secrets of its own, sometimes coming alive, and simultaneously transporting you 35 years earlier.
I normally don’t like an ending so tied together, but I would’ve hated probably any other ending. The story was truly spine-tingling, and I stayed up two hours past my usual bedtime finishing it. It was sad in some ways, yet vindicated in others. The author mostly answered any questions you might have at the end of a mystery thriller. I enjoyed the writing style overall, and it’s a great autumn-transitioning-into-winter read, as the nights get dark earlier, and you might be in the mood for something just a little spooky. The Sun Down Motel deserves a solid 4 out of 5 stars from me!
If interested in purchasing this book to read for yourself, considering buying from your local bookstore! My favorite is linked here.
Here’s a general preface — I don’t often read mystery/thriller/horror. At all. I’ll occasionally read something if it seems part of a cultural reset, like Gone Girl or Murder on the Orient Express. I found the book at my local Goodwill Bookstore for $1.50 and my girlfriend had the paperback copy, so we decided to read it together on our weekend getaway to Big Bear. Even though this book takes place on a luxury cruise ship, it still felt apt to read it in a cabin.
A quick summary: Laura “Lo” Blacklock is a travel journalist whose big break may be coming up in the form of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to aboard the maiden voyage of the Aurora, a boutique yacht set to sail on the seas of Norway, under the famed Aurora Borealis. The ship is filled with press, royalty, and the extremely wealthy, spread over ten opulent cabins. The story begins, however, with a burglary that’s meant to undermine everything Lo says henceforward. Her experience being intruded upon in the middle of the night makes her paranoid and afraid, so when she thinks she hears a passenger being thrown overboard, when she sounds the alarm — people only tentatively appease her. Couple her as a victim with a drinking problem, and then add that she’s on medication for anxiety and depression — and you have a classic unreliable character.
Unfortunately for Lo, not only is she established as an unreliable character, she’s unlikable. She possesses no charm or humor, and she isn’t described as overwhelmingly beautiful. Moreover, she’s vapid and shallow, and kind of a bitch to her boyfriend, without any real explanation. She was annoying and when a book is written in the “I” format, which I’m sure was a choice, you feel annoyed at all times. Overall, the writing to me felt lazy. There are one too many questions left at the end of the mystery, and yet not ones that really itch you to understand. Just questions that showcase the lack of good storytelling. I wasn’t ever gripped by the tale, and the twist was a little odd. A lot of reviewers on Goodreads compared the book to The Girl on the Train, which I genuinely cannot remember if I finished. So if that’s a book you’ve read and enjoyed, you may like The Woman in Cabin 10.
It reminded me sort of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express in that there could only be a finite number of suspects for what had to have been the murder of at least one passenger aboard the cruise ship. However, I didn’t like that instead of keeping it to the finite number of passengers, and creating a backstory for each of those characters, the author decided to extend outwards to the entire staff, including the waitstaff and the sailors. There were too many details when you involve so many characters. It got repetitive in that regard, as well. The same questions, the same lack of credibility, and then suddenly Lo’s locked up somewhere.
Perhaps it was also a little hard to follow in the beginning as I switched from reading a hardback cover, to listening to the audiobook (which mixed English, Norwegian, and New Jersey accents) and then finally as an e-book. So maybe that’s on me. The book received a 3.7/5 on Goodreads, and I could only give it a generous 2.5. It wasn’t a quick read for me, even though the language is easy to understand, just because of how unlikable Lo was. I’m glad I finished it to say I did, but I definitely couldn’t recommend it in good faith. That isn’t to say it’s a bad book, it just wasn’t quite my cup of tea.
Promptly after finishing this book and taking the necessary photo, I dropped it off at my local little library, perhaps for someone else to enjoy better than I did.
I’ve always loved reading. It’s hard to believe for most, but I’ve loved reading ever since I was a child. The oldest form of escape, I would spend entire summers walking to the library a few blocks away and stay up all night finishing novels. Think of the way Matilda discovered her local library, and would bring a wagon with her, quickly making her way through children’s books towards the classics. I still have a soft spot for Jane Eyre and A Tale of Two Cities… but also The BFG and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.
It also should be said that I veer towards books that make you feel something. Usually unmistakeable grief. I like a decent beach read the way anyone might, but I don’t find myself ever thinking about them again once the last page has been turned. (Ex: Books like Twilight by Stephenie Meyer and Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan come to mind.) Below are books that are always in the back of my brain somewhere, ones I readily recommend, especially to people who don’t read often, because these books just grip you one way or another. These are very brief descriptions of some of my all-time favorite books, but I encourage you to click on the links to their Goodreads pages and read in-depth reviews if you’d like a more encompassing synopsis and preview. You might also notice each are over 4 (out of 5) stars on Goodreads — trust me, I won’t lead you astray! Not on this “official” list, but I also highly recommend The Vanishing Half, by Brit Bennett, to which I dedicated its own post here.
Without further ado, my go-to list of all time favorite [fiction] recommendations! (I’ve also been reading a lot of nonfiction, so I will be compiling my list of favorite nonfiction recommendations as well!)
A true-crime novel (Capote calls it the “non-fiction novel”) about a 1959 murder in Kansas; what makes it unique is the author interviews the men convicted of the crime and almost tells it from their point of view! It’s a chilling read in that regard; almost brings you inside the mind of the murderers, as Capote interviewed them multiple times while they were in jail. I read this as a junior in high school and it’s one of those books that has always stuck with me. I’ll forever recommend this book to people, especially considering how popular true crime has gotten since this book’s original publication in 1966.
Also well-known for his work, The Kite Runner, which is also very good but I personally prefer A Thousand Splendid Suns because it’s the story of two extremely strong women and their lives under pre/Taliban/post rule in Afghanistan and what it really means to endure and persevere for love. It’s heart-wrenching and will make you sick to your stomach, but I think it breathes empathy into us for people we will never know, though they deserve to have their stories heard. While this is technically categorized as fiction, there is no question that the way the main characters suffer is the way women in the Middle East still suffer today.
This is probably Murakami’s most famous work — it tells the story of two people brought together by a common tragedy, and is written so vividly and beautifully, I wish it were something I read a long time ago and repeatedly afterwards. I always warn people of this book as I recommend it, because it is not best read for anyone with suicidal thoughts or deep sadness within them. It’s a hard book to read, not in skill level but it’ll ignite parts of you you may have wished remained dormant. However, if you have suffered and have made it to the other side of that hopeless suffering, you may like this.
This book, written in the late 19th century, is a classic and was previously banned for its morally questioning character, but it’s written so phenomenally and not in the way most “classics” are. (i.e. boring and long-winded with too many characters to keep up with and a plot that happens in the background while you’re still trying to get through paragraph after paragraph of prose.) It’s a necessary read. The Picture of Dorian Gray is maybe surprisingly a quick read and just asks you to really consider the lengths to which you might go to be beautiful forever. However, I would also say you’ll take more from it if you spend the time to go through it’s pages with a careful and critical eye. Especially because the entire novel is completely quotable. Every other line is something you want to remember forever just for the combination of words that made their way into sentences. The language is biting and a touch cruel — you’ll disagree and be insulted because Wilde is talking about the detriments of humanity and you might think yourself above the disparage. But it is all relatable.
“Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing.”
An honorary (non-fiction) mention:
I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai, who is the youngest Nobel Peace Prize winner for her role as a women’s education activist in Pakistan under Taliban rule, for which she was shot in the head by her own government and currently studies in exile at Oxford. This is her story, an autobiography that reads like poetry. It’s daunting to get through only because most people know what happens. You get to a certain part of the book, and then the rest of the time, you’re waiting for the attack. Which is nerve-wracking all by itself, and then you start to think about all of the ways women in most countries are attacked for speaking out in defense of God-given rights to live and to learn, and suffer furthermore by not doing so, and it’s easy to want to close your eyes to it all. But sometimes closing your eyes is akin to closing your hearts, and today, we’re living in a world where we must pay attention and be like Malala, fighting for the change we need.
nazaraloves 