Tag Archives: Simone St. James

Dayle Loves This: Simone St. James (author)

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Welcome to Dayle Loves This, wherein I recommend books, TV, and movies (and maybe other things) that rocked my world.

If they don’t rock your world, that’s okay. We all have reader/watcher cookies as well as triggers. If you have questions, ask. And please make your own suggestions, and discuss!


Okay, technically, I don’t love Simone St. James, at least not on a personal level. Although she seems pleasant enough online, I’ve never met her and know nothing about her. I just love a number of her books, and it makes sense to group them all into one post.

Her first five books, of which I’ve read four*, are set in the 1920s. I read the first one, The Haunting of Maddy Clare, a few years ago now, and while it was okay, it didn’t grab me. I don’t remember why, so take that with a grain of salt. (I should probably re-read it.) I got hooked when I read her most recent, The Sun Down Motel.

In 2017, a woman goes to upstate New York** and takes a job at the run-down Sun Down Motel, where her aunt disappeared from in 1982. It’s not a spoiler to say the place is haunted, okay? But the haunting is…very, very well done. It’s sometimes subtle, it’s sometimes a returning guest…. I tore through it.

Then I read the book before that, The Broken Girls, which takes place in Vermont in 2014 and 1950. In this one, a woman tries to figure out what happened to her sister who was found dead on the grounds of a shuttered girls’ school twenty years ago. The girls’ school, as we learn from the 1950 sections, was a place for “girls whom no one wants.” I loved how these time periods interwove, and while Idlewild Hall is creepy as hell, I still want to go there and poke around.

Because St. James isn’t writing novels fast enough for me, and because my gothic-loving partner in crime friend, Kris, was enjoying the 1920s ones, I put them on my library list. (2020 and thus far 2021 for me has been all about women’s thrillers and gothics, so why not?)

Of the five, I’ve discussed one above and am waiting for another, my favorite was probably An Inquiry Into Love and Death because it was set in Cornwall, but honestly, I loved them all.

If you like strong women, creepy settings (with ghosts or similar paranormal activity), Simone St. James is your woman. Er, her books are for you.

1920s-set novels

Currently set (for the most part) novels

The Broken Girls (1950 and 2014, Vermont)
The Sun Down Motel (1982 and 2017, upstate New York)

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*I thought my county library chain didn’t have one of them, but I just checked and it’s only in audiobook or large-print version. I’ve put the latter on hold.
**I’m unclear on whether it was really set in upstate NY or some place north of New York City. Upstate NY doesn’t start until after Albany, but most people assume anything north of NYC is upstate, and that makes me cranky. Don’t get me started on Northern California, either.