After a devastating loss, Brynn Wilder escapes to Wharton, a tourist town on Lake Superior, to reset. Checking into a quaint boarding-house for the summer, she hopes to put her life into perspective. In her fellow lodgers, she finds a friendly company of strangers: the frail Alice, cared for by a married couple with a heart-breaking story of their own; LuAnn, the eccentric and lovable owner of the inn; and Dominic, an unsettlingly handsome man inked from head to toe in mesmerizing tattoos.
But in this inviting refuge, where a century of souls has passed, a mystery begins to swirl. Alice knows things about Brynn, about all of them that she shouldn't. Bad dreams and night whispers lure Brynn to a shuttered room at the end of the hall, a room still heavy with a recent death. And now she's become irresistibly drawn to Dominic-even in the shadow of rumours that wherever he goes, suspicious death follows.
In this chilling season of love, transformation, and fear, something is calling for Brynn. To settle her past, she may have no choice but to answer.
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Everyone is haunted by something. PROLOGUE
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(Lake Union Publishing, 1 November 2020, 287 pages, ebook, bought from @AmazonKindle, #AmazonFirstReads)
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This isn't the chilling ghost story I was expecting but I really enjoyed it all the same. Dominic has clearly been inspired by Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man and there are references to the book scattered throughout you may miss if you haven't read it. One of the things that let the book down a little is the lack of an ending for some issues raised. We never find out the source of Brynn's loss, or why Alice seems to be tapping into psychic abilities or why Dominic came to Wharton. I felt the author didn't leave enough clues for me to reach my own conclusions. This aside, this is a very enjoyable book. There are some spooky events such as Alice, an elderly woman with Alzheimer seems to know things she shouldn't and strange dreams Brynn has. There are also some strange deaths attributed to natural causes which the locals think are the result of something more sinister. This held my interest from start to finish. I will definitely read more books by the author as at least one of them is also set in Wharton.
