“If you go, it’s gonna turn out baaaaaaad!”

12. The Broken Girls – Simone St. James

This book contains many elements that I enjoy – there’s a boarding school for girls that people want to get rid of where four girls find solid support and friendship (I expanded on that sort of “throw away the teens and they will bond” concept in my Squirrelpocalypse Trilogy .), a ghost, murder, and research with primary source material!

It jumps back and forth in time and through a few perspectives, but it was not confusing. There’s contemporary Fiona, a reporter unable to stop herself from staring at the old derelict boarding school grounds – because her sister’s body was found on those same grounds. Fiona’s sister isn’t the only body found on those grounds… and the way that St. James weaves the school’s girls during its time and the school’s registered ghost and the murderage and the complicated but very realistic to me relationships of the character Fiona really worked for me (especially her observations of small town public library staff – she’s right). I was consistently happy to pick this book up again and sad when I was done reading it.

[image error]

Having had two pregnant female guinea pigs in a row, including the pictured Miss Pammy, I at one point thought of my home as a boarding house for wayward teenage guinea pigs. It was a great time.