Idlewild Hall is a place where the girls no one wants are sent. But there is more than learning going on in this boarding school. Then one of the students disappears.
There are two timelines in this book: one in the 1950s while Idlewild Hall was an active boarding school and the other in 2014.
In 2014, the remains of the body of a young girl from a decades-old murder are discovered at Idlewild Hall, a school for girls now closed, that has always been rumored to be haunted. Fiona, a journalist, happens to be there when this body is discovered. Fiona is there because of another body—her sister’s—that was found on the school grounds years later.
Fiona had set out to learn the truth about her sister’s death and whether or not the one put in prison for her murder was actually guilty, but she discovers so much more than she planned. Although these discoveries help her to rekindle a relationship with her father, they could also destroy part of her life by causing her to lose her boyfriend as well as what is most precious to her: her own life.
Even in the 1950s, Idlewild Hall in Vermont is rumored to be haunted by Mary Hand, but no one knows who this girl really was or why she is haunting this boarding school, but everyone is terrified of her. Notes can be found written in old school books about her and have been there since the opening of the school. Could this ghostly presence be the reason for the disappearance and murder of each girl?
female prisoners in Ravensbrück, wikimedia commons
Katie, Sonia, Roberta, and CeCe are friends and roommates at the school. Each of them has been broken in a different way. Each one has a different story of sadness and/or pain— witnessing an almost-suicide, confinement at a Nazi prison, illegitimate, not wanted, troublemaker—but what it all boils down to is that they are no longer wanted at home. This school out in the middle of nowhere is where they were sent. Over time, they bond and become close friends.
Things are so strict at this school that when one of the girls receives a radio as a gift, she must keep its presence a secret from the teachers. Another girl keeps a secret journal in which she reveals the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and prisons.
the woods, pixabay
Sonia is excited when her elderly relatives decide they want her home for a weekend visit, but Sonia never comes back and her suitcase is found in the woods.
The two murders are committed years apart, but each has a story of betrayal, and each has its secrets. The twists and turns in this exciting story will keep you from wanting to put the book down. The ending is very satisfactory and all loose ends are tied up.
NetGalley sent me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. If you would like your own copy of this book, I’ve provided an Amazon link below.
Amazon Link: The Broken Girls
pages of a book, pexels
Favorite Sentences:
Now she was flying, her body fully warm, barely feeling her feet as they hit the ground, the breath raw and painful in her lungs.
It wasn’t the work that the girls loathed—it was the garden itself.
It was incredible that tens of thousands of people could vanish from history without a single record.
She dipped her head down into the book’s spine, inhaling deeply of the thick papery scent, feeling something strange and calm move down the back of her neck, into her shoulders, her spine.
dictionaries, wikipedia
New Words learned:
hubris – excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance
juddery – shaky
maudlin – tearfully or weakly emotional; foolishly sentimental
parse – analyze
Ravensbrück prison – Ravensbrück was a concentration camp for women, which had 34 satellite divisions. Located alongside Lake Schwedt, about 50 miles north of Berlin, Ravensbrück opened on May 15, 1939, and, three days later, the first group of 867 women arrived from Lichtenburg in Saxony, a fortress that had been used as a women’s camp from March 1938 until May 1939. The first prisoners were mostly of German anti-fascists, either Social Democrats or Communists — some coincidentally Jewish, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. A high wall with electrified barbed wire enclosed the women in the camp. (Excerpt from jewishvirtuallibrary.org)
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/history-and-overview-of-ravensbr-uuml-ck
runnels – small channels for water
About the Author:
Simone St. James is the award-winning author of The Haunting of Maddy Clare, which won two prestigious RITA® awards from Romance Writers of America and an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada. She writes gothic historical ghost stories set in 1920s England, books that are known for their mystery, gripping suspense, and romance.
Simone wrote her first ghost story, about a haunted library, when she was in high school. She worked behind the scenes in the television business for twenty years before leaving to write full-time. She lives just outside Toronto, Canada with her husband and a spoiled cat.
