3 out of 5 stars (remember: 3 stars is a positive review)

Goodreads has this to say (I edited it heavily, though):

Painter Cassandra Mitchell is the fourth-generation to live in the majestic Battersea Bluffs, originally built by her great-grandparents, Percy and Celeste Mitchell, and still standing despite tragedies. Local lore has it that there was a curse placed on the family and the house is haunted, though opinions are divided on whether it’s by malicious or benevolent spirits. Cassie believes the latter―but now she stands to lose her beloved home.

Salvation seems to arrive when a nomadic young couple wanders onto the property ―until they vanish without a trace, leaving behind no clue to their identities. Cassie is devastated, but determined to discover what’s happened to the young couple…even as digging into their disappearance starts to uncover family secrets of her own. Despite warnings from her childhood friend, now the local Chief of Police―as well as an FBI agent ―Cassie can’t help following the trail of clues (and eerie signals from the old house itself) to unravel the mystery. But can she do so before her family’s dark curse destroys everything in its path?

I thought this was going to be…spookier. There’s just not a ton of haunting for a story with ghosts in it. The romance aspect was weird and somehow there was an out-of-left-field love triangle for like…20 pages, then disappeared. There was the weirdness of her sister refusing to visit because….smells? She can’t just stay somewhere else in town?  I couldn’t completely buy into one plot line because there were so many. Not all of them got resolved satisfactorily – at least for me. 

Cassie comes off (to me) as really naive, sheltered, and a bit spacey. I just didn’t really connect with her, but she grew on me over the course of the novel. The plot was full of strange disconnected threads that didn’t really have much to do with each other and it almost seemed like I should be reading two different books – one about the missing couple and one about her family shenanigans. 

However, it was an easy read and nothing made me angry. You know how sometimes you just get mad at a book for whatever deficiencies it has? That didn’t happen here. I was interested in the novel for the entire time and bought the resolution to a couple of the plot threads. I liked the Police Chief, and sympathized with the FBI agent. Everyone gets mad at the people who are trained to find out what’s happening, and poor guy is just doing his best. 

I definitely don’t regret reading this over a weekend, but I don’t think I’ll be reading any more books in this series. She hasn’t written any more yet, but I have the feeling it’s a series. 

Big thanks to NetGalley and Crooked Lane Books for the eARC in exchange for a review. 

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