This book follows two women - Pippa in 1928 and Chandler in present day. Both story lines take place in the same small down which is the wintering grounds for Bonaventure Circus.
Pippa is the adopted daughter of the circus's owner after being abandoned as a baby by one of the circus workers. She is receiving mysterious messages from someone called "The Watchman" who says he knows the truth about her heritage. Wanting to know the truth, Pippa searches for The Watchman and starts becoming more involved in the circus life than her father or her fiance would like. She finds out that there may be a serial killer in the circus and her search for answers may put her in danger.
Chandler is a real estate developer whose company just bought the abandoned circus train depot with plans to renovate and restore the historical site. But with it's dark history, the depot may be more of a project than she expected - raising questions about the murders from the 1920s but also a missing local woman more recently. Chandler is a single mom with an autoimmune disease and a huge chip on her shoulder, thinking that she needs to do everything for herself and that everyone else in her life wants to see her fail.
Overall, I liked this book just fine. I was really intrigued by the dual timelines and the serial killer / haunted circus premise. The two main characters were well developed and complex and the story had good ~spooky~ vibes. However, I found the ending just a bit unsatisfying - the dual timelines made it feel like it wasn't as high stakes as I would have liked (further explanation below).
The slow and steady build up in this book was fantastic. Jamie Jo Wright did a great job of giving us just enough of one timeline before switching to the other which really helped pull me along through the narrative. The first third of the book was really setting up who these two women are, what their worlds look like, and what they are searching for. I found Pippa a little annoyingly naive and Chandler a little annoyingly jaded but overall, I did like their characterizations. They were so different from each other which I really enjoyed. The middle third was when the eerie elements started coming in and I'll admit I got spooked a few times while reading. There wasn't anything overtly scary that happens, but there's a general spooky vibe going on which was exactly what I was hoping for. The setting of the circus was really atmospheric. All the side characters were circus workers and they all had individual reasons for working at the circus none of which were particularly happy reasons. We find out pretty early the identity of one person who will be killed and we know the killer was caught and was a member of the circus. This really heightened the suspense because the reader knows from the present day plot that some of the characters we are following in the 1920s plot aren't who they say they are and it was really fun trying to figure out who would end up being the bad guy.
The last third is when everything started really ramping up and I was super on board but this is where I found the dual timelines were hindering the suspense. I've liked this same mechanic in other books in the past so I'm not sure why it didn't work for me here, but I felt like the times where the narrative cut back and forth weren't at the ideal times to boost suspense (if that was what the author was going for). It was almost like each break in the timeline came just a bit too far after a reveal. So I would be reading along and then *something would happen* and there would be a bit more plot after of the characters just starting to deal with the *event* and then it would cut back to the other time. The little bit of the characters starting to deal with what just happened took away from the drama and then I wasn't as stressed about getting back to that timeline because there was a bit of a resolution after the plot point was revealed. I think the overall plots of both times were really suspenseful and thrilling and I thought the timing of the switching timelines for the first 2/3 of the book was fantastic, the last third just didn't click as well for me.
I really enjoy reading split timeline books and it is a mechanic I think works really well in thrillers, especially. The best praise I have for this book is that both timelines were so entertaining and interesting that I would have read either of them as a stand alone book. I find in a lot of dual timeline books, one is the 'main' story and the other is mostly there for context or to build suspense and so one timeline seems to be less developed or interesting than the other. Not so in this case - in fact, I really wanted more build up with both of these timelines, more suspense during the investigation, more red herrings revealed. I wanted to sit in each world longer and really get into the deep underbelly of this circus.
I also enjoyed how the ending isn't 100% resolved for all the characters (though it is resolved for the reader). The characters in present day get exact answers to some of the mysteries they were investigating, but one mystery they have only a theory on and no exact proof. The characters talk about how hard it would be to prove something that happened so long ago but overall they are satisfied with their conclusions. We flash to the 1920s characters and have that theory confirmed. I thought it was a realistic touch that one set of characters wouldn't be able to find with 100% certainty something that had stayed a secret for so long.
A final note is that one of this book's genre is listed as Christian Fiction. That isn't a genre that I gravitate toward and honestly didn't realize it was a Christian fiction book when I initially requested it. I felt like there was a good amount of discussion between the characters about their faith and their views on God's role in their lives. However, I didn't feel like these discussions were very smoothly incorporated. It felt to me like the discussions were added in after the rest of the story was written as an extra layer (or maybe they were much lighter initially and then boosted up during the editing phase). Based on some of the GoodReads reviews I skimmed over, a lot of people really liked the faith discussions in the book so this just might be something I'm not used to since I don't read this genre very often.
Spooky, dual timeline investigation of serial killer and possible haunting of a circus. Very atmospheric first 2/3s and then the last 1/3 really steps up the action.
391 pages
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC
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