No one writes a ghost story like Simone St. James.

I have loved each of her previous four books, which were set in the post World War I era. The Broken Girls finds itself alternating between various time periods--the common thread being a terrifying ghost who has haunted a girls boarding school since its inception. The strands are brought together in the present by a journalist whose life has been overshadowed by the murder of her sister in the 1990s. Abandoned Idlewild Hall is about to be renovated and reopened, prompting Fiona to investigate the death of her sister Deb whose body was dumped on the campus. Her research not only brings her in contact with the restless spirit who has haunted generations of girls at Idlewild but also with the living whose secrets are even more frightening. St. James expertly weaves characters and events from the past and present into a riveting tapestry, reminding the reader that everyone, the living and the dead, is broken in some way.

Full Disclosure--Net Gallery and the publisher provided me with a digital ARC of this book. This is my honest revie

Simone St. James has mastered the art of ghostly suspense. Chills run up and down and you can't wait to turn the next page. But The Lost Girls is so much more than a ghost story. Set in Vermont in the 50's and 2014 the story starts at Idlewild, a school for girls sent by parents who want to forget them. It's a terribly uncaring place where four girls become close friends watching out for each other, until one of them is killed. A nasty spirit remains on the grounds who haunts the school grounds in the 50s and in present day as well. Fiona's sister was murdered on the grounds in the 70s, and in 2014 Fiona is still haunted by what happened. Someone new has just bought the decrepit grounds and plans to restore and reopen the school. Past, present and future combine to solve three murders and finally bring the truth to light I highly recommend.

Following two different timelines, 1950 and 2014, this book explores the lives that have been affected by Idlewild Hall, a massive creepy old girl's boarding school that housed "troubled " girls from the early twentieth century until its closure in 1979. In 1950, four roommates at the school try to cope with both the coldness of the institution they've been imprisoned in and the schools ghost, Mary Hand, who appears to all of them. In 2014, Fiona Sheridan is still mourning her sister, murdered and dumped on the grounds of the abandoned school twenty years earlier. Now the abandoned school has been purchased with plans for it to reopen as a girl's boarding school. But during the construction work, a body is found. The body of one of the girls from 1950. As Fiona investigates she must unravel the threads that link her sister's death to that of both Sonia and the ghost of Mary Hand. This is a fantastic, impossible to put down ghost story. Hands down my favorite read of the summer