"Bad people are to be found everywhere, but even among the worst there may be something good."

"Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting"

This novel was so well written and kept me up till 2 a.m just to finish. I had to know how it ended, the whole time i was reading i could not figure out where this story would take me. Adding the black and white photos and Grace's notebook entries to the story was a nice touch, really made the story come alive for me.

Grace's older sister, Rachel, who has been missing since Grace was 12, is presumed dead and the person most likely responsible is Carl Feldman, a well known photographer, who is diagnosed with dementia. He is later acquitted on a murder of another young women and put into an assisted-living facility. Obsessing for years over what happened to her sister she one day seeks out Carl and claims to be his daughter. In hopes to jog his memory she wants to take him on a road trip to various stopping points where women have vanished. Those same stopping points are also in photographs he has taken. Believing he has killed these various women who have gone missing in Texas she hopes to prove he is in fact the killer and hopefully get justice for her sister. Carl of course has no memory of these killings and is skeptical that she really is his daughter but agrees to this road trip but she has to meet some of his conditions first. She of course agrees, she has been waiting/preparing/training for this day. As the trip progresses, she sees moments of lucidity and how he's keen to detail. Which leads you to ask Does he even have dementia? Could he actually murder all these women?

Will this game Grace is playing actually lead her to answers or will she be next in this list of missing women?

I cant stress enough how great this book is. The author did a great job of keeping you intrigued, giving you small clues to whats going on without actually giving away anything, and bringing the story alive in each page.
Towards the end it stopped being about whether or not Carl was a serial killer and became about the relationship he and Grace had formed, as messed up and crazy as that is.

5 STARS!! Thank You to NetGalley and everyone involved i absolutely enjoyed this one. Great start to the New Year!!!!!

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this title. Unfortunately, I was not able to finish this book which means I will not be able to review it. I truly appreciate the opportunity and apologize for the inconvenience the lack of review may cause you.

The premise of this book sounded a lot better than the execution. Overall it read a bit slow with the same situation happening over and over again. I understand why the protagonist was searching for her sisters potential killer, but the reasoning behind why she chose Carl didn't really add up.

Abandonment Alert
Oh my. I've had this book for weeks... I pride myself on being able to finish a standard novel in one to two days. After reading this book off and on for three weeks, I abandoned it. I believe this is a first for me. I've read some horrible books before, but continued on with a hope of revitalization. Alas, that hope has been extinguished here after approximately 2/3 of the way through. It just drones on and on. The only mystery is, did he or didn't he? To be so well planned of an adventure, why is she so careless? I'm not buying into the story, and at this point I don't even care why, when, or how. While the concept of the plot is entertaining, the pages are not.

Imagine your sister was kidnapped years ago and was never found. Now imagine you are consumed with finding out what happened to her and that you will stop at nothing to know. That is basically the premise to Paper Ghosts.


Throughout the book, written in first person, you don't know the character's name. She is an adult now, but never got over her sister's disappearance. Who would? But, this woman takes everything to the extreme. She thinks she knows who may have taken her sister, but after year and years of research and planning, she thinks she's ready to prove it.


She has her eyes set on an aging, semi dementia suffering photographer, Carl, who was acquitted of one major crime already. He is now in an assisted living home where she actually plots to get him out and travel around the country to different locations in hopes of jogging his memory of, not only her sister, but other missing girls she feels he may have had something to do with their disappearances as well.


They travel to the locations where the other girls went missing and along the way, she can't figure out whether Carl is faking the dementia or if he truly is struggling.


So the question here is, will she ever find out what happened to her sister and the other missing girls? Is she safe with Carl? Could she be his next victim? What else will she find out along her journey?


My two cents: I thought the premise was a tad far fetched. You're going to scheme and be able to pull of taking a possible dementia patient out on the road in hopes of finding out what happened decades ago? Also, this took me way too long too finish. I love to read and this was one of those books on my Kindle where I would look down at the percentage finished, I was a little surprised wondering how much more could really happen.


Now, you might think I didn't enjoy this book. I actually did like it. I think it got better after I got over the halfway point. I did want to know what happened, but just thought the whole thing was just a little too unrealistic. However, I think it will do well upon its release.


I was so happy to get an advance copy from the publisher through NetGalley. Thank you to Netgalley and Random House. No review was required.

Julia Heaberlin's novels are set in Texas and radiate her attachment to the state and the wide assortment of people who inhabit it. My favorite is still Black-Eyed Susans, but Paper Ghosts is and entertaining puzzle involving Grace, a young woman whose beloved older sister disappeared when Grace was twelve.

Grace has spent the intervening years searching for clues, determined to discover what happened to Rachel. Carl Feldman, a gifted documentary photographer, was once suspected of the murder of several young women across the state. Now, he is an old man who suffers from dementia.

Grace considers Feldman a good possibility to have kidnapped and murdered her sister. She visits the home where he is being cared for claiming to be his daughter. He agrees to accompany her on a road trip to visit the locations of some of his eery photographs. At times, Carl seems a bit lost, at other times, you question the dementia diagnosis and worry about what Grace has gotten herself into. After all, if Carl is guilty, she has put herself in a dangerous situation.

While parts of the narrative are fascinating, there are some slow and repetitive sections as well. From Galveston to Marfa, the two tour the locations of missing women and of many of Carl's photographs.

I liked this novel despite some slow spots and an ambiguous conclusion, in which you learn some answers, but by no means all.

Playing Dead, Black-Eyed Susans, and Paper Ghosts, each have a character with dementia. Since there could hardly be a family in America who hasn't felt the heartache of Alzheimer's or some form of dementia, either within their own family or the families of friends and colleagues--it seems appropriate.

Heaberlin's acknowledgements include interesting personal comments about some of the elements that went into the creation of Paper Ghosts, including the grandfather who shot crime scene photographs; her friend, Texas photographer Jill Johnson; and the eery photographs of Keith Carter.

Read in November; blog review scheduled for April 23, 2018.

NetGalley/Random House/Ballantine

Mystery/Suspense. May 15, 2018. Print length: 368 pages.

Julia Heaberlin takes an interesting approach to a murder novel. Instead of trying to solve the crime from a distance, Heaberlin's main character takes charge and directly confronts the serial killer she believes killed her sister. I will avoid any spoilers, however the ending of this novel felt like the story deflated at the end and tried to wrap up too neatly.

Overall, the characters were well fleshed out. Heaberlin's description of dementia was very accurate. Having lived with a relative with dementia, I appreciated her attempt at portraying the struggles that bystanders may experience when working with someone with dementia. Very few novelists that I have read have discussed this topic. As our population ages, more and more people will encounter someone with depression and it was nice to see this reflected in a novel.

Midway through the novel I became bored with the writing. The story started out strong, however as the novel advances the writing is not as captivating. If I wasn't doing this as a review, I would have more than likely not finished the novel. I hoped that the novel would become more exciting and capture my attention again, but it didn't happen. The ending was not predictable as I thought it would be, but it was a disappointing end all the same. It seems like any novel that has a female lead character and deals with crime is compared to Gone Girl. This is not a novel to compare to Gone Girl. There were many areas of opportunity, but overall the novel was a letdown. I am glad it didn't take me too long to read because I was disappointed at the time I put in with the end result. I wouldn't recommend this novel, there are other crime fiction novels that are much better. The premise is strong, but the delivery just was not there for me.

Please be advised that I received this novel through NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Julia Heaberlin’s Paper Ghosts takes us on one of the craziest road trips ever. The narrator doesn’t give her name to us, or anyone else as she goes on the hunt to find out what happened to her missing sister. Rachel was beautiful, exciting and 19 when she vanished on her way to a babysitting gig. Our narrator just 12 at the time has spent her life researching suspects and cases that could be linked to her sister’s abduction. Now 24 she has pinpointed a single culprit, a famed photographer and possible serial killer Carl Feldman. Carl lives in a sketchy halfway house allegedly suffering from dementia. Our narrator poses as his daughter to take him on a vacation, and so begins a road trip that Kerouac would be envious of.
Carl is an enigma. He has moments of clarity, and of caring, mixed with off hand remarks, conversations with imaginary figures that might be ghosts of his victims or figments of a slipping mind. His ability to focus and notice details is more terrifying and intriguing, than his behavior we assume is related to his dementia (even as we question it’s existence). Heaberlin’s character who is both nameless at first but also has many aliases, guides us through her search for her sister, as she tries to pull memories from a mind that is slowly losing them.
Once I started Paper Ghosts, I only stopped reading to sleep for a few hours. It’s original with moments that are scary and funny.

Excellent read. Really kept you coming back and really kept you guessing. I enjoyed every single character including the animals. Good read for sure.

Thanks to the publishers for giving me an advance copy to review through Netgalley.
This psychological thriller is different from the usual because it is told by the young girl who has been trying to find answers for her sister's disappearance for more than a decade. Through her research she concludes that Carl Feldman who was a published photographer, seems to be linked to girls who have disappeared.
She decides to take Carl on a road trip to the places he has photographed to try to get some answers. Carl is supposed to suffer from dementia, but as the story progresses, one wonders if that is just a front that Carl is putting on. Will she finally find the answers she is looking for, or will the road trip be a wild goose chase .
I have read other novels by this author and really enjoyed them, but unfortunately I could not get into this story. The characters seemed unbelievable and I got lost midway through the book as the storyline seemed to wander.

I enjoyed reading this fast-paced action packed mystery thriller that will keep you up at night. The characters are well planned out and developed with a setting that is perfect for a thrilling mystery.

Would you go on a road trip with a possible serial killer if it meant you would learn the truth about your sister's disappearance?

Carl Feldman was a photographer before dementia took away his autonomy. A young woman claiming to be his daughter takes him on a road trip to stir up memories, mainly to find our if he is a killer. There are so many things about that premise that make me want to scream at the characters, but it makes an intense book. Carl is quietly creepy, but you feel yourself starting to wonder if he is who he is made out to be. That unsettled feeling of not knowing what is around the corner kept me thinking about this book after it ended.

Incredibly unique take on the serial killer suspense genre. I've read a lot of thrillers, and this is definitely the first time I've seen one where the protagonists kidnaps the alleged killer hoping to get answers via a bizarre yet strategically engineered road trip.

Heroine Grace is very easy to like, especially for those of us who imagine we'd want to take matters into our own hands if we lost a loved one to a murderer, but the truly fascinating character here is Carl. Just creepy enough to remain suspicious, yet just human enough for the reader to doubt his guilt, Heaberlin kept me guessing until the end, and dosed a very dark plot with just enough humor and charm to make it fun.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This is a very scary thriller that kept me turning the pages, but I thought some of the plot strands did not seem realistic.

Grace is literally chasing ghosts, i.e., trying to find out what happened to missing girls, presumed dead, like her beloved older sister Rachel. She believes Rachel was killed by an alleged serial killer, the famous photographer Carl Feldman. As the story begins, we find that Rachel is visiting Carl in the Texas home where he now resides, which serves as a halfway house for criminals with dementia. Rachel tells everyone, including Carl, that she is Carl’s daughter that he doesn’t remember. She asks to take him on a trip - her goal being to take Carl to the scene of where the girls went missing and to see if she can jar him into confessing.

The story is interesting, and there is certainly a lot of suspense, but I didn’t feel all the plot strands added up. Rachel reportedly “trained” extensively to be alert to any emergency, but she proves remarkably inept. Most jarringly, Carl was amazingly, and unrealistically, it seemed to me, strong, smart, and capable for an older man who supposedly has dementia - really was. Parts of the epilogue did not seem realistic at all. Finally, readers were left in the dark about many aspects of who Carl really was. It left me feeling a bit cheated.

While many of us wonder what we might do to the person who harmed one of our loved ones, this novel finds a young woman who spends her lifetime preparing to essentially kidnap the man she believes got away with murder. Or did he? Is he suffering from dementia? Or is he just extremely crafty? Does he know something about her sister's disappearance? Or is he really just a photographer? In the end, the truth is a little less than satisfying, but the roadtrip is worth every twist and turn.

Paper Ghosts was well written but there was no real plot twist that shocked me. I enjoyed the characters, even though the main character frustrated me at times, and I thought that the pace was good.
It was a story that I enjoyed reading but not one that I will remember from years to come,
Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I have been caught in a thriller mood as of late and Julia Heaberlin delivered everything that I wanted. Paper Ghost reaches out and pulled me in from the minutes I started reading. I had a hard time putting it down to finish things in my busy schedule. My only complaint is that it did get a little slow in the middle, but I had no trouble getting through it. If you want a great psychological thriller then I highly recommend checking out Paper Ghost.

Paper Ghosts is a beautiful, twisted, intense read. Perfect for any reader who enjoys a plot twist! This book did not disappoint.

5 smoking hot stars for a thrill ride that kept me guessing the whole way. Wow. A road trip with your sister's murderer through the Texas landscape? Heck yes. This main character has some wrongs to right and the oomph to get it done. Wow. Just...amazing. I loved it.

Paper Ghosts has a great concept: a young girl tracks down her sister's killer but when she finds him. he is suffering from dementia. So she takes him on a trip to jog his memory of his crimes and find out where her sister is.
The execution is sub par. Also reviews compare it to the books of Gillian Flynn. While it has the same haunted and twisted protagonist, there isn't any really any suspense as I was easily able to figure out how they were going to play the ending (I kept waiting for the amazing twist to no avail). A sub story develops to add some tension but it is not a nail biter at all. But it does at least give some clarification to a plot devoid of real answers.
The best portions of the book are when carl talks about photography. I really enjoyed the descriptions and how he was moved by photography. The writer was able o put into words why photography can be such a great form of art.
Paper Ghosts is o.k. but it never really gives you the tension and puzzle you want. The whole novel skirts across the top of idea that could have been so much more deep