Title:Â The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus
Author: Jaime Jo Wright
Publisher:Â Bethany House
Source: The publisher on NetGalley in exchange for an honest review
1928
The Bonaventure Circus is a refuge for many, but Pippa Ripley was rejected from its inner circle as a baby. When she receives mysterious messages from someone called the “Watchman,” she is determined to find him and the connection to her birth. As Pippa’s search leads her to a man seeking justice for his murdered sister and evidence that a serial killer has been haunting the circus train, she must decide if uncovering her roots is worth putting herself directly in the path of the killer.Present Day
The old circus train depot will either be torn down or preserved for historical importance, and its future rests on real estate project manager Chandler Faulk’s shoulders. As she dives deep into the depot’s history, she’s also balancing a newly diagnosed autoimmune disease and the pressures of single motherhood. When she discovers clues to the unsolved murders of the past, Chandler is pulled into a story far darker and more haunting than even an abandoned train depot could portend.
I liked both the historic and modern day settings for this novel. Chandler would be imagining the people and what it looked like in the past and through Pippa the reader is able to picture it a bit more accurately. The alternating storyline format was done well. However, I felt more description was needed for the present timeline to make the characters come alive in my imagination. I felt much more invested in the historic storyline.
If asked what type of book I thought it was, well, that’s really open to interpretation. Mainly it’s a mystery but it’s also a tale about women standing up for themselves against actual or perceived cultural norms, and there’s some romance too.