Book Review: Paper Ghosts by Sarah Addison Allen

 Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from St Martin'sPress via #netgalley, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it. All opinions are my own

Part ghost story, part love story and steeped in magical realism, Paper Ghosts will transport you to a place where old secrets echo through the years and love finds a way of bringing us home.

Synopsis:

Every family has its secrets . . .The Wester women live inside theirs.

For decades, the women of Wester House have unsettled and fascinated their small, timeless North Carolina town. Their home is full of whispers, old griefs, and uncanny knowing. But when Willamena Wester reaches out to the granddaughter she once pushed away, long-buried truths begin to stir.

1976: Restless young Willamena falls for a stranded musician who brings freedom and the promise of another life to her carefully controlled world. Their brief, incandescent love story promises to escape the pull of the Wester legacy until Willamena makes a fateful choice that changes her life forever.

Present day: Returning home is the last thing Bailey Wester wants. Yet as she reconnects with Willamena, the grandmother she feared, Bailey begins to understand the love, heartbreak, and impossible choices that shaped the women in her family and realizes the past may not have been trying to haunt them after all. A luminous novel filled with Sarah Addison Allen’s stunning prose and signature blend of romance, Southern charm, and wonder, Paper Ghosts reminds us that in order to have the future we really want, sometimes we need to live with the past, and not let go of it.

Review:

When Willamena's mother dies in a car accident, her father makes the only choice he can think of which is to return home and to have his mother's help in raising his young child. She box at the restrictions that her grandmother gives her, and wonder why they have to be so different. And then one stormy night her disobeying of the rules has drastic consequences, and she finally understands the rules for grandmother had given her word for her safety, and to allow her to be able to leave the house. As the story goes back and forth between present and past, the reader gets to see what shaped Willamena, and why she's acting toward Bailey the way she is. But when she finally lets her in, and she realizes that she needs to explain everything, is when the family is finally able to go forth. And interesting light Gothic read, this one takes a new look at family dysfunction and the secrets that we keep.

About the Author:

SARAH ADDISON ALLEN is the New York Times bestselling author of Other Birds, Garden Spells, The Sugar Queen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon, The Peach Keeper, First Frost and Lost Lake. She was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina.