Lost Among the Living

Simone St. James

Apr 2016 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

From the New York Times bestselling author of Murder Road comes a gripping novel that “is the perfect blend of history and mystery, with a little paranormal activity and romance thrown in for the ride” (Suspense Magazine).

England, 1921. Three years after her husband, Alex, disappeared, shot down over Germany, Jo Manders still mourns his loss. Working as a paid companion to Alex's wealthy, condescending aunt, Dottie Forsyth, Jo travels to the family’s estate in the Sussex countryside. But there is much she never knew about her husband’s origins…and the revelation of a mysterious death in the Forsyths’ past is just the beginning…
 
All is not well at Wych Elm House. Dottie's husband is distant, and her son was grievously injured in the war. Footsteps follow Jo down empty halls, and items in her bedroom are eerily rearranged. The locals say the family is cursed, and that a ghost in the woods has never rested. And when Jo discovers her husband’s darkest secrets, she wonders if she ever really knew him.  Isolated in a place of deception and grief, she must find the truth or lose herself forever.
 
And then a familiar stranger arrives at Wych Elm House…

Ratings and reviews

This was a confusing book. It really couldn't decide whether it was a ghost story, a murder mystery, a love story or, because the main character is forced to take a job as a paid companion to her aunt by marriage, a downstairs/upstairs story. So why not make it all four! I'll tell you why, it's too much crammed into one story. The different story lines don't mesh well at all. They really did seem to be 4 different stories with a thin rope tethered between them. In addition, the characters are not solid at all and tend to make decisions that are baffling. The end is particularly disappointing. At least for someone like me. The characters, who are all family by the end of the story, just scatter in the wind, each going their separate ways. After reading all the characters' struggles they have to overcome and individual demons they all have to conquer, it would have been nice to see them all together, living in the country estate in a "happily ever after" state of bliss. But maybe I'm too much of a sentimentalist.

Amazing as expected from this wonderful Author!!!

About the author

Simone St. James is the award-winning author of The Haunting of Maddy Clare, which won two RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America and an Arthur Ellis Award from Crime Writers of Canada. Her second novel, An Inquiry into Love and Death, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel from Crime Writers of Canada. She wrote her first ghost story, about a haunted library, when she was in high school, and spent twenty years behind the scenes in the television business before leaving to write full-time.