Lena’s Reviews > The Sun Down Motel > Status Update

This story focused on main character, Carly, whose aunt Vivian had disappeared 30 years ago, and was never to be found. Carly goes to Bell, New York to investigate the disappearance of her aunt Vivian. She gets a job at the sundown motel as an overnight clerk, which is the same job that her aunt when she was alive. She moves in with a friendly and nerdy girl named Heather, who allows her to stay there for free. She meets a cute guy named Nick, whose father shot and killed his brother, and he ended up moving into the motel because it’s one of the only places he can sleep. This book is alternating timelines from Carly’s perspective as well as her on Vivian’s perspective from the past.

What we basically come to learn, is that the aunt Vivian had basically begun investigating the deaths of a couple of girls from Bell. She basically ends up finding out that a door-to-door salesman who frequented the motel was responsible, as she followed him around and got clues as to him being guilty of those crimes.

So basically, the book is going back back-and-forth between Carly and Vivian’s perspectives, they’re basically both on the hunt for more clues into their respective mysteries. Carly is investigating what happened to Vivian, Vivian is trying to figure out who was the murderer.

In one of the crooks points of the book, Vivian has a showdown with the traveling door-to-door salesman and he admits to all of the murders. He killed the first woman because he was in love with her and wanted her. The subsequent murders were just because he could get away with it. He charges at her and she ends up, stabbing him twice. As she’s trying to move the body into the car, her two friends from the book, one is a private investigator on the other one is a graveyard, police officer, help her to dispose of the body in an abandoned barn. Both of them then tell her that she has to disappear and leave everything behind to start a new life. The graveyard, police officer basically helped to cover for her, and the private investigator basically also helped cover for certain things for her.

Then going back to Carly’s perspective, the sundown Motel was haunted by multiple ghost, including a smoking man, a baby boy who had passed away in the pool, and Betty, who was the door-to-door salesman’s first victim, the one that he loved. Whenever the spirits were upset with something all the lights will go off in the motel and all the doors would swing open.

So basically during her investigations, Carly gets in contact with the private investigator and graveyard, police officer that were friends of her aunt Vivian‘s. Basically in the book, the police officer notifies Carly that her aunts notebook full of all the details was in the vending machine in the motels lobby. She calls her crush Nick, the guy who’s sleeping at the motel and tells him to go get that notebook. In the interim she had met a guy named Callum at the city library and told him that she was investigating her on appearance. It turns out that Callum is the grandson of the door-to-door sales men. Callum follows Carly to the motel and basically chases her down and pushes her into the pool. She gets injured at that point. Nick the crush chases after Callum, at which point Carly escaped to her car. She’s trying to start the car when a car pulls up next to her, and it turns out that it was her aunt Vivian. Her aunt Vivian takes her away from the motel to a restaurant where they basically explained to each other what happened over soup. Vivian confesses to killing the door-to-door salesman and hiding for the last three decades. She does not implicate the police officer or private investigator, she says that she did everything on her own. Carly and Vivian ended up going back to the motel where they find out that Callum had actually died from a brain aneurysm. We found out that part later, but initially Nick was accused of killing him. So Nick is taken to the police station. Vivian and Carly go to the police station and at that point Vivian turns herself in for the murder of the door-to-door salesman. Nick is acquitted. Flash forward three months Vivian is in jail for manslaughter. Nick and Carly are dating. Carly’s friend Helen and her are still in contact. And basically Carly wants to start a fresh in the city of Bell.

Overall, this book had me hooked, and I kept wanting to read more and more to find out what happened. I think that the author was able to create the atmosphere of the motel super super well. However, I did feel as though the ending was very anti-climactic. The door-to-door salesman kept coming up throughout the book, so I was expecting for it to be a plot twist on somebody else have committed the murders, but the author continued the track and made him culpable. Also, there were multiple elements added to the book which were pretty unnecessary, including the ghost of the smoking man and the young boy. In addition, Nick‘s backstory of his dad killing his brother was quite random, particularly because it wasn’t looped back into the plot at all. It was just kind of an extraneous piece of information. Also, the ending with the aunt popping up out of nowhere was also kind of anti-climatic as well. Overall, the book was pretty good, but the ending was a bit un impressive. Still would recommend because of the atmosphere of the book itself.