The Broken Girls is the second Simone St. James book I have read, and I was so pleased to journey back into her immersive writing style that is so smooth and easy to settle into. The Broken Girls is told in alternating timelines of the small town of Barrons, Vermont in 1950 and 2014. The 2014 chapters all focus on Fiona Sheridan, a journalist of middling success whose sister was murdered twenty years ago. In the 1950 chapters, we read from various narrators who were girls at the now closed and abandoned boarding school, Idlewild Hall. 

When Fiona learns that Idlewild Hall, the site where her sister's murdered body was found, will be restored- she decides she must write about it. Quickly, construction halts when a body is found. And that's where St. James had me on tenterhooks, flying through the rest of this book. I loved the historical timeline, and while I initially thought the multiple 1950 narrators was a bit confusing I came around to it and enjoyed the end result. The integration of real and well researched history in this book is top notch and made it all the more unsettling for me. 

I must mention that St. James loves a ghost element. Ghost stories and paranormal elements aren't my favorite, but I like the way she does them.  If you like a dual timeline story and don't mind (or relish!) ghost elements, this one is worth picking up!