by Sarah Addison Allen

Paper Ghosts is a multigenerational ghost story, complete with a haunted house and a town witch.

The story opens in the 1970s with Willamina Wester. After her mother abandons her, Willamina is raised by her grandmother, a solitary woman in Hen Town. Grandmother Wester knows EVERYTHING, and she isn’t above using what she knows to blackmail others into doing her bidding. She has her granddaughter’s whole future mapped out, right down to the husband she’s picked for poor Willamina. Willamina, however, wants nothing more than to escape the confines of the Wester house. Before long, the choices she makes push her grandmother to murder.

The story then jumps ahead to the present day. Willamina, now called Mim, lives alone in her rambling haunted mansion, which is exactly how she likes it. That changes when her son Tug and granddaughter Bailey move in. Bailey, it turns out, has the same “gift” as her grandmother, though she doesn’t yet know its full extent. As a young child, Bailey is precocious, innocent and cheerful, at least until Mim starts interfering in her life and manipulating her friend group. Even so, Bailey adores her Grandma Mim and only wants to be loved by her.

The story then jumps ahead once more, this time to Bailey’s high school years. By now, her life is beginning to follow the same tragic path as her grandmother’s.

Overall, this novel is a quick read, and I was immediately entertained by both the plot and the writing. My one frustration was the jumps in time, which felt abrupt. That’s a little ironic, since the author describes Hen Town as a place where time moves more slowly, and even the town clock runs one minute longer every hour.

What I liked most was the premise. I loved the idea of women being trapped by their past, and of the “sins of the mother” being passed down to the daughter, or in this case, the granddaughter. I also appreciated the message about not letting your last name define your destiny. If anything, I wanted more. I would have loved to read Grandmother Wester’s backstory, see Willamina’s story fleshed out further, and have the gaps in Bailey’s life filled in.

All in all, it was an enjoyable read, even though I found the ending a bit of a disappointment.

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the copy.