The Broken Girls is set during two timelines, one being set in the 1950s in a boarding school for troubled girls and the other one being set in 2014, where a journalist starts to look into the murder of her sister, whose body has been found 20 years prior on the grounds of the aforementioned boarding school.
This was such a great story, wonderfully told. Often dual timelines don´t work for me and I end up liking one of the stories more than the other one. I didn´t have this problem with The Broken Girls and Simone St. James did a splendid job at bringing everything together in the end. And I was really surprised that this is more of a straight up mystery novel, interspersed with some supernatural aspects, who didn´t feel forced within the story. Everything just worked very well together.
What I didn´t like about the authors writing is the following:
He was there. She hadn´t expected him, but somehow when she saw him, she wasn´t surprised. Jamie, sitting on the floor, next to her closed apartment door, his back against the wall, his knees up. Out of uniform, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with a flannel shirt unbuttoned over it and work boots, his hair mussed.
Why does she tell me what the characters are wearing? It´s not important to the story at all. Just tell me that he is out of uniform, it´s enough information to know that he is off from work. I´m perfectly capable of assuming that he isn´t sitting in the nude in front of her front door.
Simone St. James does this a few times within the book and every time I´ve become incredibly annoyed by this. If I want to read about the clothes of people, I will buy the Vogue. I most certainly don´t want to have my books cluttered up by this. I know, it´s ridiculous, but just bear with me.
12
5
