​Ella, Yuki, and Rory are returning to their elite boarding school, Grimrose Académie; however, this year they will begin the year with a funeral for their friend Ari.  Ari was found drowned in the lake by the school just before the semester began.  The girls don't believe Ari's death was a suicide like the officials say.  Ella, Yuki and Rory don't make any headway in finding a cause for their friend's death until a new girl, Nani arrives.  Nani finds a book of fairy tales  with a list of names that Ari had been taking notes in along with a threatening note.  The girls piece together that the deaths at Grimrose seem to follow the endings of fairy tales.  But, are the deaths at the hand of a human killer or a curse upon the school?


The Grimrose Girls is a young adult murder mystery combined with a little magical realism.  The writing drives directly into the mystery as the girls attend Ari's funeral.  Each of the girl's personalities were well developed and evident from the beginning.  Yuki strives for perfection in everything, Ella has a need to please everyone around her, Rory wants to be herself, despite her parents best efforts to make her someone else and Nani needs to find her place within this strange group of girls and discover why her father sent her to Grimrose.  I loved the incorporation of the fairy tales around each girl's situation.  The suspense built as fairy tail deaths begin to find their matching students.  The line between magic and reality was easily blurred as the girls were pulled into their fairy tales and seemed to play out their tragic stories.  Even more than the mystery, The Grimrose Girls is a story of friendship, coming of age and self-discovery.  Each of the girls takes on figuring out who they are without Ari, the glue of the group.  They also find who they are in relation to their fairy tales and decide if they  want to play into their fate or change it.  With a diversity of characters and a wonderful storyline, I can't wait to read the next book. 

This book was received for free in return for an honest review. 

​After a car accident that left him nearly dead, Lyle Hall, a lawyer in Bridgehampton, NY is confined to a wheelchair and has found that he now cares about people's emotions and may even be able to sense what they are feeling.  As Lyle approaches an abandoned building, one he would usually fight to demolish in court, an apparition of an adolescent girl named Jewel appears to him in the window and shows him a vision of his daughter's death.  With his daughter's death looming, Lyle decides to file a motion to stop the demolition of the building known as the "Old Vic," once thought to be a brothel. However, once the media finds out about Lyle's change of heart and the reasons why, the vultures descend.  Lyle is goaded into a contract with FearCom, putting him on prime time TV for his ghostly vision and bringing protestors to the Old Vic.  When Lyle visits the Old Vic again, he doesn't come in contact with Jewel, but darker forces.  As Lyle's life spirals out of control, the date of his daughter's foreseen death draws closer and he has only succeeded in pushing her farther away.  

Ghost Hampton is a  paranormal mystery that focuses on what happens in the real world when a person claims that they have seen a ghost or have had a brush with the paranormal.  Lyle Hall is the perfect character for this to happen to, a brutal property lawyer who has burned many bridges bringing development to the Hamptons.  Now, in trying to save the Old Vic, he has to work with the organizations he is usually fighting.  His relationship with his daughter, Georgie is also a large part of the story.  Lyle wasn't the best dad, now Georgie helps to take care of him.   Lyle enters the media frenzy in an attempt to save Georgie from the vision of her death, but ends up being swept up and abused by the media.  I did find it a little hard to believe that Lyle  didn't read his contract or couldn't find a way out of it.  The media frenzy around the Old Vic and the believers that flocked there was really interesting.  People are so quick to dismiss paranormal activity, but we all want to be able to see it for ourselves as well.  Ghost Hampton is a longer read with several side stories, so the ghost part sometimes took a back seat.  I really wanted to know more about the history of the Old Vic, Jewel and the many forces that seem to be active there.  This information comes near the end, but I wish it would have been sprinkled more evenly throughout the story.