The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus



The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus

Jaime Jo Wright

Bethany House Publishers

1928
The Bonaventure Circus is a refuge for many, but Pippa Ripley was rejected from its inner circle as a baby. When she receives mysterious messages from someone called the "Watchman," she is determined to find him and the connection to her birth. As Pippa's search leads her to a man seeking justice for his murdered sister and evidence that a serial killer has been haunting the circus train, she must decide if uncovering her roots is worth putting herself directly in the path of the killer.

Present Day
The old circus train depot will either be torn down or preserved for historical importance, and its future rests on real estate project manager Chandler Faulk's shoulders. As she dives deep into the depot's history, she's also balancing a newly diagnosed autoimmune disease and the pressures of single motherhood. When she discovers clues to the unsolved murders of the past, Chandler is pulled into a story far darker and more haunting than even an abandoned train depot could portend.


There's something that's always seemed a little fundamentally haunting--or at least creepy--about a circus. Considering they're supposed to be places of fun and joy, I guess it's a bit ironic, but evidently I'm certainly not alone in my opinion.


The Haunting of Bonaventure Circus weaves together two plotlines from different time periods to uncover the story of a serial killer whose effects have lasted for nearly a hundred years. Like most of the novels which employ the dual timeline method, I did find it could get frustrating-every time I'd finally get invested in one plotline, it would switch to the other, and then I'd have to remind myself to care about that only to be jerked out of that storyline and into the other one. However, I did really enjoy the mystery. I meant to read only a few more chapters of the book last night, and ended staying up late to finish the whole thing! While some of the loose ends in the contemporary portion of the story didn't wrap up quite right for me, I did really like the reveals of the historical storyline.

I will admit that the plot here is stronger than the characters. It hard for me to connect to them (or in Chandler's case, even really like them.) The romance in both timelines had the bones of something good, but never exactly won me over, either. I've only read one other book by Jaime Jo Wright-The Curse of Misty Wayfair- and if I remember correctly, I felt the same way about that one.

However, despite this, I found both books quite addictive once the mystery really started rolling, so if you're a fan of intricate, creepy mysteries with a dash of the (seemingly) paranormal, it seems that Wright may become a go-to author.

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

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