The Haunting of Brynn Wilder

 Book 4 of my 2021 Reading Challenge

The Haunting of Brynn Wilder

by Wendy Webb

Summary (via Goodreads)

published 2020

After a devastating loss, Brynn Wilder escapes to Wharton, a tourist town on Lake Superior, to reset. Checking into a quaint boardinghouse for the summer, she hopes to put her life into perspective. In her fellow lodgers, she finds a friendly company of strangers: the frail Alice, cared for by a married couple with a heartbreaking story of their own; LuAnn, the eccentric and lovable owner of the inn; and Dominic, an unsettlingly handsome man inked from head to toe in mesmerizing tattoos.
But in this inviting refuge, where a century of souls has passed, a mystery begins to swirl. Alice knows things about Brynn, about all of them, that she shouldn’t. Bad dreams and night whispers lure Brynn to a shuttered room at the end of the hall, a room still heavy with a recent death. And now she’s become irresistibly drawn to Dominic—even in the shadow of rumors that wherever he goes, suspicious death follows.
In this chilling season of love, transformation, and fear, something is calling for Brynn. To settle her past, she may have no choice but to answer.

First Impressions/Judging a Book by Its Cover

I chose this book from the options on the Amazon First Reads page.  The cover art was suitably eerie, the description was interesting, and reading mysteries/thrillers electronically adds to the unknown since I can't skip ahead easily.

My Opinion

4 stars

I received this book for free through the Amazon First Reads program. I don't know if that needs a disclaimer or not so I'm including it just in case.

The scenes were vivid so I could feel Brynn's confusion as timelines melted into each other and she wasn't sure what was real and what was only in her mind.  The version of the afterlife they discuss is what I'd like to believe...not necessarily reincarnation but more of meeting up with the souls that are important to you and starting all over again.

However, "clunky" also kept popping into my mind as well because while the first-person narrative helped me feel the haziness of the story, it also made some conversations and/or scenarios feel inauthentic or contrived as a way to introduce further plot development.  They teetered between "I can't tell you anything" and "I'll tell you everything in a monologue" but then once everyone got to know each other and started communicating and comparing their experiences, it settled down and I liked it a lot more.

I wavered between 3 and 4 stars for this book but the fact that I immediately put Daughters of the Lake (mentioned in the acknowledgments as a book set in the same fictional town with a few of the same characters) on my Kindle and am bumping it ahead in line to read it next means something so I went with 4 stars.

Quote from the Book

"The age of this room radiated out into my bones. A century of souls inhabiting a place will leave an imprint that lingers long after they're gone, and it lingered here."