My Thoughts on The Lost Boys of Barlowe Theater by Jaime Jo Wright

 

About:

It promises beauty but steals life instead. Will the ghosts of Barlowe Theater entomb them all?

Barlowe Theater stole the life of Greta Mercy's eldest brother during its construction. Now in 1915, the completed theater appears every bit as deadly. When Greta's younger brother goes missing after breaking into the building, Greta engages the assistance of a local police officer to help her unveil the already ghostly secrets of the theater. But when help comes from an unlikely source, Greta decides that to save her family she must uncover the evil that haunts the theater and put its threat to rest.

Decades later, Kit Boyd's best friend vanishes during a ghost walk at the Barlowe Theater, and old stories of mysterious disappearances and ghoulish happenings are revived. Then television ghost-hunting host and skeptic Evan Fisher joins Kit in the quest to identify the truth behind the theater's history. Kit reluctantly agrees to work with him in hopes of finding her missing friend. As the theater's curse unravels Kit's life, she is determined to put an end to the evil that has marked the theater and their hometown for the last century.

My Thoughts:

Well, oh boy! This is the kind of story that you really need to clear your whole schedule for. It is not a short book either, but the level of intensity, creepiness, and just needing to know what happened is very high. This just might be my favorite Wright book yet.

This is a dual-time story, with one timeline taking place in 1915 and the other in the present day. Greta Mercy, from 1915, is poor and has sole responsibility for her four younger brothers after her parents’ deaths and the untimely death of her older brother. She is essentially alone in the world. She has siblings and a couple of good friends, Oscar and Eleanor, but they are from the right side of town and have money.

The greatest fault Greta has, I think, is not trusting them more. They loved her and her family. Greta knows this, but that pesky pride gets in the way. From the start, things go from bad to worse for Greta, and her freedom and possibly her survival depend on finding the truth and her missing brother. This dangerous search amps up throughout the whole novel. The town and the theater are hiding some sinister secrets.

Present-day Kit has it a little better—same town and theater, though. However, her story also starts with an unbelievable reality. While on a ghost-hunting show in the Barlowe Theater, her best friend disappears, it seems, into thin air. No amount of searching gives any kind of clue about her whereabouts. Her family doesn’t know where she is, and the detectives working on the case are having a hard time piecing things together. Then someone begins to target Kit for reasons she cannot even fathom. Throw in Kit’s abandonment issues and a hunky guy that really gets on her nerves, and you have a story that is quite literally hard to put down.

If you are looking for a creepy October read with twists and turns and ghostly figures, yet ending with hope’s message, pick this one up.

I was provided a copy of this novel by Bethany House Publishers through Interviews & Reviews. I was not required to post a positive review, and all views and opinions are my own.

About the Author:

Jaime Jo Wright (JaimeWrightBooks.com) is the author of ten novels, including Christy Award and Daphne du Maurier Award-winner The House on Foster Hill and Carol Award winner The Reckoning at Gossamer Pond. She's also a two-time Christy Award finalist, as well as the ECPA bestselling author of The Vanishing at Castle Moreau and two Publishers Weekly bestselling novellas. Jaime lives in Wisconsin with her family and felines.