Fans of Ms. St. James are no doubt familiar with Fell, the location of her popular 2020 novel The Sun Down Motel. We’re back there to learn all about the Esmie siblings, whose peculiar story is told in A Box Full of Darkness.

1989: Folks in Fell are used to the creepy, the strange, the macabre. They take pride in accepting the weirdness with a hefty dose of nonchalance – or drowning it in denial aided by drugs or alcohol. The latter is the path Violet Esmie had used for years. It had been easier to forget than to deal with everything that had happened to her in Fell, a place to which she planned never to return. The loss of custody of her daughter and a stint in a mental hospital may have sobered her up, but it hasn’t changed the fact that she does indeed see dead people. She’s learned to keep it a secret and goes quietly about her job of clearing out the homes of the recently departed. The ghosts rarely interfere with her, and it’s about as decent a position as she can expect given her past.

Then she gets a call from the landscapers caring for her parents’ estate telling her that the ghost of a young boy had appeared, saying, “Come home” which, on top of the other things that had happened while the men worked on the grounds, had been too much. The gardeners quit and returned the unused portion of her payment, advising her to find another company to do the job. Violet calls her two siblings instead. If Ben, their younger, missing brother, was appearing to strangers and asking his family to return, surely they will. It’s clearly time to resolve Ben’s still unexplained disappearance.

Vail has spent most of his adult life investigating alien abductions, desperate to find a logical reason for Ben vanishing during a routine game of hide and seek. He doesn’t want to return to Fell, but then, that’s true of most people who manage to get out. Once Violet makes it clear that she plans to go back and unravel the mystery that has haunted them for years, he feels he has no choice. Ben being a ghost makes it pretty clear Vail has been looking in the wrong place, anyway.

Dodie is on another first date. She never gives anyone a second and makes that clear at the start of each new rendezvous. The latest guy is different, though. Although they both know they are dishing out complete lies to each other, he shows genuine care when her stories all indicate she’s been through trauma. Dodie’s almost sorry to leave him behind when she gets Violet’s call, quits her job, and heads back to Fell.

Reunited at their deceased parents’ home for the first time in two decades, the three of them discuss how best to begin searching for answers. They are in no way prepared for those they find.

Ms. St. James has perfected her prose style for these gothic mysteries, and her atmospheric storytelling delivers a truly chilling sense of eerie, creeping terror so that even when absolutely nothing is happening, you get the feeling of being stalked by the possibility of evil. This story is set deeply in the paranormal, with no real-life present-day villainy involved. Our high-tech, western society tends to dismiss any belief in things/events that don’t have practical, logical explanations, but the author weaves mystical elements so adroitly into her text that you don’t need to believe in ghosts to be fascinated by the story.

That said, as addictive as the narrative is, the minute you finish the book, it’s like waking up from a bizarre dream. It was compelling in the moment, but the light of morning makes you a bit bemused that you were ever mesmerized and invested. This is, in part, caused by rather lackluster characterization. Violet comes across as a typical bossy older sister, Dodie as the good-hearted youngest, and Vail as the practical but open-minded middle who has always been used to serving as the voice of reason in the group. For people who were allegedly deeply messed up by their parents’ neglect, the trauma of losing their brother, and the weirdness of their childhood home, they come across as ordinary, everyday folk just dealing with stuff from their past. The author does get points, though, for making them so realistic that I felt I could know them in real life.

Ms. St. James also relies heavily on the sinister nature of a spectre called Sister and the Esmie’s response to her to provide the thrill factor in the story. I was rather disappointed that the house, the site of their peculiar, twisted memories and painful youth, didn’t have a more gloomy, malevolent feel. Gothics tend to rely heavily on their disturbing locations, but in this case, the author seems to assume the reader knows that Fell is creepy rather than providing the typical Gothic, malignant, scary abode. The absence of that aspect takes some of the punch out of the terror for me, and Sister was so over-the-top she snapped my suspension of disbelief.

My main complaint, however, lies with the mystery surrounding Ben and its resolution, because the whole thing doesn’t make much sense. While 1969 was not an era of cell phones, CCTV, or digital cameras, police investigated cases despite those notable handicaps. People in suburban towns like Fell were far more nosy in that era and would have been much more invested in a missing child, especially given the peculiar circumstances described in the book, than they appeared to be here. Additionally, the whole scenario is so unrealistic and lacks any grounding in reality; I found myself disengaging from the story.

The positives, including the excellent writing, are the pacing, readability, and likable protagonists, all of which go a long way to balancing out the negatives.

This is a Simone St. James novel, so reading A Box Full of Darkness made for a pleasant pastime. In terms of recommending it, I think hardcore St. James fans will appreciate it for the prose and St. James signature low-key spooky vibes. If you are a fan of horror novels and appreciate being thrilled but not terrified, you might enjoy this as well.