This is the perfect blend of paranormal and suspense. . I found it very exciting . I was unable to put it down and read it in one sitting. Very well written with excellent dialogue and great characters. The author has a gift for drawing in the reader and developing excellent story lines. It is very complex and fast paced. A very enjoyable read.

I really had no idea where this book was going for quite a long time - but I was still enjoying the parallel stories. When things started to come together it felt very natural, and I wanted to get to the end as soon as I could so I could discover what happened to Casey & Angela.

A really good read

Angela Ellis is in junior college when her mother dies. Her dad has Alzheimers and is in care, so her mother’s death has left her flat broke and completely unmoored. When she starts hearing her mother’s voice at night, she is more than a little spooked. The fact that her two college friends staying with her couldn’t hear her mother’s voice just makes it worse. Wondering if she is losing her mind, Angela finds an old school friend who is now running a ghost hunting business. During their investigations, the mystery of her family becomes more apparent.

A thousand miles away, Casey Jones is hiding from life on a small island. Now 37, Casey has a checkered history and avoids all but the shallowest of contact with other people. The only exception is her great aunt Rosetta, who rescued Casey from a desperate life in New York a decade ago. Now running the café on the island for her aunt, Casey receives a letter from her estranged mother, which was posted after her death.

Casey is trying to work out how to grieve someone who abandoned her when she needed her most, and Angela is trying to understand the mystery of her mother’s dead and the spirits that are keeping her awake at night. Neither of them realize that the future for them both will tie them together.

This is a drama about families at its heart. Angela and Casey are equally lost in their own worlds, and yet there is a connection neither of them know. Both are well written characters, with their own issues of grief and own problems coming to terms with their lives.

I really liked both Angela and Casey as characters. It is too easy to make someone who is 20 years old (Angela), appear to be too old or too brash, or even too naïve to work. Mulligan has struck a good balance and made Angela interesting, but not given her a wisdom and experience beyond her years and her situation. Casey is a more complex and more damaged character, and is therefore more of a mystery. This too is well handled by Mulligan.

There is an element of the ghost story to this, but it doesn’t play a large role in the proceedings. It did make sense for the characters involved, without being too over the top. It isn’t a ghost story per se, so don’t think this is a supernatural thriller or fantasy book. It isn’t. Human drama is the strongest element of this book, and it works well because Mulligan has such good control of the plot and pacing, and has written interesting and believable characters.

This was a genuinely enjoyable book.

Advanced reading copy provided by NetGalley for an honest review.

This is a nice paranormal ghost story that is narrated by two women in different parts of the country. You wonder what these two, Angela and Casey could possibly have in common. Angela is in college when her mother dies. She goes home and is haunted by her mom's ghost. She consults a local paranormal group for help and encounters an old classmate who truly believes her. Casey runs a diner on a small island in Maine and is not happy to find a developer wants to build a resort. Finally the connection is revealed and the two women must reconcile a past so they can enjoy their future. I enjoyed this story very much. The characters are very real and think and act like normal people when confronted by things they can't explain. This is the first book by Diane Mulligan I've read but it's likely I'll be on the lookout for her 4 previous books.