Although one really has to suspend disbelief to embrace the plot of PAPER GHOSTS, it is well worth the effort. Heaberlin's protagonist has obsessed about her sister's killer since the day she disappeared. Now she thinks she has found him - in a halfway house for criminals with dementia. Determined to discover the truth about her sister's disappearance, Grace lures the assumed serial killer, Carl Feldman, into taking a road trip with her. The trip is designed to jog Carl's memory regarding his murderous past, but of course, things do not go as planned. From the outset, neither the reader or Grace is really certain that Carl is suffering from dementia (it soon becomes clear that the arm he claims was paralyzed, isn't) so what else is Carl lying about?. What follows is part tantalizing mystery, part buddy road trip. A wonderful and fascinating read.

A map marked in red with three dots, a serial killer with dementia and a sister who has waited countless years to find her missing sister embark on an atmospheric journey. What could possibly go wrong?

Imagine preparing for twelve long years, formulating plans, practicing, spending countless hours waiting to entrap the man you think kidnapped and murdered your older sister? Now all that planning comes to fruition as Grace takes Carl, a well known former photographer and who she suspects is the man who murdered her sister away with her. Grace endeavors to find Rachel her sister, dedicating her all to finding her sister. Carl is the man she feels killed her sister and others throughout Texas. And yet, here she sits next to him in a car following a map of death and despair. Grace is ready, she has worked out every scenario, every possible twist, every way that Carl can act until he leads her to where her sister is. Grace is obsessed. For twelve years this need has driven her. She is haunted by memories, driven by photographs she is sure Carl has taken, sure they constitute the dead girls he has left behind.

Grace pretends to be his daughter and as she secures Carl from the home where he lives with other convicts with dementia, she will give her all to find Rachel. Carl has dementia, he doesn’t seem to know much but he is dangerous. But Grace is prepared or is she?

This well done atmospheric story is one that explores not only what serial killers are but also the mind of dementia as it travels down a road of what to believe is real and what is just figments and allusions. Is Grace really the one with delusions or is Carl exactly the person she has pegged him to be, a killer, the man who murdered her sister?

Thank you to Julia Haeberlin, Penguin Random House, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book

We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain – grief, despair, depression, dementia – is less accessible to treatment. It’s connected to who we are – our personality, our character, our soul, if you like. (Richard Eyre) Does Carl have a soul or is he a tainted being who has a lust for death? Is Grace always going to bear mental pain? Will this journey into darkness free her or lead her further into the dark world her mind inhabits? How far would you go?

Mind blowing. Addictive. Mesmerizing. All those words describe Paper Ghosts, the newest suspense novel from author Julia Haeberlin. With its unique plot and enigmatic characters, this book is one that pulls the reader in – and doesn’t let them back out till they’ve finished the last page.

They think he was a serial killer. Carl Louis Feldman captured award winning photos with his camera, but it is what this documentary photographer did in his spare time that interests the police. They suspected much – but they proved nothing. He was acquitted in the only case ever brought against him and disappeared for years after. When he reappeared on the side of a Texas highway, he said he couldn’t remember anything, even his own name. DNA and fingerprint tests landed him in a halfway house that handles mentally ill, elderly criminals. The proprietor will tell you that age and sickness have made them no less dangerous.

She’s a woman obsessed. For twelve years our unnamed heroine has devoted herself to the search for her sister Rachel’s killer. As a junior high student, she began keeping photos of all the men she thought might have killed her sister. As a high school student, she brought information she gathered on them to the FBI. As a college student and young adult, she trained her body to prepare it for the physicality needed to go up against brutal, sadistic people. All of it for the moment she faces now.

She claims to be his long-lost daughter when she bribes his keeper to let Carl go on a road trip with her. Ten days, a quick romp to look at the haunting sites in his photos. The same places where other young women disappeared without a trace. A chance to revisit locations that just might jog his memory and enable him to tell her where her sister’s body is buried.

He doesn’t believe she’s his daughter. She doesn’t believe he’s the weak, forgetful man he claims to be. They’re both liars – the only question is, are they both killers?

From the moment our heroine gets into the car with Carl, the suspense ratchets up. Because that man is spooky creepy. There are times when he seems able to walk through walls. No lock seems to hold him in or keep him out. He is clever, manipulative and charming by turns. It appears as though our young vigilante will be no match for him.

She’s determined and strong, though. She’s also clever and adaptive and is quickly learning how to trade blows with this master con. In spite of that, the author does a good job of reminding us that while she is still on the learning curve, Carl has already acquired all the skills he needs to win this game. Through most of the tale I was on the edge of my seat wondering if youth, determination and strength could defeat years of experience.

I was also wondering what in the heck the truth was. The author paints both characters as off–neither is completely sane. They both love weapons, they are master liars, and they both toy with danger strictly for the fun of it. And weirdly enough, in the prey/predator relationship in which they both play each part equally, they find a lot of common ground. Many times, they resemble a student/mentor relationship more than they do adversaries. They make a dynamic duo, even though neither considers them a team. This is what really shines in this novel; this weird, dysfunctional relationship that is oddly appealing while being completely chilling.

The setup is a bit far-fetched but once the reader enters the world of Paper Ghosts, it’s easy to forget that. Lyrical, atmospheric, haunting, suspenseful and riveting, this book is a must buy for fans of the suspense genre.

Is Carl a serial killer? Does he really have dementia or is it an act? Join Carl and Grace on a journey of cat and mouse. A mesmerizing slow burner of a tale. Well plotted and creepily addictive.

I have tried at least 3 times to get into this book but it just isn't for me. It's so confusing and I felt as though it was a chore to read. The premise sounded so interesting but the book sagged, I just didn't feel any spark for either character. I'm sorry that this is a "did not finish" for me. Thank you for the opportunity.

Since I DNF the book I will not post to public media as I don't think that is fair to the author as it might have a great ending that I just couldn't get to :(

This book was creepy almost from the beginning. A young woman has spent her life researching who killed her sister. She believes it's Carl, but Carl has no memory of it and since he has dementia its a distinct possibility that he will never remember. Thinking if she takes him to the location of some of the other women she thinks he killed will jog his memory she decides to claim to be his long lost daughter and take Carl on a road trip.



The road trip had me on the edge of my seat. Was Carl going to murder her? Is he really the murderer she thinks he is? There are so many moments that made my skin crawl. Julia Heaberlin hits this one out of the park. I was riveted by the road trip, the creepy photographs and the young women's drive to find her sisters body. I did not see the ending coming and was pleasantly surprised by it. The whole book was well done and wasn't your typical serial killer read. The fact that this young woman puts her life in her hands to discover the truth on the often times hilarious, sometimes scary and always suspenseful road trip from hell.

Paper Ghosts started out with a creepy feel to it with our main character posing as a potential serial killer's daughter in order to find out if he killed her sister years before. The back and forth between the characters pulled me in and led me to think I had a riveting psychological thriller to sink my teeth into. Is Carl a serial killer? Does he really suffer from dementia or is he just a great actor hiding behind a facade? Did he kill this young woman's sister or is she on the wrong trail? All of these questions should've kept the suspense level high, but less than a hundred pages in, things become more about our main characters inner musings, and there are a lot of those. Considering the amount of time spent inside this woman's head, I was surprised that we don't learn her real name or what she does in her real life until the end. What I did learn was that she walked into a situation with a much too high opinion of herself and her ability to handle a man with dementia, let alone the possibility of him being a serial killer. We're told a lot about her "trainer" and how much time she's put in to learning to protect herself from Carl should she need to. The problem is that she really didn't know as much as she thought. I will admit that Carl does play some psychological games with our narrator, and those had the potential to be spine-tingling had our oh so prepared main character not been so completely unprepared for handling them. We do get answers to the many questions posed in this story, but too many were a bit too predictable and I never quite warmed up to the main character. I do prefer my mysteries and thrillers to be more edge of your seat, what's gonna happen next type stories and I didn't find that here, so quite possibly, this one just wasn't for me.

Excellent, excellent book. Unputdownable so be prepared to get nothing done as you devour this book.. I don't give out spoilers so I won't be saying much but I will say this. Pre order this book like now so it'll be waiting for on release day and you can wallow in the glory of this book. Happy reading!

The overall story in Paper Ghosts is solidly twisted and interesting- a young woman becomes obsessed with the idea that she's identified her sister's murderer, and that he is responsible for several other deaths as well. She poses as his long-lost daughter and springs him from his long-term care home in order to take him on a macabre tour of spots he's photographed that can also be connected to murders or disappearances. She's definitely got her own issues- we learn about the numerous ways in which she's "trained" for a variety of unusual circumstances, and she's taken steps to ensure their path isn't tracked. The last third of the book picked up the pace of the story quite a bit, as her intentions and ideas become clearer, and the stakes become higher. The most intriguing parts of this book were the included photographs and the excerpts of the photographer's descriptions of the photographs, as well as the entries from Grace's survival journals that she'd started writing at a young age. These additional items give more insight into the characters' backgrounds and mindset and are actually very helpful in moving the story forward. I wouldn't go so far as to call this a "gentle" thriller as there are some quite disturbing elements to it, but it's not quite as graphic and difficult as others in the genre.

Title: Paper Ghosts
Author: Julia Heaberlin
Genre: Thriller
Rating: 4 out of 5

Carl Louis Feldman was once a famous photographer who took eerie pictures. Then he was charged with the murder of a young woman, acquitted, and disappeared from the public eye. Now he’s in a halfway house for those with dementia and he doesn’t remember killing anyone. Or so he claims.

But his daughter is visiting him, and she doesn’t believe him. She’s planning to take him on a trip to see if she can jog his memory. Except she’s not really his daughter.

She’s spent years getting ready for this day. Years looking for clues to her sister Rachel’s disappearance, even after the cops gave up. Years of painstaking research finding Carl and tracking him down. Years of training to see to it that he doesn’t come back from their little trip. Is Carl telling the truth, or are they both lying? The middle of the Texas wilderness is no place to be with a serial killer.

You know that little thrill you get when you read a book and it’s set someplace you’re familiar with? I got that on the first page of this book, with the mention of the cemetery in Weatherford, Texas and Mary Martin’s grave. I grew up in Weatherford, after all, so I was hooked from that sentence.

But I stayed hooked throughout the book by the twists and turns the story kept taking, and my curiosity to find out what was going to happen. This is an accurate look at dementia—and the way some dementia patients are sometimes self-aware enough to pretend they don’t remember things (I saw my grandmother do that). It’s an unsettling, creepy read, but the characters are intriguing. And how can you beat Texas as a setting? (You can’t.) Those pictures of the little twin girls were also creepy enough for me to keep reading.

Julia Heaberlin grew up in Texas before becoming a journalist, then an international bestselling author. Paper Ghosts is her newest novel.

(Galley provided by Random House/Ballantine Books in exchange for an honest review.)

Just thinking about this novel as I begin writing this review, I have shivers down my spine. Julia Heaberlin writes a great mystery/horror/family ties book that will stay with you for a long time. Twelve years ago, college student Rachael disappeared without a trace as she bicycled around her Fort Worth neighborhood on her way to a summer babysitting job. Sister Grace, 12 at the time, cannot get her head around this calamity that has destroyed not only her life but that of her mom and dad. And because there is no body, no closure, there is infinite hope every time a rescued kidnap victim is found somewhere in the world, and anxiety when remains are found until it is proven NOT Rachael, and then guilt because of the relief, followed by more angst.

But Grace has not spent the last 12 years sitting idly by. She has worked almost daily with a trainer, getting into shape and learning self defense and problem solving. She has found a way to override the fears she has suffered with all her life. She has studied patterns of missing young women over the last 15 years in the western US - there are so many! - and parred down the list to include only those whose disappearance appears to be of the same pattern as the disappearance of Rachael. And, with the help of an FBI agent she met when her sister disappeared, she is able to compile a list of people - men - who might fit the profile of Rachael's abductor. And there is one man who had the opportunity to kidnap and murder three other young women within a five or six hundred mile radius of Ft. Worth. He was tried for the disappearance of one of the women on Grace's list, Nicole, but Feldman was acquitted. Mistakenly, Grace decides. Carl Louis Feldman is obviously nuts and Grace is told he has physical problems with his left side and is suffering from dementia. She is able to trace him to a halfway house for released convicts suffering mental difficulties. Getting him away from the the halfway house to accompany her on a field trip across Texas to the last known locations of all four of the other missing woman on Grace's short list will not be easy. But Grace is quite positive that she can make it happen. And she can find closure if she can just prove that Carl is responsible for the deaths of Rachael, Nicole, Vickie or Violet.

We spend a little time in Houston, Galveston, Marfa, Muleshoe, Austin, Waco. The high plains desert is described in full gorgeous measure. Altogether a nice trip, with touches of humor and hubris from Carl and a growing enjoyment of Grace. I will look for more from Julia Heaberlin. The horror aside, she writes a great mystery and obviously loves Texas.

I received a free electronic copy of this novel from Netgalley, Julia Heaberlin, and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for sharing your hard work with me.

It pains me to say this, but I found Paper Ghosts to be a big waste of time.

After absolutely loving Julia Heaberlin’s Black-Eyed Susans, I was really looking forward to her next book. I expected a great mystery and a good deal of suspense. I didn’t really get either of those things in this book. The only moments of suspense were kind of equivalent to someone jumping out and yelling “boo!” at you, where you are slightly startled for a moment and then over it with no lasting impact. I felt like the conclusion was not anything we were led to believe and instead of enjoying the journey to get there, I find myself asking, “What was the point?”

I really did not care for the main character. For some reason, her real name is never mentioned until the end of the book. I’m not sure what kind of impact this was supposed to have on me, but it had none. (Something similar to this happened in Black-Eyed Susans and it did have an impact there, but just didn’t do anything for me here.) We are constantly told of her mysterious trainer who has prepared her for the dark things she has to do and what a detailed planner she is. However, almost right away she starts losing the upper hand to Carl. She does not follow her own rules and continually loses track of Carl. I kept thinking that this had to be part of her plan. She could not possibly be that inept. I kept waiting for everything to come together and her master plan to be revealed. But it never did. What she finds out she only finds out because Carl led her to it.

Overall, I was incredibly disappointed in Paper Ghosts. The main character was not only unlikable, but her total ineptitude after constantly talking about how well trained she was baffling. The only thing I really liked about the book was Carl. He was a much smarter and more compelling character. I’m sure there will be people that will enjoy this, but it just wasn’t for me.

Overall Rating (out of 5): 2 Stars

An obsessive young woman has been waiting half her life—since she was twelve years old—for this moment. She has planned. Researched. Trained. Imagined every scenario. Now she is almost certain the man who kidnapped and murdered her sister sits in the passenger seat beside her.

Carl Louis Feldman is a documentary photographer who may or may not have dementia—and may or may not be a serial killer. The young woman claims to be his long-lost daughter. He doesn’t believe her. He claims no memory of murdering girls across Texas, in a string of places where he shot eerie pictures. She doesn’t believe him.

Determined to find the truth, she lures him out of a halfway house and proposes a dangerous idea: a ten-day road trip, just the two of them, to examine cold cases linked to his haunting photographs.



My Thoughts: From the beginning of Paper Ghosts, I thought of Grace’s plan as a journey that would surely end badly.

Carl’s behavior, the way he talked, the sense that something was very creepy and off about him…these aspects of him hovered overhead all the way through this story.

I was fascinated by Grace’s bold plan and how she was constantly changing her identity and her look, trying to fly beneath the radar. If anyone had known about her plan, other than those who helped her create her various personas, they would certainly have advised against it.

Grace thought she was in control, but it didn’t take long to see how Carl manipulated and controlled so many things, specifically the “conditions” he kept laying down for her. As if his cooperation was something she could earn with the lists of things he wanted from her.

Could Grace find the answers she was seeking? Would she manage to stay safe and alive until the road trip had ended? And what if everything turned out in unexpected ways that she didn’t see coming? A fascinating study that lagged for me sometimes, but heightened to an intensity near the end that kept me turning pages. 4.5 stars.***My e-ARC came from the publisher via NetGalley.

While trying to prove Carl is the killer of her sister Rachel a girl sets off on an adventure with him.

Let's start off by admiring how beautiful the cover is of this book. I LOVE IT!! :)

Our main character Grace was 12 when her sister Rachel went missing and was presumed to be dead but there was no body that was found. As you can imagine, Grace became obsessed with finding out what happened to her sister. Grace's obsession leads her to a man named Carl who used to be a photographer but is now living in a home with other convicts that have dementia. Smart Grace pretends to be Carl's daughter! Super smart on her part right?! :)
The story SLOWLY starts to unravel when Carl and Grace take a road trip together. I feel like I was watching a tennis match between the two.... them playing their own little games with one another back and forth. The author had we wondering does Carl remember more then he is leading on is he truly mentally ill?

The story took off with lighting speed and I thought I was going to enjoy it but unfortunately it just stalled throughout the entire middle and nothing was happening. I was confused a tad throughout the story and was skimming a lot of the middle. The ending just wasn't up to my expectations either and was left wanting more.

I do have to say I loved how the author added photos throughout the novel. I thought this was genius on her part! :)

2.5 stars.

Thank you to Netgalley and Ballantine books for the advanced arc.
Published to GR: 4/26/18
Publication date: 5/15/18

A little odd and certainly unique as the mystery is that of a person and not an event. Not at all what I expected but I really enjoyed it, especially once I let go of the notion that this is not a thriller per-se but a well written slow burner. Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for this arc in exchange of an honest review.

Loved this book. Didn’t want it to end. Highly recommend.

Love love love. Incredible book. Fabulous book club pick too

Paper Ghosts is gripping and disquieting use of dementia as a character trait amidst a serial killer story more haunting than gory. This is the 2nd Heaberlin I've read and I keep enjoying her fresh take on serial killer thriller.

A nameless young woman regularly visits Carl Feldman in a state welfare house, pretending to be his daughter. During his younger years, Carl was a documentary and fine art photographer, famous for his craft as much as for his alleged crime. But now he is old and suffering from dementia. Though already acquitted by the court, the nameless young woman obtained photographs taken by Carl incriminating him with the murder he was accused of as well as the disappearances of other women including her big sister, Rachel. So the nameless young woman lured Carl into joining her into a roadtrip across Texas to visit the places where the photographs were taken, hoping against hope that Carl remembers anything that will lead her to her missing sister.

I was instantly smitten by the premise. Roadtrips are intimate and suffocatingly up close that we mostly take them with family and friends, people whom we know, can tolerate and trust our lives with. So I was curious with this woman who will pack for a roadtrip with a possible serial killer. I was half hoping that she backs off (but then nothing will happen and there will be no book) and half cheering her to not give up until she finds the truth. The roadtrip style turned out to be both a benefit and a burden to the book.

Let me talk about the benefit first. Making the characters traverse a possible murder trail gives the author an opportunity to pepper the book with interesting people and places. There are glimpses of people they met along the way who left an impression on me. To mention a few: there is Trudy, a real estate agent selling the house where one of the murders occurred, who is paranoid not with the paranormal but with being alone in showing houses to strangers. There’s the feisty DeeDee, the deeply insecure woman who re-married the widow of a murder victim. Then Gretchen, the bestfriend of one of the victims. Even how Carl and the narrator perceive the patrons of a particular diner is interesting.

The travelogue aspect of the book is deftly handled. I got a grasp of the unforgiving side of Texas: a beach front where a girl goes into the sea and never comes back, an unmarked farm which may or may not be “an infinite burial ground”. Even the author’s description of mundane things like the clouds and the moon has this spellbinding ability to draw me in to the book. (Okay, there are a couple of the worn and tired “I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.”, but other than that, the prose is beautiful) And it also helped that the book has a deep respect in photography. I am kinda creeped out but also somewhat agree with the book’s suggestion that when we look at people in the photos, especially the old ones, those people could be paper ghosts staring back at us. In between some chapters are actual eerie, black and white photos with chilling photographer’s (Carl’s) notes with them. The author in her acknowledgements mentioned that they are actually photographed by Jill Johnson and inspired by the works of Keith Carter.

Now let me get with the burden part. Aside from the casual thieving and lying by both Carl and the nameless narrator, the plot got meandering in the middle. The lull of the roadtrip has no sense of urgency especially when everything is dependent upon Carl remembering despite his dementia. The narrator can only express the immediacy of things through the days passing by (she only has ten days before the state welfare house comes looking for Carl) and her depleting resources (she set a budget money for the trip) but not through her actions.

The nameless woman narrator is always saying that she came prepared and trained for whatever danger that could possibly happen but when actual danger comes in, she is pulled back from the action. There’s this time when she can could have probably got some ass kicked but she got drunk and has to be saved by a Mysterious Man in the Dark ™. She does not even get to pull the trigger of the gun she is always anxiously holding. After ten days on the road, the book ended but the resolutions to the women’s disappearances came pretty much incidental. I think both the main character and Carl are a bit coddled, their roadtrip plot wanting more grit and macabre.

This book is not the typical thriller I read, but I couldn't say no after reading the synopsis. Our main character, Grace, is a young woman whose sister went missing when they were younger. She admired her older sister so much that she has built her life around obsessing over her disappearance. Though her sister was never found, she is presumed dead, Grace believes a serial killer was responsible.

Enter Carl. Carl was tried for the murder of a woman but was acquitted. He was a famous photographer once, but now he has dementia. After her plans are put in place Grace convinces Carl's caretaker that she is his daughter and would like to take him away for a week or two. The two embark on a ten day road trip across Texas in which Grace tries to get Carl to admit he is responsible for her sister's death.

This book got off to a great start - intriguing, fast paced, even funny. After a short while it hit a lull that it didn't really recover from until the last couple of chapters in the book. I liked the character of Carl a lot. Some of his antics were what kept me involved with this story. However, the slow creep of this book with uneventful action had a little trouble keeping my attention.

Readers who are familiar with and love Texas will be sure to want to pick this book up as the state itself is a big part of the book.