ARC Review--The Fade by Demitria Lunetta

We don't want to disappear. We want to be found.

Something terrible happened in her basement. Haley can feel it.

Four girls went missing several years ago, and the police never solved the case. But Haley know the missing girls were murdered. How else can she explain the hostile presence in her house?

The ghostly girls need something from her. And unless Haley can figure out what they want...she might be next.

I received this ARC from the publisher in exchange for an honest and voluntary review. I was in no way compensated for this review.

Demitria Lunetta’s The Fade sounded like the perfect read! A creepy ghost story that evolved into a murder mystery when our heroine Haley starts to experience strange happenings in her new home. This book, short that it is, had its ups and downs. I was determined to read through it all after a long bout of DNFing, but sadly, this book just wasn’t what I thought it would be in the end. It still had its positive merits, but in the end, I just felt very underwhelmed.

Haley is a fifteen-year-old girl who just moved with her family into a new home in Wisconsin that she soon learns is the house of one of the four missing girls in town. It was five years ago when the first girl went missing and three of her friends soon followed and the mystery remains unsolved to this day. Haley has a hard time adapting to her new surroundings and life; she misses her friends and her home in Chicago. It’s while she’s unpacking her things, the strange things begin. She and her sister discover a secret room in the basement with a trunk filled with random items and it’s when Haley is going back upstairs, strange noises begin.

Haley soon learns about the mystery of the town and the four girls who went missing five years ago. There were no clues or evidence to what happened despite all the investigation. Haley isn’t quite trying to play detective where the real police had failed, she’s just trying to figure things out with the ghosts that are haunting her and are trying to tell her something.

And of course, there’s a boy involved! Coop is her next door neighbor and actually, the brother of one of the missing girls. While there’s no immediate connection between them, there is definitely something there.

I love ghost books and I love murder mysteries that involve ghosts as well! So this book should’ve been perfect for me and yet sadly, it just wasn’t. It’s not my first Lunetta book; in fact I still have to finish her first duology that I’ve had for a while. I’m not even sure where to start with this one. I know Haley is fifteen but I swear sometimes it felt like she was thirteen or fourteen. She just felt more childish to me than a teenager would. I know fifteen is still considered a younger teen and I did keep all this in mind but yet, I just didn’t really connect with her like I do with other teen protagonists in the past.

The book is set in the current day, or at least I assume it is, as a year is never really given. But I swear I felt like I was in the 90s at times. And of course I love the 90s but since I suspect that this is current day, it felt weird to see some of the characters talking in what felt like 90s slang at times. I was a little put off with that as well.

The pacing was a little slow as well, I tend to expect that to some extent with mysteries but this one just felt off. And then time seemed to lose all sense of its meaning and we eventually get back on track. But for a while I was left wondering when and where were we again? Things made no sense, it was like an M. Night Shyamalan movie where you don’t really see the big picture until the end…though things get clearer before those final words!

The mystery element was probably the strongest point for me with this book and really only the first mystery, as another one soon develops and while struggling to find resolution in that, it literally comes together in the last few sentence and then that’s it. The End. Having that second mystery rushed to a conclusion at the end didn’t feel as satisfying as you would’ve hoped for. In fact, I’m left with some doubts about that one and all the remained behind when the end did come about. It was just too quick to be satisfying.

Overall The Fade was just okay for me. The mystery was good, I wished there was a little more ghostly encountering going on instead of just the small bits that we received, which were still creepy as expected! There just wasn’t a whole lot of clarity in this one and at times it felt like there were just shocking revelations made just for shock factor. While this wasn’t a favorite read of mine, it has in no way turned me against trying more of this author’s work.


Overall Rating 2.5/5 stars

The Fade releases December 11, 2018