Review – The Splendour Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore (4/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Length: 528 pages
Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Release Date: September 8, 2009
ISBN-13: 978-0385736909
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Won
Rating: 4/5 stars
“Sylvie Davis is a ballerina who can’t dance. A broken leg ended her career, but Sylvie’s pain runs deeper. What broke her heart was her father’s death, and what’s breaking her spirit is her mother’s remarriage—a union that’s only driven an even deeper wedge into their already tenuous relationship.
Uprooting her from her Manhattan apartment and shipping her to Alabama is her mother’ s solution for Sylvie’s unhappiness. Her father’s cousin is restoring a family home in a town rich with her family’s history. And that’s where things start to get shady. As it turns out, her family has a lot more history than Sylvie ever knew. More unnerving, though, are the two guys that she can’t stop thinking about. Shawn Maddox, the resident golden boy, seems to be perfect in every way. But Rhys—a handsome, mysterious foreign guest of her cousin’s—has a hold on her that she doesn’t quite understand.
Then she starts seeing things. Sylvie’s lost nearly everything—is she starting to lose her mind as well?”
This was a very deliberate paranormal mystery set in the South. It starts out very slow in pace; but the pace of the story matched the tone well. I really enjoyed this slow unraveling of the mystery surrounding this quiet southern town and Sylvie’s mysterious ancestors.
Sylvie is an interesting heroine and has suffered a horrible tragedy after spending her whole life in ballet and then breaking her leg. She is sent to the estate her dad grew up on in an effort to give her a chance to get away from the city and heal. However, once she gets there she finds out that her dad’s family had many secrets and she starts to see many strange things that make her doubt her own sanity.
The story has a very southern gothic tone to it and I really enjoyed the mystery and watching it unravel. I was looking for a quiet, deliberate, mystery to read and love when there is some magic woven in to the story as well; this story was a perfect example of that.
The pacing picked up a lot towards the end of the book and I really enjoyed how everything was wrapped up. I loved all the magic and mystery in here.
Overall I enjoyed this book. It was a very well done mystery with gothic and supernatural elements to it; there’s just a tad of magic as well. I would recommend to YA readers who enjoy deliberate mysteries with some hints of magic. It is a bit of a slow read and the pacing was a bit inconsistent; but I still ended up enjoying it.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
