Paper Ghosts @absltmom #yaya_reads # paperghosts # juliahaeberlin #penguinrandomhouse #serialkillers #atmospheric #psycologicalthriller

  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?

   Publishing to May 15,2018