The Splendor Falls by Rosemary Clement-Moore

Summary:
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? (from GoodReads)

Review:
While I enjoyed The Splendor Falls, there were some things I didn't like that prevent me from giving this book a higher rating.

I was really excited because I love spooky, mysterious books and it's perfect timing for Halloween. Unfortunately, The Splendor Falls didn't really scare me, but I don't blame the book because it takes a lot to frighten me. But if you like that kind of atmosphere, definitely check this out.

Something I had a problem with was the length of the book and its correlation to the speed of the plot. I don't mind long books as long as there is a lot going on and I'm interested. A lot of The Splendor Falls was narration and I found myself skipping ahead to find some dialogue or action. In the middle, the book moves painfully slow and not much happens. So the 500+ pages are unnecessary. During the climax, when it starts getting action-packed, the plot moves very quickly and things are resolved in only a few pages. So I was extremely disappointed with the pacing of the novel.

I liked Sylvie and I thought it was interesting seeing her research her family and try to find out more about the area and the ghosts. There was a lot of cool lore and legends that I would have liked to see more of. While Sylvie is trying to find out things about her ancestors she finds a diary and I would have liked to see some excerpts from that instead of Sylvie just summarizing for the reader.

Naturally, there are two love interests, Rhys and Shawn. It's obvious who is better and not because the reader gets to pick, but because Sylvie pretty much decides she doesn't like one, which is fine. But the author keeps trying to throw the love triangle in there. I also didn't like how Sylvie had Shawn all figured out - she was almost psychic in her ability to "read" him. Also, a big chunk of the story has Sylvie and Rhys meeting and Sylvie knows he's hiding something so starts questioning him. At least three or four times Rhys evades her questions but then asks Sylvie something and she refuses to tell him anything. It gets super annoying because if both characters opened up, it would have sped everything along so much faster.

So I really wanted to rant about this because it's been on my mind since I finished reading The Splendor Falls. Honestly, the book is by no means awful but I just really didn't like some things the author did. So it's frustrating because this book could be really cool. I would say to give this a chance if you like creepy, mystery type books but otherwise this might be too slow for your taste.

Rating: 7 out of 10.
FTC: using Buzz Bucks on Random Buzzers

2009/Delacorte/518 pages.