When Ghosts Come Home

When Ghosts Come Home follows an investigation into a murder at the site of a plane crash in North Carolina in the 1980s. Racial tensions are high and continued to be stirred by rumors that the victim, a black male by the name of Rodney, was meeting the plane for a drug drop. While Sheriff Winston Barnes is trying to solve Rodney’s murder with the aid of the FBI, his opponent for the upcoming election, Bradley Frye, continues to make matters worse by terrorizing the black families in the area, including Rodney’s widow. If that weren’t enough, Barnes’ daughter, Colleen, arrives unexpectedly at home, months after losing her son.

I wanted this book to knock my socks off. The plot sounded incredible!

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, or you follow me on goodreads, you may know that I’m huge fan of mystery, crime, and especially a good plot twist.

Yes, this book had mystery, had crime, but it had no plot twists. I was able to predict the conclusion of the book down to the letter in the first few chapters. Not once did I second guess the ending. Now, that’s not a deal breaker for me, as there can be such thing as too many plot twists. But I didn’t like that I knew the ending of the story before the story really got started.

Additionally, the mystery and crime aspect of the plot was lost in all of the character development and backstories we, the reader, were provided. That’s not saying the character development was poor – the character development was phenomenal. Each of the characters had their struggles, their perseverance, their admirable qualities, and their drawbacks…basically the characters were very human. However, as we dove into the backgrounds and the struggles and into the minds of the characters, the main plot of the mystery and crime became nothing but background noise. As someone who loves a good mystery, that aspect was very disappointing.

The end of the book was fast-paced, and not in a good way. I wish Cash had taken the time to write out the ending instead of summarizing it in what was literally one page. It felt like the point was to feel the grief the characters were feeling, and upon reflection, he was successful, but at the time I finished this novel, I was left feeling very deflated and disappointed in how quickly the novel ended.

All in all, the writing style, character development, and relatability of the characters was exceptional. However, this book was advertised to me as a crime/mystery/thriller, an assessment with which I would disagree heavily. Again, there are elements of each of those in this book, but that is not the main focus of this book.

After reading other reviews of this specific work, I’m willing to give Wiley Cash another chance with another one of his novels, as I did enjoy his writing style immensely, but this one just didn’t do it for me and would not be on a list that I’d recommend to someone who’s after a mystery/thriller.

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