Dancing Creek was a dusty old town, a brick and mortar relic of times long past. For Tyler, the old fashion charms it held were also home. Like any old town though, Dancing Creek also held its share of secrets, a fact Tyler learned after making a grisly discovery in the quarry behind his family’s house. By inadvertently stirring up a decades old mystery and a scandal that rocked the small community, Tyler also comes to realize that for every person who’s happy to reflect on the past, there’s another someone who will do anything to keep it buried. Can he help the town finally find closure, or will the mystery endure?

Ghost Boy by Jan Burns hits the ground running from the first paragraph and continues at a steady pace during the remainder of this short book. Painting the image of a picturesque, sleepy town that could be taken straight from the pages of a history book, Burns introduces Tyler, along with his two best friends Addy and David. After finding human remains on his family’s land, Tyler and his friends are naturally curious about who they could be and how they got there. Despite being warned against asking questions, the three decide they simply have to know. What they learn is a story dating back to the days when Tyler’s grandfather was sheriff and Dancing Creek was still an active mining town. As it turns out, the disappearance of a miner and his son has haunted Tyler’s grandfather for years, and is the only case he never solved in his role as sheriff. I enjoyed the solid foundation to this story, setting it up to be an intriguing mystery on its own, but we’re then given a compelling supernatural layer as well. This turns an intriguing mystery story into a riveting paranormal crime thriller.

While Ghost Boy follows some common genre tropes, I found the characters of the story to be well-developed and one of the main reasons I kept coming back to this book. Add to this the seemingly deep back story (or surprisingly deep for a novella anyway) and you have a story that fans of paranormal mystery novels will find hard to put down.

The plot is curious and absorbing, but I felt it was too short. The story is concise and ensures readers are consistently entertained, but I felt like this was a blueprint to a larger more compelling story that begs to be explored further. I would have loved to read more of the history of Dancing Creek and the lives of the characters from its mining days.

Ghost Boy is an absorbing supernatural crime thriller with a captivating murder mystery at its core and a cast of interesting characters that elevate this short story and makes you beg for more.

Pages: 88 | ASIN: B0B545QXLN