At the beginning of Cat Winters' Yesternight, Alice Lind doesn't believe in anything irrational at all. A female psychologist in the 1920s, she's been shoved into the pink ghetto of school (and by extension, child) psychology rather than the doctoral research she desperately wants to conduct. She mostly administers intelligence tests, but has dealt with a few significantly disturbed children who were thought to be supernaturally influenced and revealed their troubles to be the product of entirely mundane phenomena. Her own childhood had a mysterious event of its own: at age four, she violently assaulted a group of neighborhood children. Her family refuses to provide her with more information regarding the incident, and it would seem it precipitated her interest "solving" the mystery behind the troubled children she encounters. When she steps off the train in Gordon Bay, Oregon, though, she soon finds herself confronted with her most perplexing case ever.

The seven year-old niece of the local school teacher, Janie O'Daire is a math prodigy, able to perform complex calculations in her head and working on college-level proofs. More than that, though, she's claimed since the time she could talk to be a young woman from Kansas named Violet, who drowned. With a set of acrimoniously divorced parents (which would have been very rare in that time period), it would seem she is ripe for the kind of emotional issues that might provide a prosaic explanation for her claims. But as Alice digs deeper, it becomes more and more probable that this might, in fact, be a genuine case of reincarnation. As she becomes convinced that Janie is telling the truth about her past life, Alice finds herself wondering if her violent outbursts might be the product of her own previous existence as a notorious murderess.

Until the last quarter or so of the book, it moves along quickly and is an entertaining but not special read. My real issue with this book, why the rating is low, is the ending. It is so bad and preposterous that it completely erases all the goodwill it had earned beforehand. Knowing how awful the ending is, I wish I could go back in time and unread the book so I didn't have to be insulted for investing the time and energy in reading it with that absolutely terrible ending. ( )

full review can be found here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/bookreview-yesternight-by-cat-winters/

full review can be found here:

https://nordie.wordpress.com/2016/08/29/bookreview-yesternight-by-cat-winters/

After reading The Uninvited a while back, was I eager to read more from Cat Winters and getting a chance to read Yesternight her new novel made me very happy. So, happy that I moved it up quickly in my TBR mountain. The idea of the book sounded fantastic, with a young woman, Alice Lind, arriving on a little coastal hamlet to test children's IQ. And, there she finds a mystery, a child that may be a reincarnation of a woman that died some years before. But, could this really be the truth? And, why does this spark a feeling of familiarity in Alice Lind?

I think this book started off great, I loved the idea of a little girl that could be the reincarnation of a woman that died years ago. And, I was curious to see how it all would turn out. Would Alice find out the truth, and also would she herself find out what really sparked an event from when she was a child and hurt some other children?

As much as I enjoyed reading this book did it not engross me as much as The Uninvited had done. Somewhere along the way the story just turned in a direction I was not nearly interested in reading about as the mystery with the little girl, Janie O'Daire, and the question of reincarnation. One can say that when the story took the turn and I found out what Yesternight meant was the turning point to where I found the book didn't interest me as much as it had before. However, it was still good, it just felt like the whole Janie O'Daire story was dropped and suddenly it was all about Alice Lind and her memories. And, I just didn't find that as intriguing to read about. The ending was interesting, but I can't help feeling that it was a bit obvious in a way, and I also felt that I never really got a good closer to the Janie O'Daire mystery. I mean, what happened next with her? I was more curious to find out about her and what would happen next for her than Alice Lind's problem. But, I guess that's just me.

So, this was not as good as the Uninvited. But, still a pretty interesting book!

I want to thank William Morrow for providing me with a free copy for an honest review! ( )

A very solid, and well done novel. Xe sands is the narrator. ( )