My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Haunting, Old mansion cover page, interesting blurb and bayou in Louisiana, ha I wonder what I should have asked for more🤤

Callie by Bill Thompson was my perfect cup of chai and with its story should have been a 5🌟 read but just fell a tad short.

Beau Rivage is an ancient mansion belonging to the Arceneaux family for the last 200 yrs. After the death of Juliet Arceneaux, Beau Rivage is inherited by her grand-daughter Callie Pilantro. Too many things are against Callie.She’s had no luck in her life and is struggling financially, she’s illegitimate after her father,Juliet’s son abandons her mom, her great-uncle Willard is dead set against her inheriting the estate and considers her good for nothing but once Callie finds help in Mark Streater a high school friend who is running a real estate business in Opelousas, she is determined to fight it out and hope for the best. However nothing is as it seems in the Beau Rivage mansion.

It is not just the creaks and memories that disturb Callie, but the presence of a 10 yr old girl who seems to be appearing and disappearing at will even with all doors and windows closed in the house. And Ann-Marie definitely knows every nook and cranny of Callie’s home much more than she herself knows from her grandmother. Even after spending most of her childhood holidays roaming around the huge house, Callie soon realizes that there are hidden passages and stairways she’s unaware of, hiding deep and unsettling truths about her family.

The horror element of the story for which I picked the book up was too light and doesn’t leave the reader with any chills, it’s really mild compared to other ghost stories but the mystery element worked well. I would have loved to feel more of an haunted atmosphere which was missing and in certain places, the dialogue delivery between Mark and Callie did not flow easily for me. Having said that I wouldn’t mind checking out other books by this author as the story was engrossing enough!

Blurb

Deep in the bayous of southern Louisiana, an ancient mansion called Beau Rivage sits empty and abandoned. Arceneaux family members built the house and lived there for two hundred years. The house is inherited by Callie Pilantro, a down-on-her-luck granddaughter of Juliet Arceneaux, its most recent owner who died there a few months ago.
Strange things begin to unravel as a mysterious child appears and disappears at will inside the house, Callie finds a family graveyard in the woods that creates more questions than answers, and she discovers that even the walls of the mansion hold long-forgotten secrets.
Confronted by strange events she doesn’t understand and a little girl who speaks in riddles, Callie struggles to find the secrets of Beau Rivage even as someone is determined to keep her from learning them.
The Bayou Hauntings-Callie will keep readers guessing as they follow the new owner of the Civil War plantation home until everything comes into focus one eerie night. Will it be too late for Callie?

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