Title: Suntree Bay
Author: Amy Wort
Publisher: XlibrisAU
ISBN: 9781664101071
Pages: 118
Genre: Paranormal Mystery
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop

Read Book Review

A family mystery turns into a wild ride between the present and the past in Amy Wort’s first book, Suntree Bay.

As Suntree Bay prepares to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of SS Marida, twenty-five-year-old Annabelle Delighken becomes the beneficiary to the Delighken House. The Edwardian-styled home once belonged to Eden and Henry Delighken, her centenarian great-grandparents who met on the ship’s maiden voyage in 1911; they returned to the ship, which now resides at Suntree Bay’s dock, to celebrate their eightieth anniversary. It was during that commemorative time that Eden and Henry mysteriously disappeared. Annabelle, determined to solve the twenty-year mystery, swears she sees Eden’s ghost as she reads her great-grandmother’s journal that includes her 1911 recollections and on.

While the entries provide backstory to Eden and Henry’s relationship and the development of Suntree Bay, it’s a piece of paper describing time travel that activates Annabelle’s sleuthing skills. Her search begins with the island’s hotel, the place of her

employment, and where Eden and Henry celebrated their wedding. Once again, Annabelle senses her great-grandmother leading her through the hotel and around the island to collect clues to locate a docked steam tugboat, Henry’s so-called time machine. To her surprise, Annabelle finds the boat and uses it to further her investigation. What she doesn’t know is that her surreal venture will take her back to 1913, a couple of months after Eden and Henry’s wedding. As reality and paranormality juxtapose, Annabelle can only hope that she’ll find the mystery’s missing puzzle pieces.

Author Amy Wort flips between reality and the ghostly realm to create a bewildering and unnerving debut. Designed as a novella, Suntree Bay has all the markings of a quick but fascinating paranormal read. Wort’s writing style, for starters, keeps to a light European lilt, which provides for a unique Irish-American plot that is replete with living and deceased people as its main characters. The main cast is lightly developed but evasive, offering readers enough information into their personas without giving too much away.

While short chapters, filled with plenty of twists and turns, clips seamlessly along from one to the next, Wort sends her audience into a tizzy as Annabelle finds herself in the middle of two worlds, desperately attempting to get to the bottom of her longtime family mystery. Irish critics may balk at the non-existent Irish surnames—a weak aspect in character design. Nevertheless, it’s best to get past that to embrace the plot at hand.

Wort freely plays with present and previous circumstances, using many past situations as backstory that includes a nice mix of journal entries and narrative embellishment. Amid clandestine and chilling ghostly accounts, Wort weaves in a tender and long- lasting love story, which provides narrative balance with a satisfying ending. Suntree Bay has all the markings of being a satisfying read for paranormal aficionados.