I accidentally re-read this book due to me being disorganized and I only realized it when the two girls put on a show involving their pet chicken for their guests. On the bright side, I didn’t remember how the book ended, just that the sisters were somehow involved and one of them was definitely dead.

Be careful,” Piper warned her sister as the avocado tree was swallowed up, and knew right away that she shouldn’t have spoken; thoughts and words have power, and if you allow your worst fears to form fully, you run the danger of bringing them to life.

I liked this book – half fantasy, half horror tale to scare the children. The story follows the women inhabiting and living around the inhabitants of the Tower Motel. The entire story starts with the murder of Amy and her family (husband and son) and only her daughter Lou left alive. Her two closest friends, Margot and her sister Piper are left with a clue saying “29 rooms”, in relation to the motel, which was known for having only 28 rooms, harboured a secret.

In their youths, the two sisters (Margot and Piper) and Amy found the 29th room as a basement room, equipped with shackles, a mattress and some candy. Amy’s grandmother would not say what the room was for. Amy’s mother was institutionalized and not present when Amy was growing up.

Piper felt kind of bad for Grandma Charlotte—an old woman left alone to raise a wild kid like Amy. Her husband, Clarence, had died not long after the motel went out of business, back before Amy was even born. Grandma Charlotte said he’d died of a broken heart, which Piper figured meant a heart attack.
Grandma Charlotte was thin, her sallow skin sagged, and her hair had gone white. She had two long silver hairs coming off her chin, and Piper longed to pluck them. The house was always a wreck (despite the fact that Grandma Charlotte never seemed to stop tidying), and sometimes they’d catch her just staring out the kitchen window down the driveway, a lost and vacant look on her face.

When searching for clues what the room must have been used for, they found Amy’s sister’s suitcase showing she didn’t quite leave the motel to try living in Hollywood, but that she was actually killed.

Here comes a mystery for the ages. As the story of the three generations unfolds, we hear a tale of an old Irish horror story about “mares” or people who can change appearances to be whatever they want.

The second underlying story is why Amy’s and Piper’s relationship was strained when growing up – it was because they kissed in the shades one day. Jason, the young boy who used to tag along with the three girls, was crazy for Amy. Piper was crazy for Amy. Margot was crushing on Jason and Piper wanted Amy to look only at her and no-one else.

Yeah,” Piper said, her palm sweaty as Amy held it tightly, gave it a squeeze. Piper had never kissed anyone, but she thought about it all the time. She stared at the lips of all the boys she knew, studying their shape and the way they moved when the boys talked. She tried to imagine their lips touching hers, wondering if it mattered whether or not they had the soft, peach-fuzz beginnings of a mustache. She wondered if it tickled, and how you arranged your heads so that noses didn’t get in the way.

All grown up now, Jason has married Margot (there was always a current she was second choice) since Amy had married and had two kids of her own before Jason did. Funnily, this is not quite true as Jason is truly in love with his wife and expecting a new child.

Sometimes the fierceness of his love for Margot caught him off guard, left him breathless. There had been a lot of moments like that lately, when he’d just look at her, imagine the baby, his baby, growing inside her, and think about how soon they’d get to meet their baby, and they’d all be a family. And his job was to protect them, keep them safe.

Each of the chapter has a different POV showing Jason’s story, Piper’s, Amy’s and here and there stories about Sylvie messaging Alfred Hitchcock about how she wanted to come to Hollywood to be a movie star.

Rose suspects Sylvie for being a “mare” and keeps following her at night. She even tries to tell her mother that maybe Sylvie is leaving her bed at night, but Sylvie denies and keeps coming and going as she pleases. The truth was that older Sylvie was having an affair with the hand, Fenton, and wanted to leave the motel once she became of age to go with him to Hollywood. Unfortunately, younger Amy manages to scare Sylvie into admitting she was planning on leaving and accidentally causes her to fall over a banister from the top floor of the tower. Her body is never found and Rose assumes she turned into a butterfly and flew away.

The truth was that Sylvie died from the fall and eventually was found by grandma Charlotte who burried her in the woods so she was never found and assumed runaway. She didn’t want to lose both of her daughters. Amy then got pregnant later on with another guy (never married) and she started watching her own child (Amy) for signs of being a “mare”. That’s why she got sent to an Asylum and grandma Charlotte took over raising her. When Charlotte died and Amy was with her own family, she allowed Amy to visit but then the obsessive behaviour started again as Amy was watching Lou and her brother to see if any of them were “mares”. And then Amy is committed again and Amy dies tragically.

The twist was the secret of the 29th room. Not a sex dungeon or a murder room but an imprisonment room.

The old woman’s eyes were shut now, her voice trailing off into sleep. “A mare can’t help what it is. Can’t help the things it does.”

“My mother never used to remember what happened once she’d transformed.” Mama’s expression was one of pity now. And remorse. “She’d come home, clothing torn, blood under her fingernails—she would never have any idea what she’d done.”
Rose’s head swam. “But…wasn’t she dangerous? Weren’t you afraid she might hurt us when she came to visit?”
She remembered the safe feeling of being in Oma’s arms, the smell of horehound candy, the lulling sound of her voice.
Mama shook her head. “I wasn’t too worried, no. My mother had learned to control it quite well—apparently, better control comes with age. As an extra precaution, there were pills she took at night, sleeping pills that kept her from transforming when her guard was down.”
“But, still…to invite a”—Rose thought the word “monster,” but could not say it aloud—“someone who could do those things, here, to stay with us…”
“Mares have a way of recognizing one another, of sniffing each other out, you could say. That is why I invited her, to spend time with you girls, so that we would know if either of you was a mare. She told me she was sure neither of you were, that we were safe.”

So all was true, the stories about the “mare”.

And spoiler – Lou killed her family when she didn’t like being locked in the 29th room any more by Amy and joins her grandmother Rose into being mares together – a wolf graying at the muzzle and a black panther with glowing blue eyes.