In The Broken Girls, freelance journalist Fiona Sheridan takes on a story about the renovation of a long-shuttered girls boarding school and suddenly finds herself investigating a 64-year-old murder, as well. An original plot plus an eerie paranormal element make The Broken Girls an engaging murder mystery.

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I read The Broken Girls as part of the 2025 Thoughtful Reading Challenge. May’s challenge was to read a book with a main character who’s a journalist because May 3rd was World Press Freedom Day. Fiona’s father in this novel is also a journalist, well-known for holding powerful people and institutions accountable for whatever misdeeds they have committed.

As usual, I’ll begin with a short summary of The Broken Girls.

Fiona’s sister was murdered by her boyfriend twenty years ago, an event that wrecked her family. Even though so much time has passed, Fiona is still haunted by the brutality of the murder – her sister was strangled and her body dumped on the grounds of an abandoned boarding school named Idlewild Hall.

Idlewild Hall is a rundown, creepy place that’s rumored to be haunted. Once home to “misfit” girls, the school now sits rotting. Because of its poor condition and even poorer reputation, Fiona is surprised when she learns that someone is renovating it with plans to reopen it as a girls’ boarding school. And because it’s where her sister’s body was found, she can’t resist writing a story about the restoration.

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She interviews the new owner’s son on site early in the restoration, and as the conversation is wrapping up, workers report that they found the body of a girl in an old well. Unlike Fiona’s sister, who was found soon after she was murdered, this body is old, a skeleton. There’s a name tag sewn into the tattered blouse that identifies the girl as Sonja. And after some good sleuthing, Fiona discovers she disappeared in 1950.

Further investigation, and flashbacks to 1950, reveal Sonja’s unique history. She was a French girl who emigrated to the US after being liberated from Ravensbrück, a Nazi concentration camp exclusively for women. Her parents didn’t survive the war and her aging relatives in the US didn’t want a child in the house, so she was sent to Idlewild. She became part of a group of four close friends, whom we learn about through flashbacks.

Fiona feels compelled to figure out what happened to Sonja. At the same time she’s uncovering information from the distant past, she’s also finding out new details about her sister’s murder, information that puts her own life in jeopardy.

And there’s a really creepy ghost.

I wasn’t sure at the beginning of the book if it was going to be a good one, but I ended up really liking The Broken Girls. I imagine it can be difficult to have the protagonist solve two crimes from different eras without completely confusing the reader, but the author pulled it off nicely.

She also created a suitably creepy atmosphere surrounding Idlewild Hall, both in the past and present. It is a place of decay where nothing thrives, especially the students. The ghost – a girl who died after being locked out the house by her father – was a nice touch. It could have been hokey, but the author managed to make it a (somewhat) believable part of the Idlewild world.

I also thought making one of the students a French war refugee was unique. I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel that chronicles the experiences of a concentration camp victim following the war. In this particular case, Sonja was rejected by her remaining relatives, mishandled by school staff who weren’t equipped to deal with someone with her background, and was killed by evil that followed her from Germany. Her story is sad and poignant. Kudos to the author for educating her readers about one of the lesser-known camps.

Overall, thumbs up to The Broken Girls.

Did you read a book with a journalist protagonist? Please share!

** Reminder – June’s challenge is to read a book set during the post-Civil War reconstruction period.