A. Shockey

Echo of Souls A. Shockey

Ronni Parker doesn't believe in ghosts, but then, she's never met her mother... What really became of her? Was she the young girl raped and then driven mad by the loss of her baby? A tender, tormented soul locked away in a tiny room of a secluded cabin...did she commit suicide? It is the time of reckoning. Because the biggest lie ever told is that the dead bury their secrets.


Reviewed by Alice D. for Readers Favorite

Echo of Souls is the perfect book for this season of Halloween. Ronni Parker taking a leave from her company, has driven hundreds of miles across Florida to find her inheritance, a cabin nestled on Paloma Road in the backwoods land next to the Suwannee River. Raised by adoptive parents, Ronnie has been left her family's home by the grandmother she has never known. Ronni's lawyer, Mr. Saxton, warns her that the nearby townsfolk may not welcome her cordially, and Ronni finds truth in his words. Her birth mother apparently killed herself after Ronni was given as a baby to others to raise, and river dweller Jack, good friend to Ronni's grandmother, refuses to stay in the cabin after dark. Ronni senses a presence in the old cabin, but when she is nearly drowned in the bathtub, she knows there are unseen "presences" that might mean to harm her. Can old river-folk storyteller, Netta Jackson, help Ronni uncover those otherworldly beings?

Alishia Shockey has written an absorbing story that horror story fans will love. The plot holds true from beginning to end of the story. She does a first-rate job in revealing the identity of the ghost that haunts Ronni, leaving one word messages for her on the old sewing machine that runs itself. That Ronni's dead mother seems so loving, so welcoming, and then is totally lethal is a great piece of literary work. Characters such as Jack, Netta Jackson and Corbin Cox are well created and believable. This is a honey of a Halloween offering, a good read for any time of year. The wordy description at story's beginning is totally forgivable in light of the story to come.