Hi friends, happy Monday, I hope you’re all doing well! Today I’m going to be posting my review of Katie Bayerl’s novel A Psalm for Lost Girls.

A Psalm for Lost Girls by: Katie Bayerl: Everyone in the town of New Avon knows who seventeen-year-old Tess da Costa is. Known for her healing and miracle abilities people from all over would flock to seek guidance and cures but one day she un-expectantly dies of a heart attack. Now her younger sister, Callie and her boyfriend Danny are left to pick up the pieces and to solve the mystery into the kidnaping of a young girl that Tess couldn’t solve. This novel dealt heavily with grief and it portrayed that well; what it didn’t portray well was mental health. It was used as a plot device in multiple different ways but it was always used to prove why characters were acting the way that they were and used in such a negative way that it came off as bad if you have poor mental health. The premise started off good and it was written well, but as the reader got to the second half of the novel the plot kinda dipped and the mystery started lacking, losing the reader’s interest for this story. The romance plot wasn’t needed either; that felt a little out of place. The addition of Tess’s journal entries was effective; it helped us get a sense of who these characters were and the relationships they had with one another. They added that extra layer that we wouldn’t have gotten otherwise in just Callie’s point of view. The little bits we got from the little girl who was kidnapped were helpful in solving the mystery; they were eerily written, which the reader thinks were the intent. The characters for the most part were well written; they weren’t incredibly memorable but they all did grow in one way or another and learned things about themselves and the people in their lives, so that was good to read. All in all, this novel had potential but it just didn’t hit the mark for this reader.