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The House of Pearl is a romantic, paranormal, historical fiction, thriller novel written by Robert Max Bovil and Susan B. Flanagan. It’s a story about a famous pop singer Elia Pearl, who returns to the 120-year-old Victorian house that her family owns in Sausalito, California. Elia meets Paul, a local sailor, and they immediately fall in love. As the novel progresses, Elia tells Paul the troubled story of the house, which involves murder, pirates, ghosts, prostitutes and seances.
The story is a good idea, but it would be better conveyed in a TV show or movie platform rather than a novel. The descriptions throughout the novel are vivid, but a fair amount of the dialogue is lacking. The authors use a tremendous amount of foreshadowing that leaves very little to the imagination for the reader. The climax at the end is sudden, with a shortfall of a conclusion. One of the ghosts takes over a character’s body, similar to the concept of a parasitic alien host taking over human bodies in Stephenie Meyer’s The Host. I wanted to believe the characters' feelings and emotions, but they felt shallow and superficial.
The House of Pearl is a quick, easy read ideal for a vacation at the beach.