Sundown Girls by L.S. Stratton: Review
Welcome to my review of Sundown Girls by L.S. Stratton! This was a book on my Q1 TBR and a book you’re going to want to add to your own TBR!
Title: Sundown Girls
Author: L.S. Stratton
Genre: YA Thriller
Publisher: Nancy Paulsen Books
Pub Date: 01/27/2026
Description
In the tradition of Jordan Peele and Tiffany Jackson’s The Weight of Blood, a YA thriller about a Black teen whose fight for survival forces a small southern vacation town to face its dark history of racial violence.
When sixteen-year-old Naomi Ward and her family head to a secluded cabin in the Shenandoah Valley for summer vacation they don’t know the small, mountain town of Sparksburg, Virginia has a dark and twisted past. But when they arrive, Naomi can’t shake the feeling that something about Sparksburg just isn’t right—and it smells god awful, but for some reason Naomi is the only who can smell the town’s stench. When she learns Sparksburg had once been a Sundown Town—a town where Black people weren’t allowed after sunset lest they be murdered—Naomi’s unease starts to make sense.
As Naomi digs more into Sparksburg’s violent origins, she finds herself haunted by the ghost of a girl, appearing nightly outside her window. Then she learns of two girls who’ve recently gone missing and suspects the past may still be present in Sparksburg and beneath the quaint façade of this tourist town is a palpable danger.
When Naomi decides to track the disappearance of the two girls herself, she becomes suspicious of a local man who has kindled fear in Naomi more than once. She soon learns he has a connection to one of the missing girls, and Naomi is certain he’s responsible for the disappearances.
When no one believes her, Naomi takes matters into her own hands. But to save the missing girls, she’ll have to finally face her own past trauma as a “missing girl” as she finds herself in a fight for survival.
Gripping and triumphant, L.S. Stratton tells an important and unforgettable story of racial reckoning inspired by historical events.
Review
Sundown Girls was such a good book! I was immediately intrigued by Naomi being a former missing girl and having to adjust to living with the family she was taken from. The distance and misunderstanding between her and her family allowed for some great moments of tension that heightened the mystery plotline. This book was also pretty eerie with ghosts and the overall feel of Sparksburg, the former sundown town where Naomi’s family is vacationing.
The short chapters are great for low attention spans or reluctant readers and made me feel like I was flying through the book. The mystery keeps you guessing, and I love that I was completely wrong in my assumptions because it made for some shocking reveals. And I won’t even lie, I cried during the last few chapters of the book. Tears of both sadness and relief. Although it’s fiction, it depicts some of the real horrors that our ancestors went through at the hands of white people. Sometimes racism is the scariest thing of them all.
I would definitely recommend this one if you love thrillers, missing girl stories, a little romance, and Black history. It has a little something for everyone with a main character that will make you shake your head because of her spontaneity while still rooting for her to uncover the truth.
*Thank you to Penguin Teen for the ARC. All opinions are my own.*
Author
L.S. Stratton currently lives in Maryland with her husband, their daughter, and their tuxedo cat, where she is already musing about her next standalone YA thriller.
Where to Buy
Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | Amazon
