Well-written, intricately plotted, and thoroughly absorbing, The Broken Girls by Canadian author Simone St. James provides readers with "the best of both worlds": a gothic, historical ghost story set at a "haunted" boarding school for girls in Vermont, and a contemporary mystery featuring a journalist with a connection to that same school, who begins her own investigation into the long-abandoned school's change of ownership and proposed renovation, only to discover more than she bargained for about Idlewild Hall's shadowy past.