Wednesday, January 20, 2016

The Bones of You


The Bones of You
Debbie Howells

The Bones of You

Genre: Mystery Thriller

Summary (from Goodreads): A stunning, wonderfully assured psychological thriller that evokes Gillian Flynn and Alice Sebold, The Bones of You revolves around a young girl’s murder and one woman’s obsession with uncovering the secrets in an idyllic English village.

I have a gardener’s inherent belief in the natural order of things. Soft‑petalled flowers that go to seed. The resolute passage of the seasons. Swallows that fly thousands of miles to follow the eternal summer.

Children who don’t die before their parents.


When Kate receives a phone call with news that Rosie Anderson is missing, she’s stunned and disturbed. Rosie is eighteen, the same age as Kate’s daughter, and a beautiful, quiet, and kind young woman. Though the locals are optimistic—girls like Rosie don’t get into real trouble—Kate’s sense of foreboding is confirmed when Rosie is found fatally beaten and stabbed.

Who would kill the perfect daughter, from the perfect family? Yet the more Kate entwines herself with the Andersons—graceful mother Jo, renowned journalist father Neal, watchful younger sister Delphine—the more she is convinced that not everything is as it seems. Anonymous notes arrive, urging Kate to unravel the tangled threads of Rosie’s life and death, though she has no idea where they will lead.

Weaving flashbacks from Rosie’s perspective into a tautly plotted narrative, The Bones of You is a gripping, haunting novel of sacrifices and lies, desperation and love.


Review:  This was a dark and creepy psychological thriller, full of lots of nasty characters that I couldn't stand.  What made this book different is that the narrator was an eminently likable, lovely, kind woman who befriended the mother of the missing girl.  Somehow having a decent woman at the heart of the story made the nastiness easier to read, while also providing an interesting contrast between good and evil.  Interestingly, it was also narrated by the dead girl; at times this was a bit confusing, but it lent an interesting perspective and provided some of the back story, since the novel opened with the girl already missing.

Rating: 4 stars

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