An intriguing story which keeps you guessing. Who killed Rosie Anderson? And why? 3.5 stars.

The blurb: 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.

My take:

This is an entertaining mystery. Kate, our main narrator, is likeable and sufficiently “normal” to balance the many elements of pure crazy and creepy elsewhere in the story.

I was a bit wary of the idea of having parts of the story told by Rosie, the murder victim (this isn’t a spoiler: the book opens with one of her chapters). But because the author keeps Rosie’s chapters very short and scattered among Kate’s larger chunks of narrative, this ghostly device works and helps keep us in the dark.

I didn’t feel I could give the book a higher rating because while it’s billed as a “psychological thriller” it isn’t particularly thrilling. It’s intriguing, interesting, but it didn’t have me on the edge of my seat.

I recommend The Bones of You for fans of murder mysteries with a heavy dose of domestic drama.

 Claire Huston / Art and Soul