Whenever I review indie books, I find myself being extra gentle in my critiques. Maybe it’s knowing that they don’t have a large team of people to help edit, design, and promote a polished product. However, I’m still willing to call out its flaws and weaknesses where I see them. I just don’t go into heavy detail about them.
While reading books from authors who have made the NYT bestseller’s list, I tend to judge a little more harshly. After all, a publisher has selected them from thousands of submissions as a story worth promoting on a large scale. So, it’s safe to assume that they are supposed to be the best of the best.
Most people looking for a high-profile book to read will likely turn to the NYT list, Oprah or Reese’s Book Club, or some other popular source. The spendthrift in me likes to go to Walmart.
Last year, I had pretty good luck in selecting their recommended read, The Only One Left by Riley Sager. And the review I posted about that book has become one of my most popular blog posts to date, which you can read here.
This year, I decided to try another thriller on Walmart’s recommended shelf, Home Is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose. The VHS tape cover with the cracked plastic and the bloody handprint was the epitome of me judging a book by its cover, supplemented by skimming the inside book jacket’s plot summary, and it felt like this year’s perfect non-indie thriller to feature as we head into the fall and Halloween season. Below is my review of Home Is Where the Bodies Are.
Home Is Where the Bodies Are plot summary
Estranged siblings Beth, Nicole, and Michael reunite after their mother, Laura passes away from cancer. The three return home to tie up their mother’s estate as their father has been missing for the past seven years. Beth, who had been taking care of their mother in her final months, is still reeling from her mother’s last words, which trailed off with the phrase, “Don’t trust…” As a result, she greets her siblings sourly and rattled with a chip on her shoulder.
Nicole, less than 30 days sober, learns of the news in the hospital just after she is assaulted and is forced to call Beth to come pick her up, the two having not spoken to each other in a year due to Nicole’s substance abuse issues. She’s defensive and guilt-ridden that she didn’t get to make peace with her mother before her passing.
Michael arrives from California. He’s the family success story, and his sisters regard him bitterly, interpreting every comment and suggestion as a flaunting of his wealth and freedom from their small town of Allen’s Grove.
While sorting through their mother’s belongings, Beth finds a collection of home movies on VHS. Feeling nostalgic, she pops one in from their teen years in June 1999. On the tape, they witness their parents inadvertently documenting the disposal of the body of a young neighbor girl who had gone missing earlier that day.
Horrified by this realization, the three set out to figure out what happened that night. As they do, they find connections to other disappearances in their small town as well as a new understanding of their childhoods that may explain why their lives ended up the way they did.
The story
The concept of Home Is Where the Bodies Are is a compelling premise to a mystery reader. The cover art lets the reader know that this story is going to be riddled with nostalgia for what every adult generation refers to as “simpler times.” But simpler times can disguise themselves as the basis of a messy life.
The book is a tight 250 pages and is mostly character driven. Each chapter is told from a different character’s perspective, specifically the three adult children and their mother, Laura, in flashbacks pulled from excerpts from her journal. It unravels slowly, keeping details vague and building onto them as it all pulls together.
The fun of reading mystery novels is to start forming theories right away based on limited knowledge and allowing the story to reshape those theories as the plot twists and turns you around with new information. I’m typically just along for the ride and try to form the most obvious ideas first. I then wait for the story to tell me what I missed and reveal to me what I didn’t know.
Unfortunately, I figured out the ending right away and spent the rest of the book hoping I was wrong. While it feels good to solve a mystery, when you’re doing it for entertainment, you hope that the story is smarter than you are and that you are being misdirected so that you can later be surprised and awed. In this case, I could see the strings of the magic trick, and that took away all of the shock, suspense, and cleverness that I was hoping for.
That being said, Rose does pack in some interesting side plots and does create a fully fleshed out story that gets neatly shuffled together to form what would make a great true crime special that would play on commercial TV on a Friday or Saturday night. It’s just disappointing that it wasn’t better disguised or more original.
The setting
In her acknowledgements, Jeneva Rose mentions that the town of Allen’s Grove where the story takes place is an actual town where she spent some formative years. Her descriptions of the overview of the town, the protagonists’ childhood home, and other notable landmarks are expertly described. It’s a place that feels lived in and dull, especially to two women who have never left it and a man who did and can now only see the rust on it, but it also feels very real with its own small charms and grab bag of citizens.
It’s funny to think of 1999 as the olden days, but it is a nostalgic era for Millennial readers who came of age during this time period. Rose injects a fair amount of pop culture references into the flashback scenes which helps to ground the story’s history.
The siblings
The siblings in this book are your standard birth order archetypes. Beth is the responsible one who puts others’ needs before her own. This has resulted in a divorce, her only daughter stationed on the other side of the world, a dead-end job working in a factory in a town she never left, and months on FMLA while she took care of her dying mother.
Beth’s bitterness is understandable, and it doesn’t make her unlikable, even when she is being horrible to her younger siblings. She’s been the anchor that was never pulled up, and she feels resentful that she never got to break through the surface of her own life and find her own contentment.
Nicole is the rebellious middle child whose rebellion spiraled into addiction. It turned her into a liar, a thief, and a lost cause who her family eventually had to abandon at the risk of their own safety and sanity.
Nicole is still in her rock-bottom phase despite being clean for longer than she ever has been, but her past is still latching onto her, and it has made her desperate for security and reconnection. She’s burned a lot of bridges, though, and her relationship with Beth especially is not easily mended.
Nicole’s interest in writing never wavered, and it makes her a relatable character to this reader in particular. Aside from scribbling in her notebooks, life has frequently got in the way of being able to develop her skills past a hobby status.
Michael takes things all in stride. He’s more of a bystander who’s along for the ride, and he can take the verbal blows his sisters land better than the others because he feels they are punching up. He tries to solve every conflict with money, is intent on not airing out the family’s dirty laundry, and has the freedom to leave whenever he wants. The experience of coming home makes him feel grateful that he got out.
The supporting characters
The kids’ parents are an all-American couple on the surface, and they put on a convincing act that everything was fine for years after that night in June. However, Laura’s journals detail just how long she struggled with the guilt of what she knew and how she helped with the cover up and how it all didn’t end with one body but several that ended up being buried behind their house.
Their father, Brian, comes across as a protective and caring dad whose actions seem out of character from how he is described and remembered. Aside from asking his wife to hide a dead body and several other suspicious actions, years later, he leaves town, leaving behind a cryptic note and a heartbroken family. Is he the dad they always knew, or is there something more sinister to his character than he is letting on?
There is also a selection of supporting characters, including former love interests, targeted suspects, and additional victims who populate the story. Ultimately, every tie to the family is affected by these actions, and it leads to an underground tunnel of secrecy that permeates their small town.
The message
The central theme of this story is that the buried past will come back to haunt you, if it hasn’t already been haunting you this whole time. What seems like good intentions in the moment can grow into a monster that branches out and affects the people around you in horrific ways, even the innocent and the unassuming.
We all would like to think that, if asked to hide a body, we’d do the right thing. We’d report it and let events run their course. But in the intensity of the moment, would we consider hiding it, and if so, what consequences would we be trying to avoid? What would it be like to walk around with that secret, and what evidence is out there that could expose it all and lead to even worse ends?
Overall, the story’s short, concise chapters and captivating premise make it a page-turning read. I aimed to read 25 pages a day and easily hit that goal. I also felt myself reading slower than usual due to the easy prose style and interest in delving into the inner monologues of the protagonists. And I did find that I wanted to keep returning to it to see what unfolds next.
Just don’t expect anything other than a generic plot and fairly stock characters. You will root for these siblings, and you will judge the decisions that are made. But the story really doesn’t have anything new or original to bring to the murder mystery genre.
My rating
Buy it!
Buy a copy of Home Is Where the Bodies Are here, and help support local bookstores! This is an affiliate link, and I will earn a commission on any sales.
Pin it!
