Home is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose is a bit of an odd story. In a small town three siblings come together and reunite after their mother passes away, each of them with their own story. Beth is the oldest and never left their small town as she married straight out of high school where she ended up eventually taking care of their mother as got older and sicker. The middle child is Nicole, a bright and creative girl who spiraled into drug addiction after a horrible car accident years before and has been at arms length for quite some time. The youngest and only boy is Michael who left town and managed to become a highly successful tech entrepreneur who hasn’t been home in seven years, coincidentally the same time their father mysteriously disappeared. Trying to reclaim some of their closeness and happy memories they decide to watch a random VHS from their mother’s collection of home movies. In doing so they discover something they never knew, when they were all teenagers their parents helped hide the body of the girl across the street. Now they are faced with the decision of what to do with their newfound knowledge: try to figure out the rest of the story or bury their discovery.
This book was weird but good and I found myself thoroughly enthralled the farther into the story I got. Even having read the description beforehand I was not prepared for what actually happened in this story. It was a thriller and suspense story in every sense of the word and it did a great job of building that up the further in you get. The story also had numerous twists and turns that I was not expecting and I was genuinely surprised by some of it but not all of it, there were a few things that were pretty obvious. One of the things that I really liked was how it swapped perspectives for every chapter between the three siblings. For one chapter we would get Nicole and then Beth and then Michael so we constantly rotated but it also added a lot of depth to what was happening as we saw each of their perspectives on their delve into their family’s past. We also got to see their perspective of each other and how that influences their current interactions. I felt like this allowed us to see many facets or sides of each of the characters through this which also helped to add to the complexity of the story. At the same time it did a good job of only showing certain aspects of them which helped build the ultimate climax of the story which was somewhat unexpected because of this. The way everything slowly came together at just the right pace to create this great story was nice and made for an enjoyable read. I also enjoyed watching the characters grow as they struggled with this situation and am honestly glad that this is not my family. Mostly because I am not sure my family would have made it through nearly as well. Overall, a pretty good book and one that I am happy to give four out of five stars.
This book is a pretty good example of a thriller so if you enjoy that type of story than you might consider trying this one out. It deals with some pretty uncomfortable topics though such as troubled family past and some pretty serious sibling rivalry as well as Nicole’s drug addiction. There are also references to some pretty heavy drinking. I am not sure if those would be difficult for everybody but I know they can be difficult for some people. Because of this type of content I would not recommend this story for younger readers, at best only readers older than sixteen and even they should be careful about reading it. It is a good book and if it sounds like you would enjoy it then feel free to try it. Remember to share your thoughts in the comments if you do though.