Book Review: "Home is Where the Bodies Are" by Jeneva Rose

Ooh I've been patiently waiting for the right time to read this book and let me tell you, it did not disappoint. Home is Where the Bodies Are is an intense scrutiny of truth and lies, set in two different timeliness and covering about four different people. We have alternating narratives in the present day between three adult children named Beth, Nicole and Michael. Then, we have a narrative from 1999 from their mother, Laura. Concerning their father's disappearance into thin air, this book really gets twisted. I absolutely loved it.

This book starts with Beth and her mother sitting out watching the sunset. The mother is terminally ill and thus, unfortunately passes away during this meeting. She leaves her daughter with the message that her father did not in fact, disappear. Instead, she shouldn't trust...But her mother died before she could finish the sentence. Initially, Beth will choose this to keep this to herself. Honestly, I think that this is a great opening and really sets up the story for the rest of the way because not only do we have some emotion but we also have that slight distrust woven between siblings because Beth initially doesn't actually say anything.

When it comes to splitting their mother's things, the sister Nicole receives the mother's journals and the older sister, Beth receives mostly everything else. It should be alerted to the reader from the very beginning that Michael receives the third most amount of stuff but that won't matter until later. As Nicole starts reading her mother's journals, she is reminded about the fact that the next door neighbour's child, Emma, went missing several years' ago which is something many of them knew already. She learns about how her mother and father encountered an accident with the child and well, instead of telling their friends and neighbours about what happened, they get rid of the body somehow.

Alongside this, we start to learn about the dynamics between the siblings. We learn that Nicole is an addict, or at least a former addict who wants to investigate the death of Emma and what actually happened to her. All this time, there's an argument between the siblings about the investigation of their parents and how the stuff has been split up. For example: there's a clear jealousy from the other siblings that Beth got the house and now gets to choose what to do with it even though Michael is adamant that he used to 'foot the bill' for everything. This erupts into an argument, of course. I quite like the way in which the sibling rivalry almost acts as a misdirection from the real issue.

On top of this we have the mother's narrative which is filled with very intricate details in which some are very purposefully missing. For example, there is a video tape in which the 'accident' is almost shown on a video camera in which the video is left for the children. Brian (the father) told Laura (the mother) to turn off the video camera and she didn't, she just put it down but it recorded the father saying 'it was an accident' rather than showing them what actually happened. Naturally, the reader thinks that the father accidentally hit her with his car or something but on top of this, once the story starts unfolding, the reader begins to notice there is a murderer in their midst.

Again, there's a lot of misdirection but when you see it, you definitely realise that there was something you weren't seeing before. On top of this, we still have the weirdness about the disappearance of the father. As the story goes on it begins to unfold that the parents may have been involved in a lot more than meets the eye, there is definitely a growing concern amongst the siblings, especially Beth who feels like because her mother spoke to her last, that it is her duty do discover what her mother wants her to discover.

All in all, by the end of the book I think you will definitely have that moment where you realise that you've actually been missing a lot. The book is brilliantly written and I read the whole thing in one sitting. By the end I was absolutely sweating - it was well worth the wait. I would highly recommend this for those of you looking for your next psychological thriller read.

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