Tall Bones

There is something about small town USA that provides a wonderful claustrophobia. The secrets, gossip, pettiness and viciousness of people in small communities provide a perfect tinderbox. Add in the bigotry and hypocritical judgement of small town religion and you end up with a dark and powerful story which Anna Bailey captures in haunting style in Tall Bones.

The main story revolves around a missing 17 year old girl and her best friend. As her friend goes searching for the truth she digs down through the secrets buried within the family and the community.

This is dark and haunting stuff, exquisitely written to catch that underlying paranoia. A fantastic debut!

This was an interesting read, thanks mainly to a town full of some really, really awful characters! Honestly the behaviour of some of the characters made me want to reach into the book and give them a good shake.

I suppose it's credit to author for writing the characters so brilliantly that it was easy to despise them! I should say that this was the older characters and not the younger ones, who had far better attitudes!

The story was really well written and I did enjoy it.

Thank you to PH and Anna for the chance to read this book.