Reviews with content warning for Murder - Near the Bone

a comparison of the monster inside your own home and the monster that lives in the forest

for what i liked:
-the introspective narration and monologue of the main character. she has a dual monologue that intensifies as they story progresses and she remembers events from her past, fluctuating between "mattie" (present) and

samantha

(past)
-the writing style was very good and each character had a distinct voice/mannerisms. for instance, one of the characters rambles as he speaks and tends to go off on short tangents, felt very real as to how some people speak under duress.

and now for what didn't land for me:
-the abuse/abduction story line (versus the monster in the woods story line) was of more interest to me. it was gruesome and horrifying in its own right, and the domestic violence-related triggers are NOT used lightly! but, i genuinely feel that the monster could have been removed COMPLETELY from the story, and barring one or two incidents, the rest of the story would have remained the same. it just didn't give the creature-horror i was hoping for.
-speaking of, also wasn't a huge fan of the "sympathetic" lean of the monster? it's just a lone parent caring for their child, which i understand is in contrast to

mattie having been abducted and her mother murdered

, but it just felt..... so.... normal? like again, this could have just been an ol regular degular BEAR and not a monster. i wish the monster was more primal, unpredictable, calculating. not just "protective". maybe leaning into skinwalker/infection territory? something MORE.
-CP was.... frustratingly dismissive of mattie, saying things like "come on / pull yourself together / stay on track", even saying this MOMENTS after mattie finds newspaper clippings of

her abduction & mom's murder

. like.... tact, man. and yet when HE gets his hand cut off he's all "Jesus, doesn’t losing a limb entitle me to five seconds of rest?” like. lol????!?!?!?
-sometimes the text was repetitive. mattie will think "i need to find out what's in the trunk" and literally the next chapter thinks the exact same thing word for word. this isn't a long story, so that level of repeatedly explaining plot points and character thoughts was starting to annoy me. just a bit.
-also, like, genuinely upset that griffin died. he seemed like a good dude (see scene described below).

ALL THAT SAID lol, the writing style WAS very good, as was the depiction of domestic abuse (the inner monologue of the character, PTSD, not even felling safe from her abductor in her own thoughts, etc.) and would be interested in reading more from this author. it's just the monster stuff, for the most part, that didn't land for me.

quotes/passages:

-Yes, it was a skill she’d perfected—shrinking inside her body, her thoughts receding so they weren’t visible, so that she was nothing but a body and everything about her that mattered was hidden away.

-It just seemed that the light of the morning should make everything better, that a new day ought to wash away the terror of the night.

-the scene when griffin meets mattie for the second time, showing anger that her "husband" left her outside to possibly die: mattie has never experienced someone being mad on her behalf and not directly at her and she doesn't know how to process that. big oof.

-[...] the past lying over her present like two pieces of a puzzle that didn’t fit together. (as mattie has flashbacks that she can't place)

-Mattie wanted to scream to the heavens. Griffin Banerjee was a very kind man, she could see that, but he needed to learn to listen when she spoke. (in the context of HER being in an abusive situation for 10+ years i thought this was very cathartic!)

-Mattie shook her head, felt the grief swelling inside her, pushing against her skin, making her feel like she would burst. How could she live with this? How could she ever feel whole again?
My mother is dead. What happened to Heather?
What if William had killed her, too, killed her smiling sister who built fairy houses in the yard and danced with Mattie—not Mattie, Samantha—to loud music and built forts in the living room out of blankets and pillows? What would Mattie do then if there were no one to go home to?

-I don’t know what kind of person I am. William took that from me.

-Mattie didn’t believe in happy endings. She didn’t even believe in happy middles. It was only at that beginning part of the story, when you were young and didn’t know any better, that you could be happy and carefree. Once life piled up on you, happiness was impossible.

-once mattie starts to remember her past, including a dream of flying like a bird, she wonders to herself if she would rather be the mouse (cowering, afraid, meek and making herself as small as possible to evade punishment) or or the falcon (free).

Content Warnings

dripdrop's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Content Warnings

unbeeleafable's review against another edition

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dark sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

Ugh, this is a tough one to give a rating. The main storyline is compelling and gripping albeit extremely hard to read in some places. Some bits just felt silly and out of place-

the 3 hikers calling themselves cryptozoologists and William being a heroin dealer? Cmon.

The inner monologue was written cleverly and the overall pacing of the story was excellent, but the (what I feel are) heavy-handed ‘modern’ details and unnecessarily profuse descriptions of abuse turned me off from giving this a higher rating.

Content Warnings

ommageden's review

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This book rambles far too often, and makes almost all its points heavy handedly. If you are looking for a story about abuse that has a creature arbitrarily added, then this is for you.

Several plot points make no sense:

for example why didn't William attempt to shoot them through the windows of the cabin? Or shoot off the lock of the door to gain entry while they were still unarmed? How did the creature NOT kill him? How the hell does CP forget a gun in the situation they are in?

By the halfway point I was checked out. By 3/4 I was in too deep but mentally done with this book.

Content Warnings

aparker89's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Ahhh! Ms Henry has done it again! Damn! I'm shook!

Content Warnings

skranz's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

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