Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - Near the Bone

Mattie lives with William, an abusive man that calls himself her husband, up on a mountain in an abandoned cabin. William ensures that Mattie never leaves their home or has contact with any outsiders. One day, Mattie and William find signs that a mysterious creature has arrived. Three young college students, CP, Griffin, and Jen have come up to investigate reports of a monster up on the mountain, and William is not happy about their presence. Mattie must make a decision on whether she stays with her abuser or if she will help the newcomers avoid the monsters on the mountain.

Near the Bone was successful in filling me with absolute dread, but some of the characters were not fleshed out as well as they could have been.

I think that I spent the whole book being as scared of William as Mattie was. The monster, whatever it was, was also somewhat frightening, but it was nothing compared to William. I was just rooting for him to die the entire time.

And I was so happy when he finally did!!

In contrast, I really felt for Mattie the entire book and wishing for her eventual escape was what had me turning page after page.

The college kids felt very flat compared to William and Mattie. None of them had much of a personality, and they kind of felt like they were ripped from a subpar horror movie. I just couldn’t really get myself to care about them outside of whether they would be able to help Mattie escape.

I also found myself being very annoyed by the mentions of Heather. There was zero payoff to this!! We never find out what happens to her or if she’s just something Mattie made up or anything. What was the point in having Mattie spend so much time thinking about her? This annoyed me much more than how boring the college kids were.

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jessab's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

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

3.5

A bit of a slow start but I quite liked the second half. Slow burn mystery with some criptid creature intrigue

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whitneyonline's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

Is it really my first book of 2023 when I read 80% of it during the last week of 2022? Eh, I'll go with it.

It is a reach for this to be branded as a horror book. A thriller? Yes! But how is something a creature feature when the creature is hardly...featured? You could cut out all the parts with the monster in it and still have a coherent thriller. And I think there was a huge missed opportunity to go into the lore of the creature, making it the horror that it desperately wanted to be

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leahrosereads's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No

4.25

A creature feature where man is once again the scariest monster. Near the Bone starts off as a slow, domestic thriller of sorts, and then goes absolutely off the hinges. There's mystery and a beastie and of course, the real villain of it all, a man named William.

I could not put this one down! It was brutal in every sense of the word!

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