A review by not_a_wally
Behold the Bones by Natalie C. Parker

4.0

I was tempted to give this book 4.5 stars, like I did the first one, but I had to dock it a bit because it literally took half the book for me to actually get into it. Although, once I was in, I was in. I also had to dock it a bit for a couple issue that made themselves vaguely known in Beware the Wild, but got more attention in this book. I didn't necessarily love how both Abigail's blackness and gayness felt shoehorned in for diversity. Abigail is literally the only non-white, non-straight character in these books and I find that a little ridiculous. Although, these books are pretty diverse when compared to a lot of other prominent YA work... it's a problem. We need more diversity in books.

Besides the relative lack of diversity, I really enjoyed this book. I was a little bored by Candy's perspective at first, and it took me a while to get into it because the first half of the book is pretty light on the paranormal stuff, but once the ghost sightings picked up I started enjoying it more. I just wish that Phin had been in it. The first book was literally all about rescuing Phin and he's literally mentioned about twice throughout this entire sequel. It's kind of a bummer. But Sterling was a pretty prominent side character, and I was glad to see her back. Although she felt more two dimensional this time around, I guess as a side character that's only to be expected.

Overall I really liked, borderline loved, this duology and would highly recommend to anyone who likes paranormal/ghost stories.