Near the Bone

This book very solidly delivers on a very simple promise: if you want a slowly unfolding mystery, set in a very cold place, dealing with domestic violence and a creature feature, you'll get it. And you know what, good, fine. It's not amazing, but it delivers on its promises very defly. The ending is obvious once you get into the meat of the plot-- which is fine, really, except it's treated like a shocker throughout. The pacing gets a little stuck in the middle with the introduction of a character who feels like they're from an entirely different genre, and this isn't helped by the main character loosing the ability to speak for far too long during this period, but ultimately, I was satisfied? Ish.

This feels very damning with faint praise, which is a shame because the novel has a lot going for it in terms of character depth and atmosphere. However, the following (big spoilers!) knocked it down several stars for me, and really took the shine off the novel as a whole. But, yeah, the following really bugged me:

Extremely weird, though, that a horror novel that made the abduction, kidnapping and assault of a woman its centerpiece couldn't bring itself to use the word 'rape', though. It's kind of brought up and menaced throughout, but the book doesn't really have the engine power required to deal with that in full, and it seems to know. At the midpoint the book just kind of shies away from it, which makes it especially weird given the final revelation about the monster. Overall the novel really twists itself into a lot of weird shapes in order to let itself bring up the spectre of, and simultaneously avoid, the main character's long term traumatic sexual abuse and assault.

This was a heart pounding horror, set in a desolate cabin on a snow covered mountain where one woman tries to survive more than one kind of monster.

Mattie knows no other kind of life than being beaten and abused while spending her days working on her never ending chores in an attempt to avoid the brutal punishments her "husband" will mete out if everything is not done to his satisfaction. Mattie has not seen or spoken to another living soul but William for what she estimates to be about 12 years. She's not even sure how old she is anymore. She has vague memories of another life, with a mother and sister who loved her, but William tells her none of this is real, that it was just a dream, she has never been anything but his wife, and his property. Just when it seems she has given up on ever having a life worth living, a strange and deadly creature in the woods attracts the attention of amateur hikers and cryptid hunters who stumble upon William's cabin in the woods. This could be Mattie's one chance at escape or it could mean the death of all of them at the jaws of a vicious creature that can kill with one swipe of it's claws before you even know it's upon you.

As a huge fan of creature feature type horror and anything to do with being trapped in a winter storm this was a big hit with me, but when combined with the evil that mere mortals do the author created a perfect duet of terror with William and the creature being equally dangerous to Mattie's chances of survival.


I received an advance copy for review.