I had a terrible night’s sleep last night...because I had to stay up to finish this book then couldn’t sleep as I couldn’t stop thinking about it!! There is a lot of buzz about Tall Bones and I was wary that it may be over-hyped. It’s not. It deserves every ounce of excitement! It is a story about Abi Blake who goes missing from the small town of Whispering Ridge and the guilt that her best friend Emma experiences after she’s gone. I felt like the author, Anna Bailey, was like a spider, weaving a web of intrigue around you. All you can do is watch as she expertly knits the story together, dropping delicate hints along the way. I was mesmerised by the writing, drawn deeply in and grimly fascinated by what was happening in this town. Noah, Samuel, Dolly, Jude, Rat, Hunter, Emma...all of these characters affected me in different ways and I can’t stop thinking about them. The story focuses on dark events including physical and sexual abuse and homophobia, so it’s not always an easy read but my goodness it’s impactful! We are transported between Now and Then throughout the chapters and there are subtle clues bound in to the narrative and it is so exciting when you spot them. As soon as I’d finished I almost wanted to turn back to the first page and start over again to highlight all the links! This book gave me Twin Peaks vibes along with The Devil All the Time which I’ve recently watched on Netflix. Some have compared Tall Bones to We Begin at the End, but in my opinion this is so much better! Honestly, I can’t rave about this book enough - I loved it.

A sense of foreboding and unease permeates every part of this book, set in small town Colorado. It opens with a scene at the Tall Bones on a September evening. Tall Bones, a circle of six white rocks, each twelve feet tall and covered in graffiti, is a local gathering site for teenagers in search of freedom and escape. The bonfire spits and crackles and all around, the sound of teenagers letting off steam can be heard. Emma watches as her best friend, Abi walks away from her, towards a male figure. “I’ll be fine,” she assures her friend, but Emma is unsettled. This is the last time Emma sees Abi. The story centres around Abi’s disappearance, and explores possible explanations. Abi has always hated the town of Whistling Ridge, and planned to leave it when she could. Who’s to say she didn’t run away? Emma knows differently: Abi would never abandon her without a word. She knows her friend better than anyone – or so she thinks. Structured with a Now and Then format, we are taken back and forth between the aftermath of Abi’s disappearance, and the events which lead up to it. Told by a chorus of characters, we soon realise that nothing and no-one in this small town is as it seems. Abi’s own family is dysfunctional and abusive: her father is too free with this fists, her mother is drowning herself in alcohol, older brother, Noah, is struggling with his own identity and younger brother Jude, ‘the mistake’ is hobbling around after his father injured him by throwing him down the stairs. Abi’s home life was far from happy. As each character who was close to Abi takes a turn at narration, we learn that they all feel some guilt about the night she disappeared. Readers are kept on their toes throughout as each character makes vague references to wrong doings, “It was all my fault,” or “You have no idea what I’ve done.” There’s a terrifying feel to the way the town runs, with the community fuelled by the venomous sermons of the pastor, who wants his congregation and the townsfolk to subscribe and conform to his skewed take on Christianity. The police are often all too happy to fall in with the wishes of the pastor, or equally happy to turn a blind eye while he incites unrest and witch hunts. Anna Bailey’s writing is very controlled and steeped in the American Mid-West. I was amazed to learn that she is a writer from Bristol, who lived in Colorado for a few years. Her descriptions of the countryside are hypnotic and striking, and her evocation of the small town setting are terrifyingly claustrophobic. I raced through this story – desperate to discover who was to blame for Abi’s disappearance. If you’re a fan of a beautifully written mystery, then this is one for you! Tall Bones is published by Penguin Doubleday on 1st April.

I saw a lot of hype about this book on Twitter and requested an early review copy from NetGalley and I am so glad I did! What a debut. I finished it last night just before publication day today. It is a slow burn but once you get into it and get to know the extremely deep and well developed characters it is totally absorbing. The story revolves around the disappearance of 17 year old Abigail one night after a party at the Tall Bones which is a group of tall white stones in the forest. Abi tells her friend Emma she is meeting someone in the woods and reluctantly Emma leaves her. She will regret that decision. Abi is not seen again after that night. Emma turns to alcohol to help her cope and decides to try and uncover what happened to Abi that night with the help of Rat, a Romanian boy living in the trailer park and Maddox, a friend of Abi’s and Noah, one of Abi’s brothers. Secrets start being uncovered and the town are looking for someone to blame. The teenagers are going through their own issues and have nowhere to turn for help. Parents are either abusive or just don’t care, and the pastor puts the blame for their thoughts and worries back on them, telling them they are broken. The same pastor who blames Abi’s mother for her own abuse by her crazy husband Samuel, a Vietnam war vet who clearly has PTSD and drives his wife to the verge of insanity where she stops functioning. As we get to know the people who live in this small town of Whistling Ridge we find a horrible cruel lot of weak minded people, who have the local church at the centre of their lives, and are brainwashed by the pastor. They are homophobes, racists, wife beaters, child abusers. They use the bible as the excuse for their behaviour, confused by the bible’s message by the preacher of hatred. No wonder the teenagers can’t wait to get away from the town. Things come to a head one night after a particularly savage church meeting which ends with the setting fire to a property. At least one person knows what happened to Abi that night. Thanks very much to NetGalley and Transworld Penguin Random House for the chance to read an ARC of this book.

Where do I start?!? Tall Bones is an amazing and utterly gripping read. I saw a couple of my fellow booksellers discussing it on Twitter and knew I had to read it, I was not disappointed! I did have an initial worry that it would be a ‘coming of age’ tale, which I don’t overly enjoy but while you could say there are elements of that, there is so much more to this book. The small town setting immediately drew me in, I love nothing more than delighting in a fictional small town’s gossip, rumours and weirdos. Anna Bailey has the small town vibe down to a tee! I had absolutely no clue as to what happened to Abigail, or what the diddley was going on in the town, I came up with many theories but they were all delightfully wrong! I was constantly led astray, mostly due to the worrying amount of creepy creeperson character types that Anna Bailey created. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book with so many characters that made me shiver and feel a desperate need for a bleach shower! I also really wanted to reach in the pages and bop the town preacher on the nose, urgh, what a hateful man. He really epitomised small town narrow mindedness. I love books that give me characters to hate and Tall Bones gave me that in absolute abundance. There are so many things going on in Whistling Ridge, too many things to mention in my review. This is a book that you need to experience for yourself and the burgeoning town secrets need to reveal themselves to you as you read. Dark, compelling, brilliant and completely satisfying, this is a book I highly recommend.

Tall Bones Anna Bailey Thank you to Netgalley and Penguin Random House for this review copy. This is my unbiased review of the author's work and style. I suspect that one of the problems of modern life, for some readers is its pace. Their lives can be fraught and demanding and they have grown used to sitting in a chair watching an adaption on the one-eyed monster. So, when a slow-paced psychological thriller appears in book form, they expect it to reflect their hectic existence and they wait for the bodies to pile up, the protagonists to fall in and out of temper or love and the ever-present persons of authority to push the players even harder. Therefore, unless the action is set back before the millennium, I don’t expect to see an adaptation of this intense, gripping book any time soon. It is a pity. Anna Bailey has captured the oppressive and stultifying atmosphere of a small-town America where the older population clings to the traditions and values of yesteryear covering up their innate sense of failure. Their progeny, like all young people try to break free before the inevitable work, marriage, children, church, and their contemporaries, suck them down to become, in their turn, copies of their parents. I suggest if the slowness of the writing worries you think back to Harper Lee’s pace in To Kill a Mockingbird and remember to joy that bought. Not in the plot, or the characters views but in the feel of the novel. For me Anna Bailey’s debut novel deserves five stars.