Home is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose
From New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Marriage and You Shouldn’t Have Come Here comes a chilling family thriller about the (sometimes literal) skeletons in the closet.
After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before.
While going through their parent’s belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends.
Beth, Nicole, and Michael must now decide whether to leave the past in the past or uncover the dark secret their mother took to her grave.
Review:
This was the first book by Geneva Rose that I’d read despite owning a couple of her earlier works. I had preordered this one based on the cover alone. An old-school VHS tape covered in blood? Of course I’m going to read it! The premise of a shocking family secret coming to light after the matriarch’s death sounded right up my alley, so I bumped it up my TBR. While I enjoyed the book (it’s a super quick read), it didn’t really bring anything new or exciting to the genre.
The book begins with the oldest sister, Beth, preparing for her mother’s death. Beth took time off from her job and dedicated her life to caring for her mother as soon as she got sick. Her brother Michael (the youngest) hasn’t been home in years, and middle child Nicole has a heroin addiction and isn’t exactly reliable. Ever since their father disappeared, Beth has been the only one her mother could rely on, and now Beth will be there to see her through until the end. Right as she is about to take her last breath, her mother begins to deliver a warning to Beth, but before she can finish, she dies. Days later, Beth, Michael, and Nicole are going through their parent’s belongings and discover an old VHS tape that appears to show their parents covering up the murder of a local missing girl, thus throwing the siblings into solving the mystery of who their parents really were and what they’d been hiding.
Overall, the characters are well-developed and relatable, and the family dynamics are complex and realistic, making them feel authentic. I will admit, though, I thought they were a little cliché. Beth, the dutiful daughter who stayed behind to care for her ailing mother; Nicole, the troubled middle child battling addiction; and Michael, the youngest sibling who has distanced himself from his family in search of a better life. They all served a purpose in the story, but I also felt that these were precisely the types of characters I expected to see, and all of their arcs played out – again – as expected.
As the siblings uncover a dark secret from their past through a series of home videos, the tension builds, and the questions surrounding their parents deepen, but I have to admit, I pegged what was happening within the first four or five chapters. This isn’t surprising because this happens a lot with me (and honestly with anyone who reads a lot of thrillers), but I was still holding out for a surprise along the way. Sadly, I never got it.
While I wasn’t surprised by anything and felt this one played out a little too by the numbers, it wasn’t a bad read. The author does a fantastic job of creating a sense of unease and suspense throughout the novel, and I liked how we got to hear things from all three siblings’ points of view (with a few chapters from their mother thrown in to help fill in the gaps).
Overall, this was a fun read, but I wasn’t blown away. I did enjoy the idea of siblings unearthing a disturbing family secret via old VHS tapes, but I’d pegged what was happening very early on, and I found the characters and their relationships to be very by the numbers. On the plus side, it’s a quick read, and I did have fun with it; I just found it all to be very predictable. If you’re a seasoned mystery/thriller reader, this one will likely offer few surprises.
