The Unquiet Bones by Loreth Anne White
Thank you to Amazon Publishing for sending me the physical copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Book Synopsis
A shocking discovery of human bones reopens an almost fifty-year-old cold case—and rips apart the lives of a group of friends—in a riveting novel by Loreth Anne White, the Amazon Charts and Washington Post bestselling author of The Maid’s Diary.
When human bones are found beneath an old chapel in the woods, evidence suggests the remains could be linked to the decades-old case of missing teen Annalise Jansen.
Homicide detective Jane Munro—pregnant and acutely attuned to the preciousness of life—hopes the grim discovery will finally bring closure to the girl’s family. But for a group of Annalise’s old friends, once dubbed the Shoreview Six by the media, it threatens to expose a terrible pledge made on an autumn night forty-seven years ago.
The friends are now highly respected, affluent members of their communities, and none of them ever expected the dark chapter in their past to resurface. But as Jane and forensic anthropologist Dr. Ella Quinn peel back the layers of secrets, the group begins to fracture. Will one cave? Will they turn on each other?
The investigation takes a sharp turn when Jane discovers a second body—that of the boy long blamed for Annalise’s disappearance. As the bones tell their story, the group learns just how far each will go to guard their own truth.
My Review
There were multiple perspectives in this novel and they alternated between the chapters and though this wasn't a particularly fast paced thriller, this book kept me reading. My favorite point of view for this novel was the detective, Jane, trying to solve the cold case while at the same time coping with the mysterious disappearance of her fiancé. I also liked reading the perspective of the reporter trying to get a story of the cold case that has remained unsolved and how this character had changed her focus as we got closer to the end of the book and seemed to develop more of an ethical conscience when it came to reporting the story.
There were multiple unlikeable characters as well that were narrators in this novel, but having the couple that I did like reading made the others more tolerable and having unlikeable characters is fine with me as it fits thr story.
This novel definitely featured the pasts of the main characters heavily in the storytelling. I feel like Jane's story still needs to be told and there is the potential of more books following these characters. I appreciated that this novel didn't focus too heavily on the police procedural part of the story in the writing.
I look forward to reading more books by Loreth Anne White as this is the first novel I have read by this author and I do have some of her backlist titles on my bookshelf.
My Rating: 4/5
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