I was just looking for a quick audiobook to burn off some Spotify hours since I’m paying for them whether I use them or not, and the log line for this one was just intriguing enough to get me to press play. Three estranged siblings reunite in the aftermath of their mother’s death, and while putting her affairs in order come across some VHS tapes containing some disturbing footage.
The tape pertains to a missing girl (of course) from their childhood. A neighbor girl who vanished after a summer festival 25 years ago (of course) and whose body was never found. So Beth, the caretaker sibling, Nicole, the screwup-addict sibling, and Michael, the financially successful sibling, are of course shocked and disturbed to see their parents, the missing girl, and a lot of blood, right there on tape. Did their parents really kill a little girl, hide her body, and keep it a secret for so many years? Is that why their father eventually ran off and was never heard from again?
It’s a decent start for a thriller, but Jeneva Rose just doesn’t have the chops to do anything interesting with the premise. Her prose is painfully generic, and despite using alternating first-person perspective for each major character, never really develops them beyond the basics. She also doesn’t really bother setting the story within a larger world or context. The book is set in a small, Wisconsin town, but there’s nothing particularly specific that would distinguish that for the reader. There are precious few characters besides the siblings, making the world of the book feel improbably small. And Rose is especially clumsy at setting the story in the time period. She seems to think an occasional, often quite jarring pop culture reference takes care of the job.
Ultimately, the small cast of characters, the lack of a compelling world around them, and the author’s lack of ambition combine to doom Home Is Where the Bodies Are as just another lifeless “thriller”, seemingly written more in the hopes of getting a Netflix deal than of actually entertaining readers.