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A review by tvislife
Home Is Where the Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose
fast-paced
1.0
The stunning cover caught my eye, but unfortunately, that’s the best part about this novel.
The premise (3 siblings discover a VHS of their parents covering up a murder after cleaning their dead mom’s house) is great! Plenty of opportunity for exploration into the past through a different and darker lens, how our childhood influences who we become, what we’re willing to overlook for family, how the truth can warp based on who is telling it. All great ideas for a novel like this!—too bad it never really explores any of that.
The novel is just so surface level, both in terms of the actual writing and in the plot. We get nothing but the basics of the main characters thoughts and feelings. Even though we have chapters from 4 different people’s perspectives, I still feel like all of them were wooden and underdeveloped. That, combined with the very high school writing style, made this novel just meh.
The premise (3 siblings discover a VHS of their parents covering up a murder after cleaning their dead mom’s house) is great! Plenty of opportunity for exploration into the past through a different and darker lens, how our childhood influences who we become, what we’re willing to overlook for family, how the truth can warp based on who is telling it. All great ideas for a novel like this!—too bad it never really explores any of that.
The novel is just so surface level, both in terms of the actual writing and in the plot. We get nothing but the basics of the main characters thoughts and feelings. Even though we have chapters from 4 different people’s perspectives, I still feel like all of them were wooden and underdeveloped. That, combined with the very high school writing style, made this novel just meh.