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Tall Bones: The engrossing, hauntingly beautiful Sunday Times bestseller

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I will admit that this is an incredibly heavy read as it touches on A LOT of serious topics and not all come with happy endings. It would probably take up less space to list the non-triggers than the triggers in this book. Anna Bailey writes like a dream about teenage love and lust, the terror of knowledge and the claustrophobia of families and of small towns.Tall Bones is as brutal, as bittersweet, as tender and as tense as first love itself." - Emma Flint

One of the most ardent religious followers is Samuel, who has PTSD and lifetime rage and violence issues. His abused and cowering wife ignores injuries he inflicts on their two sons, Noah and Jude. He takes his twisted religious wrath out on his two boys. Noah is discovering his homosexuality, which Samuel believes is a mortal sin against God. He dislikes the younger son because he has a disability, ignoring that the boy needs to walk with a cane after Samuel threw him down the stairs. None of his violence had been directed towards his daughter, Abi. He favoured her above the boys and his wife.An intricate and compelling thriller, beautifully nuanced and wonderfully claustrophobic. Brilliant.' SJ WATSON, author of Before I Go to Sleep Though I really appreciated the writing and the issues the story touched upon, I found it a bit too slow and wished the characters were more compelling to me. I would definitely try this author again because I enjoy her writing. But this one just didn’t speak to me. As you’ll see, there are many people who loved this book so your mileage may vary, but I prefer a more plot-driven thriller or a book with at least one character I can either really love or love to hate.

The last part of the story seems to pull itself together. It's as if what resolution that we get seems to pour down a cleansing rain on the people and place, giving just about everyone, who isn't crushed by their misdeeds, some hope of a brighter days in the future. This would have been more believable if we hadn't seen so much vileness throughout the main part of the story. Irresistible, a compelling and nuanced psychological thriller suffused with small town prejudice and dark family secrets.' PAULA HAWKINS, author of The Girl on the Train Every town has its share of secrets and Whistling Ridge is no different. Seventeen year old Abigail is last seen at a party in the woods and then goes missing. Her best friend, Emma, is devastated because she left Abigail at the party. The story alternates between events before the disappearance as well as the present day and follows a cast of characters including Abigail's family members. Tall Bones is as brutal, as bittersweet, as tender and as tense as first love itself.' EMMA FLINT, author of Little DeathsOriginal title of the book is Tall Bones and now it’s gonna be releasing with a new name: “Where the truth lies” which is more convenient name for the story.

The police believe Abi ran away, but Emma knows that's not true. Abi would never have left without her. Emma decides to take the investigation into her own hands. She needs to find out what happened to her friend. Abigail Blake is seventeen and like all girls her age, she believes she’s going to live for ever. Deep down, Emma believes it too, and that is why she leaves her friend there.” Sometimes novels set in small towns have warm, loving communities where kind hearted people offer a helping hand to those in need. This is not one of those. The town of Whistling Ridge seethes with resentment, prejudice and long held grudges. At the centre of it all is the First Baptist Church and its minister, Pastor Lewis whose racist and homophobic rants fill his community with a righteousness that allows them to harm others who don't conform to their white, protestant view of the world. That summary was nothing if not accurate. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to set this aside to just breathe.I love a good dark, gritty, twisty thriller but this book was not that. The book overall was just miserable. Nothing good at all comes out of this story, dreadful things just keep happening over and over. If you have any triggers at all, stay away from this book. This story contains instances of, hate crimes, brutal child abuse, racism, domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, and incest. None of the characters in this small town did anything at all to stop any of the violence. In fact, most of the town participated in it(except for a select few). It had all the marks of a book right up my alley – A teenage girl disappears from a small town, and before long all of the town’s most devastating secrets come to light. When seventeen-year-old Abigail goes missing, her best friend Emma is compelled by the guilt of leaving her alone at a party in the woods and sets out to discover the truth about what happened. When the police find disturbing evidence in the nearby woods, the festering secrets and longstanding resentment of both Abigail’s family and the townspeople begin to surface with devastating consequences. But Abi had secrets, too, and the closer Emma grows to unraveling the past, the farther she feels from her friend. And in a tinder box of small-town rage, and all it will take is just one spark—the truth of what really happened that night—to change their community forever. The Blakes all feel Abi’s absence like a wound although whispers around the town suggest that she may have just run away. Tall Bones is essentially about outsiders in a small-town community. It covers a whole host of issues and does so phenomenally. The book is more of a deep character study of a number of folks in a small town than a fast-paced thriller, so ultimately I found it a bit slow. Part of the problem is that most of the characters are pretty unlikeable. I actually love unlikeable characters, but in this case none of them drew me in enough to be interested in them as much as I would have liked. The moving timelines of the book also got a little hard for me to follow, because once I got somewhat invested in a character or situation, the scene would switch.

But what happens after 17-year-old Abigail Blake goes missing in Whistling Ridge isn’t the beginning of a predictable or run-of-the-mill whodunnit thriller. Abigail’s disappearance is the start of the unravelling of the whole town, exposing the secrets they’ve kept hidden and the shame that has plagued many of the residents for years. When 17-year-old Abigail goes missing, her best friend Emma, driven by the guilt of leaving her alone at the Tall Bones party that night, sets out to find the truth about what happened. As the details unfold, fear and rage surface. Nobody is left unscathed. The festering secrets and longstanding resentment of Abigail’s family and the whole community of Whispering Ridge, Colorado begin to surface with devastating consequences. I love that this one was set in a small mountain town in Colorado, however it wasn’t the nicest small town! Filled with lots of lies, secrets, suspicion, unlikeable characters, including a powerful preacher. This was a darker read than I expected. Haunting... Emma's path to where the truth lies will carry the reader's soul along in both moving and compassionate ways. Maxim Jakubowski, CRIME TIMEAs much as I was disgusted and infuriated by many of the events which took place, I was equally taken in by the atmospheric writing and unique characters✨ The best kind of small-town crime novel... one that drips with atmosphere. Bailey has penned a compulsive literary crime-drama about love, guilt, trauma, intolerance and the consequences of religious devotion... an intricately weaved and haunting story that will stay with you for days after. Culturefly

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