“The image of the young girl is sideways. Her blue eyes are clouded like they’ve been submerged in milk. They stare into the lens of the camera and it’s as though she’s looking directly at me, calling out for help, twenty-three years too late – like the light of a star that’s already exploded, finally reaching our eyes.

Beth’s life hasn’t worked out the way she planned. After her father walked out on their family with a note simply saying ‘I’m sorry’, she became obsessed with finding him. An obsession that destroyed her relationship with her husband and her daughter. She just has her dying mother left, Beth taking care of her as best she can until she breathes her final, shocking words:

Your father. He didn’t disappear. Don’t trust…

Still processing these words, Beth receives a surprise call to say her sister has been attacked and rushed to hospital. Soon after, she finds both estranged sister and brother moving back into the family home. She makes sure to lock her bedroom door at night. Her sister can’t be trusted.

Desperate to revisit happier memories, the siblings find themselves watching home videos of their childhood. It feels like a good idea, until the footage cuts to a dead girl in the woods at night, their father covered in blood, their mother’s voice panicked. They’d love to believe it’s fake, but they know the little girl in the video. It’s their old neighbour, Emma Harper, who vanished in 1999.

Burying their mother is already hard enough, but will Beth and her siblings survive the truth of what really happened to that little girl?”

Hello and welcome to damppebbles. Today I am delighted to share my review of Home Is Where The Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose. Home Is Where The Bodies Are was published by Orion Books on 23rd May 2024 and is available in audio and digital formats with the paperback to follow next year. I chose to read a free eARC of Home Is Where The Bodies Are but that has in no way influenced my review. My grateful thanks to Anne at Random Things Tours for inviting me to join the blog tour and for sending me a digital copy of the book.

Beth knows her terminally ill mother doesn’t have very long left. Laura’s carer has been preparing her for this moment for a number of days now. So when her mother, weak and barely able to speak, beckons her to her side to watch the sunset, Beth doesn’t hesitate. With her last breath Laura shares something unexpected with her eldest child. “Your father. He didn’t disappear. Don’t trust….” Beth has made it her mission to find her missing father since he left his family seven years ago. Unsure what to make of her mother’s last words, she puts them to the back of her mind. She knows as the eldest sibling it is going to be down to her to make all of the necessary arrangements. She needs to take control of the situation, particularly with her brother’s arrival imminent, quickly followed by a call from the hospital about her sister. With the estranged siblings reunited for the first time in years, they start to reminisce and watch videos shot by their mother of the most mundane family moments. Until the picture on the screen changes to something shocking, something they cannot tear their eyes away from. The body of a young, local girl. Their father, the man they loved and trusted for so long, covered in Emma Harper’s blood. What part did their parents, and in particular, their father, play in Emma’s horrific death? Has Laura taken the biggest secret of all to her grave with her? And how well do we really know those we’re closest to…?

Home Is Where The Bodies Are is a highly emotional, suspense-laden thriller. With themes of grief and family resentment, there aren’t many characters to like in this book but that only adds to their appeal for me. Beth is the eldest of the three siblings. She’s the only one to have returned to her mother’s side when it became clear that Laura was dying. Being the big sister automatically means she’s the bossy one, the one who sorts everything out. But she doesn’t feel she’s made the most of her life. A loveless marriage which inevitably crumbled, having a very distant relationship with her daughter and working the same, meaningless job for years. However, she knows without a shadow of a doubt that she wouldn’t swap her life with Nicole’s, her sister. Nicole is a drug addict who often contacts Beth begging for money, calling her all of the names under the sun and threatening her if she doesn’t deliver. Beth wants to help Nicole but feels Nicole needs to help herself first. Michael is the youngest. A tech entrepreneur who escaped the small-town hell that still ensnares Beth and Nicole. Living it up in California and splashing the cash, Beth can’t help but resent her brother.

Would I recommend this book? I would, yes. I thoroughly enjoyed Home Is Where the Bodies Are. The siblings’ story is a very compelling one and I was intrigued to discover the truth, what really happened that night in June 1999. Told in the voices of Beth, Nicole and Michael, and with flashbacks narrated by their mother, Laura, the reader really gets a feel for these characters. The ending was unexpected and really quite shocking. There were several well-written twists along the way that knocked me for six. Despite frequently trying, I couldn’t guess what direction Rose was going to take the story in! This is the first book I’ve read by this author and on the back of how much I enjoyed HIWTBA, I will definitely be on the lookout for more books by Jeneva Rose in the future. All in all a well-written, engaging psychological suspense thriller with a fascinating, highly compelling, complex family dynamic at its heart. Recommended.

I chose to read and review a free eARC of Home Is Where The Bodies Are. The above review is my own unbiased opinion.

Home Is Where The Bodies Are by Jeneva Rose was published in the UK by Orion Books on 23rd May 2024 and is available in audio and digital formats with the paperback to follow (please note, the following links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no extra cost to you): | amazon.co.uk | Waterstones | Goodreads | damppebbles bookshop.org shop | damppebbles amazon.co.uk shop | damppebbles amazon.com shop |

Jeneva Rose is the New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Marriage, One of Us is Dead, The Girl I Was, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here & Home is Where the Bodies Are. Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages and optioned for film/tv. Originally from Wisconsin, she currently lives in Chicago with her husband, Drew, and her English bulldog, Winston.