Tall Bones falls into my favourite sweet spot - crime literature - a genre which is led by Tana French and Jane Harper (who has provided a blurb). I was therefore hugely looking forward to reading it, not least because it is getting a lot of buzz. I wasn’t disappointed.

Abigail Blake has gone missing from the small town of Whistling Ridge. The story is held together by the search (or lack of search) for Abi. But what more clearly draws the reader is the secrets and lies which make for a complex web of relationships across the town’s families and bonds. This is an incredible slow burn narrative. Character led, it is one for readers not those who skim as the rich prose is full of small nuggets of detail that take us towards as satisfying ending to most of the strands.

A thoroughly recommended 4.5*. Thanks to Transworld and PRH for the ARC.

A story of two teenage friends, out together one evening. One comes back, the other doesn't. Has something happened to her, or did she just run away?

Set in a small insular town, the atmosphere is tense. Emma is blamed by friends so starts nvestigating herself when the police fail to discover what happened.

Lots of different themes in this story make it a worthwhile read.

This is a masterful study of a small, insular town, it's occupants and all the darkness, rumour and judgement that goes along with it. Centred around the disappearance of a young woman and suspicion falling on so many this weaves subplots deftly, what could just be another red herring becomes a strong story in itself.

Heartbreaking in places this is a great slow burner that builds up tension to a great climax. Twin Peaks meets series 1 of True Detective in terms of atmosphere.

This is a slow burner suspenseful book, filled with interesting and chaotic characters and a twisty plot. Set in small town Colorado, it centres round families, secrets, racism and a missing 17 year old girl. It's a depressing read, especially the minister of the local church with his fire and brimstone sermons focusing on homophobia and religious fanaticism. Too many small town stereotypes but overall, a good debut novel which tackles a lot of modern day issues in society. Thanks to Net Galley for my ARC.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for providing an ARC of this book.

A haunting tale set in small town America. I liked that parts were left open ended allowing you to make up your own mind

This is a beautifully written, atmospheric thriller, that slowly winds up as Emma tries to find out what happened to her missing friend. The town of Whistling Ridge is populated by an array of miserable characters and plain rotten parents and the story covers some dark subjects as it winds its way through a long list of suspects. For me, I found the pace a bit slow and the large cast of characters created a constant distraction from the main story. Beautiful imagery though, and plenty of simmering emotion.

Two teenage friends go to a party in the woods but only Emma makes it home. At first, 17-year-old Abi's disappearance is treated as a runaway but when a gun casing is found suspicions start to fly around the small town of Whistling Ridge and hidden secrets start to rise to the surface.

The sense of tension in the atmosphere was so well drawn, along with the feelings of anger, despair and devastation that move through the main characters. I really liked the character of Emma who begins her own search for the truth when the police fail to turn up any leads, who faces a sort of coming of age when she realises that her best friend didn't tell her everything like she'd thought. There are many hard-hitting themes in this novel including domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse, homophobia, xenophobia and the presumed abduction and murder of a teenage girl (although a body is never found). Having recently read Beartown by Frederick Backman I felt there were some similarities between these novels, particularly around an incident involving a teenage girl and the community's reaction to it. My heart broke for Jude, the 12-year-old brother of Abi who so desperately wants her to come home and struggles to find an ally in his older brother Noah, who is dealing with his own problems, not least a violent father and a closeted sexuality.

The format of telling the story in 'then' and 'now' format worked really well for me and I liked that Abi was given a voice through the scenes told in the past, because so often in this genre of novel the missing woman simply doesn't get heard, she is a blank silent character that the others get to fill in. I thought this was a good debut and I think it would work well if it was made into a TV drama along the lines of Little Fires Everywhere.

A masterful depiction of a small town choked with rumours, judgement and prejudice, Tall Bones follows a small community in the wake of a disappearance of a teenage girl. As her friends and family try to piece together what has happened, deeply entrenched xenophobia, racism and homophobia come to light, along with long hidden secrets. There is a huge cast of characters here, and sometimes I wondered if the pages could have been less densely populated, but at the same time if perfectly captures the deafening whispers of small town life, and you have to pick through the noise to try and discover who is telling the truth.

Last week I read Tall Bones by @annabaileywrites and I loved it.

When Emma leaves her best friend at a party in the woods and she goes missing, the whole town of Whistling Ridge begins to crack; it’s long and intimate history spilling out, threatening to uncover everyone’s secrets.

Emma knows something is wrong and makes it her mission to find out what has happened to her friend.

Split between ‘then’ and ‘now’, this multi perspective novel had me hooked right until the last minute and even then I didn’t guess who was responsible. Tall Bones is an exploration of love, family and loss, the writing is beautiful and if it helps to sell you further, it gave me MAJOR Harry Quebert vibes.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Whistling Ridge is small-town America at its most bigoted, racist, homophobic and God-fearing. In this fine debut novel by Anna Bailey, there is a rich array of wonderfully drawn characters whose hitherto concealed secrets gradually emerge following the disappearance of a teenage girl. The portrait of rural USA is beautifully presented, the story intriguing and the resolution satisfying. I look forward to more from this promising writer.

Initially I found that the book jumped from character to character in the middle of chapters and I found this disorientating. However, once I had got to grips with all the different characters the story flowed really well.

Abigail goes missing at the Tall Bones. Her best friend Emma needs to know what has happened to her and does a better job than the sheriff.

Abigail’s family is not a happy family, her father strongly influenced by the church uses violence as punishment, her mother lives in fear and does not protect her children, her older brother is fighting with his sexuality and her younger brother is disabled from where the father pushed him down the stairs. But what is Abigail’s secret?

Slowly Emma unfurls clues from friends and foe to reveal the truth not only about Abigail’s disappearance, but her own past too.

Trigger warnings: racism, sexual abuse, extreme religious influence, discrimination, alcoholism, bullying, violence. All of the above are not vividly described but feature.

Tall Bones gave me quite a visceral reaction while reading. I found it oppressive and uncomfortable but also completely addictive. It is a psychological mystery thriller about a 17 year old girl, Abigail Blake, who goes missing from Whistling Ridge, a small town in America.

But the story is also very much about the curse of the insidious small town mentality that uses religion as an excuse to be bigoted, backward and just plain awful to anyone they view as different from themselves.

The Blake Family: Dolly Blake is a lost woman. She married Samuel young and has spent most of her marriage trying to escape. For good reason really – Samuel drinks to much, is violent and uses religious zeal as a way to justify his terrible actions. Their children: Noah, Abigail and Jude bare the brunt of this dysfunctional upbringing with little love.

A trigger warning – it is often hard to read the chapters about the complex Blakes, as the abuse involved is pretty horrific, which gives credence to the idea that Abigail perhaps ran away of her own accord…

Tall Bones is structured in a very enticing way. A new nugget of plot info or a character revelation is dropped at the end of most chapters until all the threads tie together.

We are also told the story through ‘Now’ and ‘Then’ chapters. The defining point between them being Abigail’s disappearance. This way, we slowly learn just how many people in the town actually had a dotted line to Abigail before she disappeared.

The Tall Bones are a local landmark of white rocks and the scene of the crime, so to speak. The woods next to them was the last place that Emma saw her best friend, Abigail. Emma is determined to discover what happened to her friend and finds herself enlisting help from people she wouldn’t have usually hung out with – Hunter, son of one of the local big shots and Rat, who lives on the trailer park owned by Hunter’s father.

Rat is from from Romania, called ‘the gypsy’ by the locals and is the focus of their collective despair and anger at their own lives just because he is not from around these parts.

Tall Bones has an overwhelming sense of unease and injustice is rife. This is what made my reaction so visceral. Put it this way: some of these characters would have definitely voted for Trump. This is what I found this an uncomfortable read – these characters made me so annoyed, using twisted religious justifications to cover their own hatred.

Really powerful and wonderfully written, this story is very raw, very unforgiving, very claustrophobic and very memorable. Tall Bones is Anna Bailey’s debut novel. An English author, she lived in Colorado for a while and took her inspiration about small-town America from her real life experience.

I am still thinking about this book days later, it’s such an evocative story that shines a light on the seedier side of small-town society.

I really wanted more from this book. "Tall Bones" by Anna Bailey starts off promising, with teenagers having a party and the mystery of what happened to Abi. Although this is explored and finally explained, you meet some unpleasant characters along the way and even the characters who are portrayed as likeable, don't really tug on the heart strings.

I thought that Tall Bones started pretty slowly, but once I got into it I found it very engaging. I think maybe it's a little bit long? That aside, it's a gripping story and definitely kept me guessing once I'd got into it. Great jacket too.

Anna Bailey's beautifully written, haunting debut novel focusing on a American small town, Whistling Ridge, bursting with gossip, resentments, secrets, rage, lost dreams and hopes, judgements, bigotry, a pent up mass of hatred that revolves around the central place of the First Baptist Church. The Tall Bones, a local landmark, are a tall circle of white rocks. Its powerful hell, fire and brimstone preacher, Pastor Lewis's God and religion is far from compassion, love and kindness, it does not welcome outsiders and heaves with its anti-gay homophobia, it is insular, narrow minded, controlling, excusing and tolerating the unacceptable. The dark, heavy oppressive cloud and atmosphere that hangs over the town builds to a inexorable finale when the mystery of 17 year old Abigail Blake's disappearance breaks open the ugly underbelly of a town of residents where so few have redeemable qualities.

Abigail's best friend, Emma Alvarez, had not wanted to leave her alone to party in the woods, but Abigail had insisted on her departure, there is a man hanging around in the background that Emma cannot quite make out. Burdened by the intolerable weight of guilt, she takes to drinking heavily, connecting with Rat, a Romanian living in a trailer park, and Noah, as she makes the momentous decision to search for the truth behind the mystery of her missing friend. In a narrative that shifts from past events prior to Abigail's disappearance, to the present. We learn of the unpalatable darkness that lies behind the closed doors of the Blake family, Abigail's father, the religiously driven and abusive Samuel, his wife, Dolly, her brothers, Jude and Noah. Poor Dolly is told to look for answers to the abuse she suffers within herself, a damning approach of blaming the victim, whilst Noah, developing a relationship with Rat, tries to do his best to oversee both Dolly and Jude.

Whilst this is ostensibly a novel about the missing Abigail, what holds centre stage is the depiction of small town life, and its communities with secrets. This is a slow burn, character driven, psychological drama, so if you are looking for a fast paced read, this is not going to be for you. I found it to be a compulsive read, atmospheric, and engaging, the highlight for me was the quality of the prose. A novel that many readers will love. Many thanks to Random House Transworld for an ARC.

'The worse thing to happen to a person is to have nothing to believe in"...Racism, Domestic violence, sexuality, Mental health, substance misuse, shattered dreams, post traumatic stress disorder...We are not merely the sum of bad things that have happened to us..
A tale of live, love and, and death in a small town. A book full of vibrant characters that come alive on the the page. This is a proper 'can't put it down, reading late into the night, real page turner' kind of a book.

This book has a wonderful sense of suffocating small town life and its dark underbelly as we follow the disappearance of a young woman Abigail. I found it very atmospheric with a lovely slow burn quality that allows the secrets to unfold little by little. The tragic damaged characters and the families are beautifully drawn and as a reader you feel that sense of their inability to escape the hand they have been dealt.
A very good read and I would recommend.

I started reading this book and wasnt sure if I would enjoy it but I'm glad I carried on reading relationships and tension in a small town community

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.

The young of this community behave much as the young do anywhere. They party in the woods in the shadow of the Tall Bones, a circle of six twelve foot tall white rocks. They drink a little too much, experiment with drugs, dance wildly and they fall in love. When one of their number, Abigail Blake goes missing after one of these parties, whispers soon start about her friend Rat, a young Romanian man who lives in the trailer park. Abi's friend Emma feels guilty for leaving her at the party despite Abi's insistence she would be fine. Abi's brother Noah wonders if she has run away from their drunken father who suffers from PTSD caused by serving in Vietnam and regularly beats his wife and children and makes them pray on their gravel driveway.

This is a dark and suspenseful novel written in two time lines. There is a lot more wrong with Whistling Ridge than Abi's disappearance giving the book a menacing undertone as the tension builds to explode in a horrific act of pure violence and prejudice that will crack open the town's hate filled heart.

At times this was brutal and claustrophobic and sad at the treatment of some characters.
At other times it was just ok.
Throughout I couldn't help but feel I'd read this story before,but done a little better. And I feel bad for saying that.
Very much a pick up,put down book for me.