Ah, Christina Henry never disappoints.

It’s my third book by Henry and every time, I went in almost blind, not knowing much about the story, and every single time, it made my reading experience so much better. I love Henry’s writing and subtle way of writing horror - I’ve never read horror like hers.

I absolutely loved the story of Near the Bone and absolutely loved our main character Mattie. It is easy to predict what happened to her but I still loved reading about it and her grasping what happened to her. The monster side of the story was really, really good - we get not one, but two monsters, a mystical creature and a man. I do wish we got to know more about the beast but the mystery around it makes it almost more real in a way.

The pace set by Henry is quite fast and kept me hooked so much that I finished Near the Bone in a few hours. Moreover, it felt like watching a horror movie like Blair Witch Project and I loved it.

Near the Bone reinforced my love for Christina Henry’s writing and books and I’m so very excited to read more by her.

Near The Bone by Christina Henry is a dark and gripping read with more than one monster within its pages.
This tense thriller tells the story of Mattie, a young woman who lives in a remote mountain cabin with her devout and abusive husband, William. Her life is limited by his rules and his demands, she cannot even leave the house without his permission , and to even think about breaking the rules results in a vicious beating. One day while checking William's traps for game, Mattie finds the mutilated body of a fox, and tracks of a creature that she cannot identify. When she and William investigate, they realise that there is something living with them on the mountainside, something with sharp teeth and claws and seemingly more than animal intelligence. William is determined to kill the creature , not just because it is scaring off the local game, but also because he want's to make sure that strangers do not come to the mountain and uncover the secrets he is keeping. However it is too late, word of the creature is already out there and soon a group of cryptozoologists threaten the isolation that William is relying on, and trigger memories that were buried so deeply in Mattie's subconscious that she did not even know they were missing.
This was a gripping read, mostly because of the dynamic between Mattie and William and the nature of their relationship. I was completely invested in Mattie as a character , and was desperate for her to escape from William, who was by far the most sinister of the monsters in the book. I loved how skilfully the author was able to build the tension throughout the book., I was on the edge of my seat while reading. There are some graphic descriptions of violence that readers might find hard to stomach, but they are not gratuitous and do serve to move the story along or explain more about the characters. I did feel like the ending was a little rushed , but overall I enjoyed the book.
I read a review copy courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Anyone who has visited An Average Life before now will know how much I adore Christina Henry's work. Her books are autobuys for me and instantly take top place on my TBR.

Near The Bone opens straight into the action with a tense, insidious atmosphere I've come to expect from Henry. I'm a lover of horror in the wilderness so the cold desolate mountain top was an ideal setting. The safety of a cabin is relative when up against an enormous monster.
Not that the cabin is safe for Mattie...

Mattie herself is well developed, I was irritated by her, I pitied her, sympathise with her, I hoped for her and I was endeared to her kind spirit and determination.

I can't remember the last time I had such an immediate response to a character. William is a fantastic antagonist, I truly despised him from page one. For me he was far scarier than the threat of the creature in the woods.

My partner always says when we watch horror films it's scarier when you don't get a full view of the monster, just a glimpse or a movement so quick you can't take it all in. Fear of the unknown. Henry wields this tactic perfectly in Near The Bone.
Having both characters and reader unsure of the creatures intentions, origins and whereabouts keeps the tension on a knife edge from start to finish.

I read Near The Bone in one sitting and as always, adored Henry's story. I'll be clinging to the hope this one day gets optioned for film, even if I'd faint from holding my breath so long!

I'm a huge fan of Christina Henry and was thrilled to have an opportunity to read this story via NetGalley. Most of Christina's books are re-imaginings of classic fairy tales; I particularly enjoyed The Mermaid, which was a spin on The Little Mermaid. Near the Bone is a little bit different from her other books. It's a mash-up of psychological suspense and supernatural thriller, with a dash of horror.

Twenty-year-old Mattie lives alone with her older husband William in a rustic cabin high on a mountain. While William occasionally goes into town for supplies, Mattie never goes anywhere or sees anyone. They live a very simple life, without any modern technology; Mattie even makes her own clothes by hand. One day they become aware that they are now sharing their mountain with some kind of wild beast, possibly a large bear, and William becomes obsessed with hunting it down and killing it. But what bear sorts bones into neat piles and hangs the remains of its victims from the trees as a warning to stay away from its territory?

Near the Bone starts off as a terrific psychological suspense. Who are Mattie and William, and why have they chosen to live in such a desolate place? William is abusive towards Mattie, particularly when she doesn't do the chores to his satisfaction. When she mentions old memories, he says they are just dreams. Lots of tension and suggestions of gaslighting, and what does William keep locked up in his trunk? The story then shifts into a supernatural thriller with the appearance of a huge beast that is never really described, apart from its huge claws and yellow eyes. While William so pre-occupied with stalking it, can Mattie pluck up enough courage to escape from his tyranny?

Although slightly more gory than the kind of thing I usually read, I really enjoyed Near the Bone. A fast-paced, cat-and-mouse style thriller, I found it completely engrossing and couldn't put it down, particularly towards the end! I think my only complaint would be that it ended fairly abruptly and I'd liked to have known what happened next, particularly regarding Mattie's sister - or maybe I missed that bit, because I was reading so fast! A five-star read, but recommended more towards fans of horror, despite the psychological suspense element.



Thank you to Christina Henry and Titan Books for my copy of this book, which I requested via NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.

It's a disturbing story a mix of domestic thriller and horror and I'm a bit on the fence.
On one side there's a lot of violence, on the other side a situation that could involve some supernatural entity.
I appreciated the style of writing and Mattie as a character but I'm not a fan of domestic thriller.
It's one of those cases "it's me, not the book", not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

TW: kidnapping, murder, abuse, physical and emotional abuse, gaslighting, victim blaming, rape, death, gore, mentions of blood and violence, drug dealing

Thank you to NetGalley and Titan Books for allowing me to read an eARC of Near the Bone. All views discussed here are my own.

I've been a big fan of Christina Henry for a while so as soon as I saw there was a new book coming out I had to head over to NetGalley to request it. Sadly this is one of hers that just doesn't quite work for me. I agree with the other reviews that talk about the wasted potential in this book; for me it just never quite hit the mark and I was starting to get bored quite soon into the book. The pace or the plot just never pick up and i'm left wondering whether I should commit to finishing it or just give up. I have to be honest, I did skim perhaps the last 20% of the book because I just wanted it to be over.

This is meant to be a Horror/Thriller with a dash of supernatural added in but really it's just a domestic thriller with a lot lacking. I think if the book had just focused on one side of things it would have been so much better; if it was just about Martha and William and her trying to piece together her life I think that would have been so much more interesting. It could have been done in such a way that the reader is dragged along in the mystery trying to figure out who she is. But really we're shown right from the start that all is not right and then here is this weird monster/creature/alien that no one really knows what it is. It was just frustrating.

And that ending. I hate open and unanswered endings and this one just threw it at you and left everything open. There are so many questions unanswered and so many things left open that it almost defeats the whole point of reading the book because you find nothing out. It was predictable and just not for me.

Mattie lives with her abusive older husband William, beaten for the slightest perceived transgression and confined to their cabin and the area immediately around it by the power of his terrifying rage. But the arrival of a mysterious creature on the mountain - as well as strangers trying to track it down - could change everything, for better or worse.

Despite this setup (and the cover artwork), one thing that might surprise about Near the Bone is just how heavily it leans into the abuse side of the plot. At times, it feels more like an abuse memoir that’s had a monster forcibly inserted into it; the beastie could have been completely absent from this story with only fairly minor rewrites, and things could ultimately have gone much the same. It’s incidental, more of a catalyst than anything else. Its presence isn’t insinuated subtly, to make you doubt its existence - because it’s definitely there, make no mistake - but it also doesn’t receive much in the way of explanation. It seems to be there to do some gory things then just fade into the shadows again, which is entertaining enough but ultimately a little unfulfilling.

The real monster, perhaps not surprisingly then, is the one in the cabin with Mattie. He’s certainly got the bestial side of things nailed down; William is so readily enraged that for much of the time we see him, he’s either threatening or assaulting Mattie. The slightest provocation will send him incandescent, with violence sure to follow. It does feel like there’s a slight lack of nuance to his character as a result of this, with his fervent religious mannerisms something of an easy shortcut when it comes to his characterisation. His constant anger and abuse - both physical and sexual - does help establish him as a particularly hateful character, however, and it’s clear to see why Mattie lives in such fear of him.

Mattie, in contrast to William, feels much more fleshed out as a character. She frets constantly about the right thing to do, worrying that a single toe out of line will see her beaten black and blue, knowing that there’s no way out of her horrible situation and terrified that even if there was, she wouldn’t dare take it. William has got into her head so thoroughly that she has lost all sense of who she is, and her struggle to regain any kind of agency is the main focus of the narrative. It’s consequently very easy to root for her, and she’s a sympathetic character with well-established motivation and a believable personality.

The arrival of strangers on the mountain serves to shed more light on William and Mattie’s situation, as well as adding some much-needed extra characters into the mix, all of whom are distinct from one another and feel very real. As she interacts with them, Mattie begins to make more sense of her situation and her past, remembering crucial details as she fills in the blanks of her life. At times, this is deeply affecting, such as when a taste of a sweet treat triggers a wave of memories and emotions. On occasion though, Mattie’s recollections feel awfully convenient, occurring at just the right time to be relevant and coming across as slightly clumsily implemented. This is particularly the case later on as revelations and recollections practically jostle for position, with some of them stumbling rather inelegantly.

Thankfully, there are enough thrills and spills to sustain Near the Bone towards its entertainingly hectic ending. Explanations might be disappointingly thin on the ground, but the drip feed of tension in the earlier part of the novel lays the groundwork for a second half where the pace rattles along nicely - even if some of the nuts and bolts have come a little loose by the finale.

Well, this was a roller coaster, to stay the least.

I'm not one for horror, nor have I previously read this author. When no book seemed to be doing the trick, I thought, "Why not?"

The synopsis is barely the surface of how deep(ly disturbed) the book is. The heavy themes and content and trigger warnings. Domestic violence, abuse, awful, horrible things that made me want to climb up the wall, as my heart was breaking for the female MC.

The first half of the book was frustrating and had me - as previously stated - want to climb the walls. I didn't know whether to go on or not, since I was so angry, on the female MC's behalf, and have wished a horrible end for William, her dear ole sick eff of a husband. However, the fact that I'm curious - and a teeny bit vindictive - I just had to know how it all came to be, what the monster was etc.

I'm no expert on this genre, as far as books go, but I've seen quite a few movies - some good, some awful ones - and well, I have to say that, after the halfway point, the story line kind of followed a regular horror movie.

Up until the very end, my heart ached for Mattie, but I feel like it was too abrupt and a bit of a letdown? An epilogue would have been welcomed, maybe a few months/years after the ending of the book.

Anyway, I guess I liked it and kudos to the author for knowing how to keep me engaged and invested, when no other book was managing it.

I voluntarily agreed to read a copy via Netgalley and my rating is 3.5 stars.

Near the Bone is an exciting and absorbing, if at times harrowing, read. Above all it's a MEGA page turner - if you pick this one up, you'd best clear your diary for a few hours because you won't want to put it down again until the last page.

We first meet Mattie, out in the woods where she lives with her husband William on a remote mountain in the US, on an errand. Mattie discovers something new and strange. Mattie debates what to do. Should she stop and investigate, at risk of making herself late? Or should she hurry on? We soon see that her dilemma is framed entirely in terms of what William would want her to do.

She's terrified of getting it wrong.

And she will get it wrong. Because William is a manipulative abuser who has Mattie at his mercy. ('She wasn't going to think of how strange it was, because William told her what to think and she was sure he wouldn't like her thinking on this').

I won't give much more detail on that, because it would be spoilery. Henry reveals the detail of what has happened to Mattie slowly, layer by layer, building up a picture and showing us Mattie's unenviable life, every detail calculated to keep her under William's sway: starved, beaten, denied any warmth or humanity ('That's why William was always starving you, always working you when you were exhausted. Without food and sleep you couldn't think, couldn't fight him...') Much of her own history is lost to her, and it is only revealed as we learn about it, over a harrowing and desperate period of two or three days which turns her life inside out.

I also do not want to be too specific because there are some really dark themes here - themes of abuse and control - which may be triggering for some. For me, it was a mark of how good Henry is at spinning a story that even in the darkest moments I wasn't tempted to put this book aside. I had to know what would happen. It helps that, alongside the tense drama between Mattie and William, there is another strand here - that discovery of Mattie's leads to glimpses of something strange and deadly in the woods. Something that has been killing the local game. Something with uncanny grace and strength, and a greater than animal cunning.

William becomes obsessed with this thing, whatever it is, seeing it almost as a supernatural test of him. That might have given Mattie some respite except that is short-lived as other complications come into her narrow world. And the one things she has learned in her life with William is that complications are trouble, and trouble is HER FAULT.

This story was creepily, scarily believable, William a true monster but one who seems, increasingly, familiar, his attitudes those of men that we all know about, his sense of entitlement and dominance recognisable from tragedies that happen aria and gain. The comparison of man and monster is explicit: William in the cabin is bad, the beast outside apparently worse, and Mattie is trapped between the two of them. For other writers that dilemma might seem overdone, but Henry's writing gets under the skin of both Mattie and William so well that it just seems, well, true.

This is both a cracking good read and a real exploration of human darkness. Not a dark fairytale, despite the overtones of big-bad-monster-in-the-wood, but much more uncomfortable, closer to home and raising urgent questions.

Finally, they say never judge a book by its cover but... that cover!

There's something about Christina Henry's books that make them really hard to put down, and Near The Bone is no exception. From the very first page to the heart pounding final pages, the book had me hooked.

The story follows Mattie, a young woman living in a remote mountain cabin deep in the woods with her husband William. William, who's much older than Mattie, is a harsh man, one who will only have his way and beats any kind of fight out of Mattie to achieve those ends. Because of this Mattie begins the book a fairly broken person, one with little to no self esteem or belief in herself, a young woman living in constant terror that her husband will find something she does angering and will beat her.

Having been with William as long as she can remember Mattie has no sense of what the outside world is, and can barely remember ever seeing another human. She's not allowed out of the cabin unsupervised except for the occasional chore. She's not allowed to read anything but the Bible. She's a prisoner in her life.

This all changes one day when Mattie is checking the rabbit traps close to their cabin and comes across the mutilated remains of a fox. Not just that, but there are strange bear-like tracks in the snow, large tracks of a huge creature that seems to move around on its hind legs. Mattie shows this to William, and the two of them follow the trail until it mysteriously vanishes.

The next day William decides they'll investigate some nearby caves, hoping to find the creature's lair. What they do find is more bizarre and terrifying then they ever expected, however. Things only get worse though when they run into another human, a young man in strange clothing and carrying gear that Mattie doesn't recognise. This begins a series of horrific events as more outsiders arrive on the mountain, searching for this strange creature that seems to be stalking people through the woods. Now Mattie has to not only survive this unknown monster, but her enraged husband who's determined to keep Mattie away from the outside world.

Near The Bone is told from Mattie's perspective, and she makes for an interesting narrator. Having been kept in isolation for much of her life, and raised by a vicious man, it soon becomes clear that she has a very narrow view of the world. Mattie can only relate things through her experiences, and there are times during the book that she struggles to put things into words, even to the reader. Over time we learn more about Mattie, as she begins to slowly unlock her older memories thanks to the events going on around her, and we see how she ended up the woman she is.

This is one of the more fascinating parts of the book, and it's possibly more frightening than the strange creature killing people in the forest because of how human and real it is. It soon becomes clear that the events of this book aren't set a hundred year ago or more, which it first seemed to, and that Mattie is so isolated from the real world that she's essentially living in the past. Learning how Mattie went from living in our world to becoming a captive on a remote mountain is one of the biggest mysteries of the book, and is unlocked slowly as Mattie recovers the secrets of her past. These scenes are not only fascinating for the answers they provide, but are some of the most emotional moments of the book. Things like Mattie remembering what a grilled cheese sandwich is and the way it connects her to her mother, or tasting chocolate for the first time in over a decade. These tiny moments are close to heartbreaking as we see Mattie discovering these tiny parts of life that we all take for granted, but change her entire world.

There's a very human story at the heart of this book, one of a young woman living through extreme trauma and abuse, and it makes the book so much better than if it were just a group of people being picked off by this strange monster. There are times where William is the more frightening of the two monsters that are stalking Mattie, and the level of fear she has for him is not only understandable, but so terrifyingly real.

That being said, the creature in this book is so frighteningly fascinating. We never get a clear look at this thing, we never find out what it really is, and that's one of the most infuriating and brilliant parts. I wanted to know what this thing was. I wanted to know how it could be so huge but move almost silently. I wanted to know why it mutilated animals and people. I wanted to know how smart it was. And I wanted to know where it had come from. But, I also know that knowing all of that would have taken away a lot of the mystique of this thing. As such, I was more than happy to get tiny glimpses, to only see it briefly, and to be put in the same situation as the people on the mountain. The times where the creature turned up were some of the most tense, well paced moments of the book, and I loved them.

Near The Bone is a horror story where more than horror is thrown at the characters. William or the creature alone would have been enough to carry this book. Either one of them was frightening enough to be the main threat, but to throw both of them at Mattie and the reader? Well, it meant that you were never able to relax, were always on the edge of your seat, and always desperate to keep reading more.

I loved the incredibly real horror of being a captive, of being abused and broken by a human being, as well as the completely alien horror of being hunted by something otherworldly. There are few writers who'd be able to weave two very different narratives like that together so well, whilst also making Mattie's journey so engaging and emotionally resonating; but Christina Henry is able to do it with such amazing flair. This is a book that no horror fan should miss out on. Absolutely perfect.