Reading Tall Bones by Anna Bailey was a gripping experience. The story is set in the small town of Whistling Ridge, where the disappearance of seventeen-year-old Abigail Blake unravels the town’s deep-seated secrets and grudges. The narrative’s strength lies in its atmospheric setting and well-drawn characters. Bailey paints a vivid picture of the claustrophobic, tension-filled environment, making the town almost a character in itself.

The characters are complex and their interactions are fraught with underlying tensions and secrets. Emma, Abi’s best friend, is particularly compelling as she grapples with guilt and the whispers of the townspeople. The Blake family’s dynamics add another layer of depth, showcasing a dysfunctional household under the influence of a domineering preacher.

Bailey’s writing is haunting and evocative, making it hard to put the book down. The plot is well-paced, with flashbacks seamlessly integrated to reveal the characters’ backstories and the town’s dark past. Each twist keeps the reader on edge, culminating in a powerful and thought-provoking conclusion.

Tall Bones is not just a mystery; it delves into themes of small-town bigotry, oppression, and the impact of family secrets. It’s a novel that stays with you long after the last page, making it a standout debut.

This book is highly recommended for fans of psychological thrillers and anyone looking for a deep, engaging read.

Wasn't sure about this one personally. Struggled to get into it. Hadn't read the author before and not sure I would again

In a small town everyone knows everyone, and a lot of old conflicts and mentalities take hold. Combine this with the disappearance of a young girl in the woods, and it sets the tone for a well written read where you just have to find out what happened to her! Recommended.

trigger warning
<spoiler> racism, homophobia, slurs against Sinti and Roma, conversion therapy, domestic violence, child rape, gun violence, alcoholism, trauma, ptsd, misogyny, mental illness, grief, religious fanatism</spoiler>

A young woman goes missing and only her family and her best friend believe she didn't simply run away from her dysfunctional family. Especially Emma is sure that something happened to Abigail, something bad.

Small town vibes and everybody's life is shit. Nobody seems to enjoy where they are, everybody suffers and contributes to the other's suffering. Had problems getting into it because it was hard going. My brain is depressive enough, I don't need my reading to be like that.

This is about discovering all the little figurative fires in the area to find out what happened. We have two timelines, the present starting from the evening Emma went away and watched her friend disappear in the woods, and the past, leading up to that day.

It's a solid narrative well told, but please, make sure to look up the trigger warnings if you need them. This book simply was not for me and that's okay.

The arc was provided by the publisher

I had this book on my to be read pile for rather a while and it has now been published .I think I was put off by the title as I didn’t realise it applied to a rural stone formation rather than a literal meaning
I don’t usually enjoy crime thrillers but found this one rather deeper than some I’ve read and not so gruesome.
The book is essentially a who dunnit and looks at the effects on a small rural town in America and it inhabitants when a young girl goes missing .The sense of place is very strong
I liked the character descriptions of the main characters and felt they were well painted and felt like real people .I did however find that I became lost at times and couldn’t keep up with all the characters who appeared on the story .At the end I felt I didn’t really understand what had happened
The author has a beautiful at times almost poetic writing style which I enjoyed .I loved the description of an older woman smoking “ she wrapped her drawstring lips around her cigarette “ I knew exactly what this would look like
In summary this book wasn’t really for me
I read an early copy on NetGalley Uk the book is now published by Random House Uk

A very unusual murder mystery/wild thing/ almost YA novel. Unbelievable, but never mind; after all it's a novel! Well written and certainly different from the usual murder mystery with a cast of characters each with their own secrets. Not really my sort of novel, but I did finish it, to se haw it would end! Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance digital galley.

Really enjoyed this one, from the charactors to the somewhat unfriendly small town the book is set in, this book covers alot of issues such as racism and homophobia as well as mental health. A really good read about the troubled lives of young people in a small American town and the disappearance of a young girl. This book is going on my 2022 favourites list for sure.

An interesting story if a little odd. Not like the usual detection books I read. I was looking for a new author to follow but I'm not sure whether I'll buy more.

It's a story that will keep you guessing, a story of surprises and secrets, regrets and rage, love and lies. Abi's disappearance cracks open the façade of this small town, peeling away the intriguing layers of its past. Even within Abi's own family there are questions to be asked - of the older brother whom Abi betrayed, of the shining younger sibling who hides his battle scars, of her mother and her father - both in thrall to the fiery preacher who has an unsettling grasp over the whole town. And then there is Rat, the outsider, whose exciting presence is a catalyst for change. What a fantastic book! I was totally hooked… I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. It was full of tension, twists and turns that kept me totally engrossed…

The story is intriguing as it is disturbing overall.
A night of party and drinking resume in a missing girl and everyone is making assumptions of what happened and why maybe she run away from her life.
A search party is set up, but soon we discover that there are so many secrets and not everyone wants them to be discovered. Being a Romanian myself, it was interesting to read about the Romanian family and their boy that made some appearances throughout the story.
The story is told in multiple voices and the author has done a great job of making them heard. Overall, it was easy to track who is who and what’s happening even if t the beginning I was confused. But I’m assuming it’s like any other story where it takes a while for all the characters to be introduced in a story.
Quite a few turns along the way in the investigation part and while I had my doubts and theories, everything unfolded nicely in the end.
I found some comments quite hurtful because of some characters traits and showing their true face regarding discrimination and hate.
Overall i think it was an interesting story that many lovers of the genre will enjoy.

🆓📖Very grateful to the publisher for my review copy through NetGalley

First of all, I did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did. It’s been a while since I’ve read a thriller/murder mystery and this book reminded me of why I love the genre so much. I devoured this book in a matter of days and every time I put the book down, I was left thinking about the characters for much longer afterwards which is always a huge tell-tale sign that a book was good.

Also I really loved how each character has their own secrets and their own story to tell. I could imagine every character and their houses/locations so vividly in my mind, it was honestly like I was watching a film in my head every time I read the book. The pace of the book was absolutely spot-on too, and we as the reader, are taken on this journey to not only piece together what happened to Abi and who was involved, but to also work out each character’s back story and I thought the pace in which we find out about each and every character (and there’s a lot: Abi, Abi' best friend and her mother, Abi's father, mother and two brothers, Abi's friend Hunter and his dad, the Police officer, the Gypsy new-comer and the Priest) was second to none.

I also really enjoyed other aspects of the book where author, Anna Bailey, would use different characters and their story/experience to highlight long-standing issues surrounding religion, cults, sexuality, racism, classism and also the effect of war on men and its survivors - especially in small town America where everyone knows each other’s business.

I thoroughly enjoyed the reading experience of this book, especially because the book flicked between the past (before Abi’s disappearance) and the present. I really enjoyed every single character arc and you could just tell that the author had put so much thought into how and when we would find out different character’s secrets. I thought it was such an incredible read and one you can get lost in almost immediately. Just don’t blame me if you don’t get any sleep once you start this book.

READ THIS IF:

🦴 You enjoy thrillers that flick between narrators and timelines

🦴 You’re looking for a book that you can easily escape within

🦴 You enjoy books with lots of characters and subplots

A suspenseful story that really had me gripped. The settings of this book were amazing, I could picture every detail of the town and the surroundings as if I was there. I loved the duel timeline and felt that created a real depth to the story. A great read

I could not put this book down. Set in a small town in the southern United States, it follows the events preceding and after the disappearance of 17 year old Abi Blake. As characters’ stories emerge, it becomes clear that Abi was leading a very troubled existence, but she was not the only. Anna Bailey’s description of life in Whistling Ridge is very well done and the book is a pleasure to read, even if the subject matter is at times dark and uncomfortable. Highly recommended.

A gripping, twisted, claustrophobic tale of crime in small town America.

Bailey's writing is so stunning that it should be — in my opinion — an actual crime to give this book fewer than four stars. It would have been a five-star read, but I personally wasn't a fan of some of the more disturbing content (particularly when it comes to the incestuous rape that takes place). That being said, Bailey does a wonderful job tackling heavy topics such as racism, physical abuse, homophobia and gender power dynamics. This book was a page-turner, and the mystery at the heart of it kept me guessing until the very end!

While reading Anna Bailey’s Tall Bones I was reminded of Philip Larkin’s This be the Verse. Yes, it’s the one which notoriously starts with an F-word and then, in a startlingly lyrical shift, tells us that “man hands on misery to man/it deepens like a coastal shelf”. At one point, one of the novel’s characters almost paraphrases this same thought: “Even if they live…we all end up with our children’s blood on our hands, one way or another”.

Whistling Ridge, the predominantly white, predominantly Baptist town in the Colorado Rocky Mountains where Tall Bones is set, has a particularly high incidence of problematic parents. The worst dad accolade, however, must surely go to Samuel Blake, Vietnam War veteran, alcoholic and Bible-basher. His wife Dolly and children Noah, 17-year old Abi and young Jude bear the physical and emotional scars of his righteous wrath. But Samuel is not the only bad guy in the vicinity. Pastor Lewis uses the pulpit to incite hatred against anyone who is different, whether gay or outsider (imagine what he does to Romanian immigrant Rat, who is both). Landowner Jerry Maddox is a racist with a penchant for young girls.

As one can imagine, Whistling Ridge is hardly the most entertaining place on earth and so when Abi Blake disappears after a party in the woods, there is some hope that she might have simply escaped its suffocating small-town atmosphere. But her best friend Emma, guilty at having gone home without Abi, is afraid of worse. Sheriff Gains seems to share her opinion, even while seemingly hiding dark secrets of his own.

Tall Bones develops into a riveting thriller with plenty of dark, Gothic tropes – a missing girl, cabins in the woods, car chases, night-time escapades, fiery preachers, shady sheriffs. Bailey certainly knows how to build atmosphere and how to delay the revelation of the mysteries at the heart of the book. At the end of a horrific ride we are even regaled with some emotionally cathartic scenes.

I found Tall Bones to be great fun (although “fun” is hardly a suitable word to use for a novel featuring graphic violence and multiple stories of abuse). Only time will tell whether it will also be a memorable read for me – I doubt it though, since I felt it did not do anything particularly new with the tropes it relies on. Part of the problem is, perhaps, that the novel’s villains are almost irremediably flawed. Characters such as Samuel and the pastor have few positive traits if at all, and no serious attempt is made to understand how their characters have been shaped - in the case of Samuel there is a reference to a possessive mother and a disturbing event in Vietnam but even these traumatic events hardly explain the monster portrayed. As an atmospheric thriller, Tall Bones works perfectly. As a character study, it is less successful.

https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/02/tall-bones-by-anna-bailey.html

In Tall Bones by Anna Bailey teenagers Emma and Abi are lifelong best friends in the small Colorado town of Whistling Ridge, considering themselves almost sisters. At a drink and drug fuelled party at the local landmark Tall Bones,a circle of stones, Abi watches her friend walk into the woods...the last time she will ever see her.
Suspecting that the police are not putting enough effort into solving the mystery of Emma's disappearance Abi decides to investigate herself and soon discovers she's poked a nest of vipers.
Whistling Ridge is very much the small town America of David Lynch with its main ,often quite unpleasant ,characters all seemingly having dark secrets. and as Abi continues on her search for answers she wonders if she ever really knew her best friend at all.
This is a dark tale of damaged people, small town hypocrisy,domestic violence ,bigotry and racism. While it won't brighten your day you won't forget it in a hurry either and it's an often powerful and disturbing read.
I read a lot of books,most are good,some are very good,a few are exceptional..........and this is one of them.

Emma and Abi are seventeen-year-old best friends, they’ve grown up together, typical small-town girls (livin’ in a lonely world) – rebellious and looking for adventure. They attend a party one night and when Emma wants to leave, Abi decides to stay. Emma checks she is sure that she doesn’t want a lift home and when Abi insists that she is fine, Emma heads off. Many things will happen that night, but Emma will never see her friend again.

Abi’s disappearance cracks open the facade of this small American town, where everybody knows every else’s business, and the church plays a pivotal role in setting the tone for the moral compass of the inhabitants. This is a town with an intimate history of long-held grudges and resentment. Even within Abi’s somewhat dysfunctional family, there are questions to be asked – of Noah, the older brother whom Abi betrayed, of Jude, the shining younger sibling who hides his battle scars, of Dolly, her mother, and Samuel, her father – both in thrall to the fire and brimstone preacher who holds the entire town in his grasp. Then there is Rat, the immigrant outsider, whose presence in the town both unsettles and excites those around him.

Anything could happen in Whistling Ridge, it is after all one of those towns where everything looks perfect, but scratch beneath the surface, and there are dark thoughts and dangerous deeds aplenty.

Using multiple viewpoints plus a dual timeline of both the past and present, the events which lead up to Abi’s disappearance are laid bare in this dramatic, slow-building psychological suspense.

Bailey writes deftly and vividly, drawing the reader in so that Whistling Ridge feels like a real place; oppressive, atmospheric, with characters who leap from the pages.

Dark and at times most unsettling, Tall Bones is meant to raise uncomfortable emotions, and it does in spades. Trigger warnings: sexual assault, racism, domestic abuse, child abuse, and homophobia.

This is a book that I’ve not seen reviewed much but I really, really liked it!

When seventeen-year-old Emma leaves her best friend Abi at a party in the woods, she believes, like most girls her age, that their lives are just beginning. Many things will happen that night, but Emma will never see her friend again.

Set in a small American town, Bailey describes perfectly the small mindedness of the people who live there and how exclude and belittle all who go against what they believe. This was both amazing and infuriating to read - I found myself constantly shocked but what I read, but also amazed as how well the author portrayed this in her book.

The characters are a motley crew, most of them very unlikeable but this somehow draws you into the book and make you want to read more and see what will happen to them.

Anna Bailey had come up with a great storyline, one that kept me guessing and intrigued as to where it would go. The story telling and scene setting is brilliant and you become completely immersed in what this small, dark and disturbing American town is really like.

The opening chapter of Tall Bones is very stilted. Bailey seems to throw the plot at the reader as quickly as possible in short, emotionless sentences.
The pressure to hook the reader early appears to have overridden any natural flow to the writing, or perhaps it was intended to impact- either way i found it noticeably disjointed. Whether this changed throughout the novel or I just became accustomed to it I'm not sure.

Tall Bones is the usual fare; deeply religious, small town America with the unfortunately familar veins of racism and homophobia exacerbated by an over zealous pastor.

Told in third person before and after the disappearance of Abigail Blake, we follow the lives of her brothers, parents and best friend Emma as they seek to uncover secrets whilst concealing their own.
I felt Tall Bones lacked in emotion a lot of the time, there's a bleak desperation to the Blake family that left the characters wooden and slightly hollow. The mystery of Abigail's disappearance and the frequent introduction of lesser curiosities kept me reading.

Whilst Tall Bones doesn't weave a particularly original story I still much enjoyed reading it. The righteous fog that obscures the minds of these fictional small town folk and their refusal to acknowledge the consequences of it is nicely balanced by the few decent characters in Tall Bones. A reminder of how important community is and hope for the growing acceptance we see in the world today.

I read the Tall Bones on a grey and rainy Sunday morning befitting of the tone Bailey set. Read if you enjoy Amy Engel or Emma Cline.

Oh my gosh this book was good, it was atmospheric, creepy, haunting and gripping. I loved the writing, I loved the characters and I loved the storyline, I cannot believe that this is a debut, I really enjoyed it.