Publication Date: 04th March 2025
Genre: YA Paranormal Mystery
3.2 Stars
One Liner: Great atmosphere but... repetitive
Lucifer’s Creek, Arkansas
A seventeen-year-old Dovie comes from a long line of women who could hear the dead bones sing. She doesn’t believe in magic until she begins to hear the songs. In the last three years, many people have gone missing from the trials in the Ozark Mountains.
Some think it’s the Ozark howler snatching people, though Dovie doesn’t agree. She doesn’t listen when her best friend Lo says he is haunted by shadows. Her only focus is on leading the local sheriff to the dead bones. However, Lo knows the shadows belong to the dead people, and they want justice. Can Dovie and Lo find the killer before more deaths occur?
The story comes in Dovie’s first-person POV.
My Thoughts:
The book starts with a bang. We see Dovie hearing the ‘song of the bones’ and follow her. Right away, we also see the superstition and bias against ‘witches’ though even the police seem to wait for the bones to sing to her instead of actually doing their job.
Dovie is your typical seventeen-year-old, meaning she thinks she knows the best, her emotions are intenseeeee, she is dramatic, and well… you get the gist. Despite the repetition, it wasn’t too bad being in her head. Though I initially sympathized with her, the constant ‘I don’t believe in magic’ got boring. After the initial quarter, I could increase my reading pace.That made the book quite enjoyable.
I admit I liked Lo a lot more, though we don’t get a lot about him. There are only a few things the FMC has to say about him and those tend to go on a loop. The other guy is… I don’t know. He’s just there.
The atmosphere is the biggest strength of the book. It is amazing! I could feel the dark forest, the stinky Lucifer Creek, the humidity, the weight of uncertainty and fear, and the presence of the howler. Still, I wish we got a wee bit more of the supernatural element. The setting is ripe for a proper horror mystery.
Coming to the mystery, it is okay. Rather strange that the most important question doesn’t even occur to the FMC until someone points it out. Or maybe it aligns with her teen personality where she is the center of the universe. Anyhoo!
The reveal is rather underwhelming. The topic is great. No doubts there. There’s even some foreshadowing but the focus is on the sub-mystery. The main one needs a bit more detailing and an extra touch of darkness to drive home the point.
However, I did like the execution of Brother T’s role. It is quite stereotypical what with the Christian brother intent on converting ‘witches’ and ‘hill people’ but given how extensively such events occurred (and occur) around the world, I don’t mind it being shown in books. That said, he gets a lot more limelight than necessary. Maybe he was used as a smoke screen but not really needed.
I would have rated this higher if not for the supposed ‘love triangle’ that had no place in the book. It is nothing more than exotification on one side and silly curiosity on the other. Imagine being surrounded by death and you prioritize kissing someone. How romantic (not)! Remove this attraction/ complication from the plot and nothing changes. My rating would have been higher.
There’s an epilogue which I do like. It ties up the loose ends. Since mine is an ARC, there wasn’t an author’s note. I’d have liked to know about the forest and its local lore.
To summarize, When the Bones Sing has a great premise and starts well but meanders into an average YA mystery with drama, romance, and a touch of supernatural.
Thank you, NetGalley and G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, for eARC.
#NetGalley #WhenTheBonesSing
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