Review: Near the Bone by Christina Henry
This book made me so nervous I literally have a stomach ache. I loved it so much.
I see why some folks are upset by the ending, but I felt like I got all the answers I needed about the human side of the horror, the supernatural side I was perfectly fine maintaining some mystery. Whenever I have read monster books in the past, the revel has tended to be where I lost all the tension. This book literally had so much tension I felt like I might be physically sick. This is high praise.
Mattie is an excellent narrator. We meet her and can tell in the first chapter that she is severely traumatized, and by chapter two we know she was kidnapped as a child and is being held hostage by an incredibly abusive man who keeps her as incapacitated as he possibly can while still being able to extract labor out of her.
She has a really well done character arc. She has no agency at the beginning of the book, every bit of will or hope is literally being beat out of her as often as William, her ‘husband’ can. I really loved that her first act of outward rebellion, by this point her thoughts are almost entirely focused on escape, is not towards William but to the hikers she meets in the woods. It was like a test run of assertion before the final boss. I thought it was very well done.
I also loved the narrative device of the voice that constantly challenged Mattie. The voice that urges her to be bold and fight back. It sort of illustrated the split of Mattie’s mind, a literary embodiment of the way she had to divide herself to actually be able to survive the horrific abuse she was put through.
I also found the choices the author made registering who lived to be very interesting! She did not make the obvious choice, or the choice I would have assumed she would make. But I truly loved the choice she did make.
I and still so worried I might not be able to go to sleep, and it is almost 2 am. But it is always impressive when a book elicits a physical reaction. And this book has done that to me in spades.
