The Dark Bones, by Loreth Anne White

The Dark Bones by Loreth Anne White

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This will be an untypically short review because this book was interesting enough but I had expected so much more: This books predecessor, “A Dark Lure”, was very, very suspenseful and exciting and told a really interesting story.

“The Dark Bones” features a few characters from the first book (namely Olivia and her daughter Tori) but deals with the murder of Noah North which his daughter, Rebecca, a white-collar-crime cop investigates. During the course of her investigation Rebecca meets her ex-boyfriend, Ash, again who quickly becomes a “person of interest” in this case and an older one about two missing kids.

As in the previous book, White’s career as a romance writer shines through and – again – her heroine falls for the handsome rugged second protagonist – it worked the first time so why not try to apply the successful formula again?

Which would be fine by me but somehow I was not as invested in both the story and the people this time around. Rebecca broke up with Ash because he cheated on her and met the girl again – she never asked him for the reason but just left. Ok, so some people do that, I get it, but if she really loved him so much that Rebecca never had any serious relationship again would she really just leave? Wouldn’t she at least ask him to explain himself before basically burning all bridges and leaving her home for good?

Either way, even when Rebecca becomes convinced of Ash’s innocence, she still feels that he harbours a huge dark secret – and instead of digging into him till he spills, she tries to distance herself emotionally – which didn’t work when he cheated and, surprise, surprise, doesn’t work now either.

The story takes a long time to pick up speed and when it does, it feels slightly rushed. The twist at the end doesn’t really feel right either – like it was “tacked on” in hindsight.

It’s pretty obvious what happened to the missing kids so that part of the story wasn’t as interesting as it could have been either. Among all the romance stuff and our heroine oscillating between loving her Ash and being wary of him I sadly sometimes lost interest in the entire proceedings.

Maybe it’s in fact that: The book is simply too long for what it has to tell us.




View all my reviews