Bone Gap by Laura Ruby - Review

Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps - gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza goes missing, the people of Bone Gap aren't surprised. After all, it isn't the first time someone's slipped away and left Finn and Sean O'Sullivan on their own.

Finn knows that's not what happened with Roza. He knows she was taken, ripped from the cornfields by a man whose face he can't remember. But no one believes him anymore. Well, almost no one. Petey Willis, the beekeeper's daughter, suspects that lurking behind Finn's fearful shyness is a story worth uncovering. But as we, like Petey, follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap - their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures - the truth about what happened to Roza is slowly revealed. And it is stranger than you can possibly imagine.

Even reading the blurb gets me excited about this book all over again. If it hasn't convinced you to preorder immediately, let me try! I've had a really good run of magical realism books recently and this is one of my favourites that I've read this year.

The best part of this for me was the way magical and fantastical elements were woven into a convincing contemporary story. It felt at times like a beautiful, dark fairy tale and at others like a really gripping contemporary novel.

In a lot of ways, I interpreted this as a coming of age book, with Finn trying to find himself as much as trying to find Roza. His relationships with Petey and his brother were incredibly realistic and complex. 

I also really liked getting the story from Roza's point of view, so you knew what was happening to her even when the boys didn't.

The unpredictability of this also kept me invested. There were a lot of aspects that I wasn't sure where they were going and I loved that!

This was a gorgeous book to end the year on. It comes out in just a few days so treat yourself!