Blog Tour: Home is Where the Bodies Are | Jeneva Rose (book review)

If you are new to Jeneva Rose, you are in for a twisted story! In her latest book, Home is Where the Bodies Are, family dynamics are tested and long buried secrets surface.

What is Home is Where the Bodies Are about?

After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before.

While going through their parent’s belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends.

Beth, Nicole, and Michael must now decide whether to leave the past in the past or uncover the dark secret their mother took to her grave. (Synopsis from Goodreads)

What did I think?

Jeneva Rose isn’t merely a delightful social media presence (though she is that too), she’s a powerhouse of popcorn thrillers. The first book I read by her was The Perfect Marriage and it is still my favorite, but I’ve also enjoyed each new story. Home is Where the Bodies Are is a pretty iconic title, and the story centers around a truly damaged family.

Siblings Beth, Nicole, and Michael are adults now and they’ve returned home after the death of their mother to sort out her estate. Their father disappeared seven years earlier without contacting them again. Beth has remained at home with their mother, dutifully caring for her. She was the only one present when their mother died and heard her final words, “Your father didn’t disappear. Don’t trust…” Beth never hears what or who her mother was cautioning her about.

Their mother left them the house, a lock box, and letters for each to be opened after her funeral. While going through the house, the siblings stumble upon an old VHS tape. Thinking it was another home movie, they put it on. The tape is from 1999, but it isn’t what they expected. Their father is on screen wearing a bloody shirt, and he and their mom are talking about how to dispose of a body.

In a twisting story, the shocking footage on the video tape lead down a path that none of them expected. Did their parents have something to do with the disappearance of a teenager from next door? Emma went missing in 1999, the same year as the tape. I was hooked from this point, as the siblings pieced together clues from their past.

There is so much they don’t know, and the siblings themselves aren’t exactly close. Beth feels she took on all of the burden of caring for their mother. Nicole is a newly-recovering addict who feels that no one trusts her or believes in her sobriety. Youngest sibling Michael lives in California and is a high achiever who rarely returns home.

This is one truly dysfunctional family, and the video tape isn’t even the most dysfunctional thing about them! I thought this was a quick read and the pacing kept things lively. In a rare turn of events, I actually guessed part of the way this would play out, but certainly not all of it! Once the pieces of the puzzle came together at the end, I was shook. Jeneva Rose knows how to write a killer of an ending, that is for sure!

The characters had a sense of authenticity to them, as did their fractured relationships with one another. Don’t we all regress to our teenage selves when we are back with our siblings, no matter how old we get? Their mother was holding on to a lot of secrets and it seemed wild that she waited until her dying breath to try and unload them. She didn’t even get them all out! She did find a way to provide some answers though, but only after a lot of things spiral out of control.

I find Jeneva Rose writes with a very cinematic quality to her books. They feel slightly larger than life, like sitting in a movie theater can. It makes reading her books fun and easy to visualize. Expect twists and turns all over the place. Don’t skip the author’s note at the end!

About the Author

Jeneva Rose is the New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Marriage, One of Us is Dead, The Girl I Was, You Shouldn’t Have Come Here, and Home is Where the Bodies Are. Her work has been translated into more than two dozen languages and optioned for film/tv. Originally from Wisconsin, she currently lives in Chicago with her husband, Drew, and her English bulldog, Winston.

Thank you to Random Things Tours and Orion Books for my copy and spot on the blog tour! Opinions are my own.