Bone Gap Review

Title: Bone Gap

Author: Laura Ruby

Genre & Age Group: Magical realism, fantasy, mystery, young adult

Goodreads Synopsis:

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 went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. After all, it wasn’t the first time that someone had slipped away and left Finn and Sean O’Sullivan on their own. Just a few years before, their mother had high-tailed it to Oregon for a brand new guy, a brand new life. That’s just how things go, the people said. Who are you going to blame?

Finn knows that’s not what happened with Roza. He knows she was kidnapped, ripped from the cornfields by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember. But the searches turned up nothing, and no one believes him anymore. Not even Sean, who has more reason to find Roza than anyone, and every reason to blame Finn for letting her go.

As we follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap—their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures—acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness—a story about how the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.

Source: Public library

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Because I’d heard such good things about Bone Gap in the past, I decided to go into it blind. After all, I often mesh with magical realism really well and find it really interesting. But was this ultimately a good idea? Haha, no.

(Note to self- never go into a fantasy book blind again!)

This book and I did not really get along. I know it has such good reviews, but I just don’t get the hype! Objectively, Bone Gap is not a bad book, but once again, I think it was my distaste for fantasy that threw me out of enjoyment for it.

To briefly synopsize the novel, it follows a protagonist named Finn. When Roza goes missing, Finn has a hunch that she was kidnapped, but no one believes him as there is no solid evidence to back up his theory. Will the citizens of Bone Cap find out what actually happened, or was Finn right all along?

For me, the characters of this novel were extremely two-dimensional. I did not feel any sort of connection with any of them, which is something that will automatically turn me off from a story. I even had to look at the synopsis just to remember their names! One good thing, however, was that this book is diverse in that Finn, the main character, has prosopagnosia, which means that he has significant trouble with recognizing faces. This was a big part of the storyline as this meant that Finn could not recognize the person who had allegedly kidnapped Roza.

I also found the plot to be really confusing, and for me, confusion = boredom! The story was just… weird, to put it that way? Seriously, I had no idea what was going on during half of my time reading, and that was no fun. This book made me want to fall asleep, but I pushed through just to see if it got better.

And spoiler alert: it didn’t!

Overall, this book was just not for me. I didn’t mesh with the characters, writing style, or plot. If you are a big fan of fantasy, mystery, and magical realism all tied into one novel, then I would recommend Bone Gap for you- but if you aren’t, then there are many better alternatives out there.

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Rating:

🌟🌟

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What are some books that left your head spinning in confusion?

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