Review: Quiet In Her Bones

I was about halfway through A Madness of Sunshine when I knew I was going to have to pick up Quiet in Her Bones immediately after. Both books are stand alones, featuring very different characters, and yet there are comparisons to be drawn between both books.  Namely that Singh once again creates a world with a large cast of characters all of whom have secrets - although this time out it's an exclusive, upscale cul-de-sac neighborhood.

Ten years ago Nina Rai stormed out of the home she shared with her husband and teenage son never to be heard from again. Also missing? $250,000. Her disappearance has haunted her son, Aarav, who heard her scream, right before the front door slammed...twice.  Or did he? Aarav, now a success thanks to his debut novel catching fire, is recovering from a bad car accident. So bad that when he's released from the hospital he's under doctor's orders to not be alone.  So he goes home to stay with his father, stepmother and half-sister. He's suffering from terrible migraines and there are gaps in his memory - problems only exacerbated when the police show up and announce that they've found Nina Rai.  Her car slid off the road into the bush and has been hidden for the past decade. Mommy Dearest is now nothing but bones....bones found in the passenger seat of the Jaguar.

Now Aarav knows for sure. His mother didn't just leave him. Her marriage was a disaster, her relationship with his father extremely volatile - but she never, ever would have left her only child voluntarily.  She's been dead since the night Aarav heard the scream.  Determined to know the truth he starts his own investigation.  The exclusive cul-de-sac where he was raised and where his father still lives is full of neighbors, all of whom have secrets. Then there's Dear Old Dad. The front door slammed twice that night.

Terrible car accident, migraines, drugs, gaps in his memory - buckle in kiddies it's Unreliable Narrator time!  Aarav doesn't know what memories he can trust and then there are the gaps thanks to the car accident and the prescription drugs.  He's under the care of a neurologist and a shrink.  Oh, and he fully acknowledges he's a sociopath.  Warm and cuddly our boy ain't.

I'll be honest, I'm not a fan of this trope in suspense.  Blame it on The Girl on the Train and cutting my reading teeth on the likes of Kinsey Millhone, but I dig competency porn in mystery/suspense.  There was a trend for a while of female unreliable narrators gorked out of their skull on alcohol or drugs running off half-cocked and basically I wanted to throat punch all of them.  Singh at least has the good sense to give me something different - our unreliable narrator is a dude.  A sociopathic dude who is a mess but is very good at wearing the appropriate mask for whatever the occasion demands.

Aarav's instability ramps up over the course of the story as he turns over rocks and ugly things begin slithering out.  As much as the unreliable narrator stuff wore on me after a while, by this point I was so invested in the cul-de-sac, the secretive residents, and the mystery of what happened to Nina Rai - our protagonist's escalating manic behavior was only a minor quibble, one derived solely from personal reader preference.

Like A Madness of Sunshine I had portions of the mystery figured out before the denouement but not all of it; although as the pages dwindled I did worry for a hot minute that Singh would leave a thread dangling.  Good news, she did not.

I didn't like this quite as much as A Madness of Sunshine (again, personal preference talking here) but this is actually the better executed book.  It felt tighter to me, although it lacks a strong romantic element thread that the previous book had.  That might be a deal breaker for romance fans, but not really a concern for someone coming to this book wanting suspense.  

Now I'm left with only one question.  When is Singh going to give me another suspense novel? Tick tock, tick tock...

Final Grade = B