what I’m reading: quiet in her bones by nalini singh.

Aarov was a teenager when his mother fled in the middle of the night, taking $250,000 and leaving Aarov with his bitter and angry father. But ten years later, her body is found in the wreckage of her car, wearing the same clothes she had on when she left. Now Aarov has to rethink everything he’s known about his mother while trying to determine how she died.

This book was a bit of a miss for me. I never connected with Aarov and didn’t find him especially interesting. When the story begins he has moved back home to recuperate after a car accident where he broke his foot and also has some sort of brain injury. Because of this brain injury and the medication he’s taking for his foot, he has trouble recalling things which makes him an unreliable narrator. I felt like many things going on with him were red herrings and I found myself wondering what the point a lot of them were.

Additionally, the pacing was off for me. I never really felt any urgency in solving the mystery and I didn’t particularly care who the killer was.

There are lots of characters in this book and I had trouble keeping them all straight. I felt like each new character that was introduced had secrets and could be a potential suspect in the disappearance of Aarov’s mom. I’m still not sure who all the characters were and I didn’t try too hard to figure out who the villain was.

I did enjoy the setting of the book. This book takes place in New Zealand and the author did an amazing job of capturing the lushness and beauty of the area. The inclusion of Hindu culture was interesting and I enjoyed learning about a different lifestyle.

This book had a lot of potential but it just didn’t work for me.

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