Quiet in Her Bones

Ten years ago Nina Rai vanished. Taking nothing but some money and her car, she left everyone, including her beloved son Aarav, behind. It's something that has had a huge impact on Aarav growing up and now, as a best-selling author, the themes of loss and abandonment are prominent in his works.

Everyone, even Aarav, had put her disappearance down to an unhappy wife leaving her unhappy and toxic marriage behind.

Except now, Nina Rai has been found, and it's not on a calm and sunny beach somewhere, she actually didn't make it much farther than her own home before her car veered into the brush.

Aarav immediately knows that this wasn't some unfortunate accident. He knows his mother was murdered. Now, he'll stop at nothing to unearth the show more secrets from the past. But can he rely on his own memories about what happened all those years ago when he's held so much grief and anger towards his mother and father? But if he is right, there's still a murderer on the loose, and secrets that someone wants to leave buried.

Nalini Singh is a must-read author for me. Even when she moved from her fantasies and romances into this mystery/thriller genre I knew she wouldn't let me down.

This is her second foray into mystery following [book:A Madness of Sunshine|44525771], but I loved how different the two books are. Nalini Singh takes readers in a completely different direction, but obviously still retains the murder mystery aspect.

This time around readers are taken to the affluent gated community Aarav calls The Cul-de-Sac where everyone knows everybody else's business. At least, they think they do. Behind closed doors everyone has their secrets. Aarav is newly returned to the community returning to his childhood home after a vehicle accident left him with a broken leg.

The entire story is told from Aarav's point of view, and I feel like Nalini Singh was very calculating in how she framed everything. You at once feel bad for the child Aarav once was, losing his mother, but then some of his actions as an adult make him kind of easy to dislike. The same goes for the rest of the people in the neighborhood. But then you stop and think that ALL of this is from Aarav's perspective, and then you begin to question how much you can take at face value and how much is a distorted point of view.

Without another more reliable character to balance things out a bit, Quiet in Her Bones wasn't always an easy read. But as I said before, this is all so calculated. It's meant to cause the reader to get pulled in and question everything just as Aarav does. So even we feel this kind of isolation. Who do you trust? Who can you believe? Nalini Singh pulls this aspect off to perfection.

There was a very Hitchcockian feel to the story especially the idea of this idyllic close community, these neighbors that smile to your face on the outside and seemingly have it all, yet pretty much everyone harbors some kind of secret. It's something that kind of carries over from the her previous book. The secrets that hide beneath the surface of a community.

I don't want to say too much for fear of spoilers, but suffice it to say, Nalini Singh has never let me down no matter what she's writing. I'm really loving her new Mystery/Thriller direction. show less

A fast-paced psychological trip from the point of view of a totally unreliable narrator (even HE doesn't trust his memories, perceptions and conclusions). Ten years after his mother, a beautiful socialite trophy wife, stormed out of their home in a secluded upscale cul-de-sac neighborhood in Aukland never to be seen again, apparently taking a quarter of a million dollars from her husband's safe with her, Aarav Rai is released from a month-long hospital stay to continue recuperating from a violent auto accident he cannot remember. He has a severely fractured leg which is slowly healing, and some cognitive issues the depth of which neither Aarav, his caregivers or the reader can be sure about. When his mother's Jaguar, with her skeletal show more remains inside, is discovered nose down in deep underbrush not far from their home, Aarav becomes obsessed with scoping out what happened on that long-ago night that he thinks he remembers vividly. All the neighbors, a multi-cultural lot, come under his scrutiny, and sometimes his suspicion. Most of them knew his mother quite well. All of them turn out to have secrets, just as the Rai family did. None of it is pretty, but is any of it relevant? Aarav's sugar addiction is a nifty nod to the compulsion for more more more that sped me through this novel's 480+ pages in two solid sittings. Go ahead, have a piece of fudge. Just one...it won't hurt you. show less

A slow burn psychological thriller, QUIET IN HER BONES is beautifully executed with a pace that seems to stroll along, focusing mostly on a range of characters that stand out from the page.

Socialite Nina Rai vanished ten years ago, along with a quarter of a million dollars in cash. Her son Aarav heard a chilling scream the night she went, but it wasn't until years later that her remains are discovered in the dense forest that surrounds their elite, privileged, secretive, exclusive neighbourhood. Aarav's desire to find out what happened on that night is compelled by his own deteriorating condition, meaning he's got a small window of opportunity, before he becomes physically incapable of doing so.

QUIET IN HER BONES is packed with show more atmosphere, made somehow more ethereal and exotic by the wealthy lifestyle of the victim, and the Hindu culture that are woven together. It's beautifully written, with considerable emotion and a really interesting, vivid set of characters that reader's could find utterly compelling. Some readers might also find the slow burn too much at points, perhaps because of strong empathy for Aarav's situation, perhaps because pace simply isn't the point of QUIET IN HER BONES. Place, character and situation are the focus here, as well as complexity - the reveal is itself quite something when it does arrive.

This is the second thriller from Singh - a New York Times bestseller known for her prodigious output of paranormal romance novels in particular. Her earlier thriller, A MADNESS OF SUNSHINE, isn't connected to this one, although it did exhibit a lot of the same elements - great sense of place, intermixing of the investigation and the personal, and a standout sense of place and culture. It may have been slightly more of a page-turner, but QUIET IN HER BONES delves into the experience of those left behind a lot more.

https://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/quiet-her-bones-nalini-singh show less

Arev’s mother disappeared ten years ago. Now her bones have been discovered and Arev is desperate to find out what happened. The thing I adored most about this book was the unique New Zealand setting that the author describes in such great detail (she has such an amazing way of painting the landscapes and countryside with words) and also because the narrator is the most unreliable of unreliable narrators. Arev has recently been in a car accident and suffered a terrible brain injury. He can’t remember what happened last week. He’s going from person to person, trying to piece together what’s been happening to him as he simultaneously searches for clues to what may have happened to his mother. It’s a bit of a thriller crossed show more with “50 First Dates” and just about everyone in the novel seems guilty. show less

One part Memento, one part Rear Window, this atmospheric mystery pulls you in with a decade-old murder and an unreliable narrator.

A man returns to his childhood home after an accident. The body of his mother, who disappeared 10 years earlier, is found. The unexpected discovery shakes the Cul-de-sac community and he begins to realize all his neighbors have secrets.

It reminded me of The Survivor by Jane Harper, though I think that one deals with character development and relationships in a much more powerful way.

There are some clichés in the writing that are a little cheesy, but the overall atmosphere and creepy wild of New Zealand is captivating.

Novelist Aarav Rai is back living at his childhood home after a car accident the damaged his foot, lungs, and brain. He's not happy to be there. His mother Nina disappeared ten years earlier and his childhood was filled with fights between his parents. He seems to remember hearing a chilling scream when she left home that night but doesn't remember anything else.

Then the unthinkable happens, his mother's car is found off the road in the bush and her bones are in it. Aarav is determined to find out what happened to his mother that night and has a wonderful pool of suspects in the rich enclave where they live. But his injuries which include memory loss and migraines don't make his investigation easy. And he's also supposed to be working show more on his second novel...

The Cul-de-Sac where they live is filled with people who knew Nina and some of them had reasons to hate her. Nina Rai was a loving mother but she also drank too much and could be quite cruel. Aarav is having nightmares that seem like shards of memory that make him think that he might have had something to do with his mother's death though he isn't willing to believe that.

The story was an intriguing thriller made even more complex by the memory issues the Aarav is having which include hallucinations. Since he is the viewpoint character, we share in his confusion as he looks into the lives of his neighbors to try to discover who murdered his mother. We also gradually learn about his car accident and other events in his life.

Fans of atmospheric thrillers will enjoy this intriguing story. I especially enjoyed the scenery and culture of New Zealand that were essential elements of the story. show less

There were times when I really wanted to shake Aarav and make him realise what was happening to him but at the same time I was kept wondering exactly what was happening and exactly who was to blame for it all. The story starts with a body found in the forest in a car and the son, recuperating from an accident that has left him with broken bones and a head injury deciding to try to help solve the situation. His parents had a volatile relationship and he has mental scars from it, but as he scrapes the top off the story he discovers lies and other stories that he has to work out too. He remembers parts of the day she disappeared but not all and he's also walking in his sleep and finding himself behaving in ways that don't quite make sense. show more As well as being an unreliable narrator he's also aware of it and trying to fix it all. But there are some things that you just can't fix.
I was pulled into it and could hardly put it down. I liked it and would read more of her mystery fiction. show less