Monday, March 23, 2015

In Which I Read BONE GAP And I Think Maybe You Should Too

So, we're half way into March and I'm fairly certain I just read the best book I'm going to read all year.

Yeah. BONE GAP by Laura Ruby* is just that good. You know how you can tell I really mean it? Because I never review books. If you look through my five years of blogging, you'll find maybe one or two book reviews. If you check my Goodreads page, you'll find the same.




Mostly that's because I'm not really good at reviewing books. I'm not good at critical reading, and I'm also not really good at expressing why I like certain things (you can take a look at my end of year best books I read posts and see this is true. They're mostly paragraphs of "this book was great and I lurved it!" without much else).

But I loved BONE GAP so much, that I knew I needed to try to do a review justice. Because I think so many of you would love it too.

When beautiful Roza goes missing, no one believes Finn when he says a man took her, because Finn can't remember what the man looked like.

Roza is beautiful, a fact she's lived with all her life. And she's well aware of how some men treat beautiful women. So when a man takes her and gives her everything she could want as long as she loves him, she tells him no. And continues to tell him no.

But Roza's disappearance haunts Finn, and since he's the only one who believes she's been taken, it's up to him to find her.

BONE GAP was one of those books where I stayed up late reading it, because I couldn't put it down. Finally though, finally, I had to go to bed (you know, because stupid adulthood means responsibilities and junk. That's one thing they never tell you as a kid, that as an adult, you feel like you get even less sleep and you want it even more).

So I went to bed, and I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I woke up early, sat in my living room with my dogs, and finished it that morning. I read it in one day, guys. And, I mean, I do that pretty regularly because if you set aside 4-5 hours a day to read, you can read a whole book. But this wasn't even that. This was taking away from precious sleep because I needed to know what was going to happen. I was that invested in the book.

BONE GAP has so many wonderful things. It has corn that's kind of creepy. It has a man that's more than just kind of creepy. It has cats and kittens, giant dogs and black horses, bees and goats and lambs. And some of these animals are magical, and some of them aren't.

It has beautiful girls and boys and ugly girls and boys. It has girls and boys that need rescuing and girls and boys who rescue themselves.

And, finally it has magic and mystery and people broken by love and people saved by love.

I wish it had been 1,000 pages. I was super sad when it was done. I didn't want to even pick up another book (even though I have a full TBR pile which I'm excited to dive into).

I honestly can't wait until I can read it again.


*Full disclosure - Laura Ruby was my second semester advisor for my MFA. She's just as awesome as her books.

5 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

I'll add it to my reading list then.

DL Hammons said...

I've seen that book around and always wondered about it. On the strength of this review I'm adding it to the list!

Thanks! :)

Josh said...

Yeah, I'm with you on all counts. I hardly ever review books either, because there is an art to it, and I never took the time to learn how to do it well. But I really loved Bone Gap a lot, for all of the reasons you said. It was probably the best example of magical realism that I've ever read. So many awesome twists and turns, and yet it all made total sense at the end (well, we'll talk about that some more since I don't want to give spoilers out.)

mshatch said...

I sometimes review books but I try to only review the ones I really liked. This sounds like something to add to my wish list - thanks!

Lisa-Marie Jordan said...

Totally adding this to my list! It sounds SO good!

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