Bone Gap discussion

A few months ago, Roza disappeared without a trace. Everyone in the town of Bone Gap seems content to just believe she got up and walked away just as mysteriously and suddenly as she had come; that is, everyone except for Finn O’Sullivan. He knows what happened to her: she was kidnapped, and he even saw who it was who whisked her away against her will. The problem is that no one believes Finn, especially his older brother Sean, who is becoming more and more apathetic and distant from Finn as the days go by. While Finn struggles to make others understand what he saw, he connects with fierce, perceptive, and misunderstood Petey who finds herself questioning his motives for liking her. Finn eventually decides to take matters into his own hands and searches for Roza on his own, and all the while, Roza is trying her best to outsmart her kidnapper, but finds that something is far from normal about her situation.

When reading the summary of this book, I immediately imagined it to be a cross between The Lovely Bones and A Slice of Cherry, and after finished the book I can wholeheartedly say that this is a spot on description. It has the mystery and intrigue of The Lovely Bones and the magic of A Slice of Cherry, and wraps these elements up into a neat little YA package that is great for anyone who loves romance, mystery, or mythology. Overall, I really loved this novel, but I question its classification as “realistic fiction” (or maybe my definition just isn’t as nuanced) as it isn’t very realistic. Though one of the twists was predictable, most were not, which changed the direction of the book in a very enjoyable way. That being said, I do feel that the mythology-related twists should be more thoroughly explained as I still believe there to be confusion about its role and place with the place and novel of Bone Gap. As for pairing it with another book, I would put it with The Lovely Bones which focuses on the aftermath for a family after one of their daughters is kidnaped and murdered. That text is more adult and deals with more detailed and complicated topics and reactions to the events that go past just the immediate problem of soling a murder.

Yeah, this one is hard to pin down genre-wise. I really loved the twists of this novel, but I liked the really lovely prose even more. This one is a Printz Honor Award, and I think it's easy to see why it got an award in a very competitive field!

I loved this book. I'd categorise it as magic realism personally, because it definitely isn't fantasy and yet it has so many fantasy elements. It's also literary in terms of the prose which is some of the best I've read in a YA novel. It is, unmistakably, still a YA novel because of the coming-of-age twist, but it's a very original one that I think people should be paying more attention to. I'd love to see a film adaptation!