I am here for all these recent YA thrillers! All These Bodies is a book that pulled me through beginning to end. Talk about unreliability, questions, and the unknown. Keep reading this book review for my full thoughts.
Summary
Sixteen bloodless bodies. Two teenagers. One impossible explanation.
Summer 1958—a string of murders plagues the Midwest. The victims are found in their cars and in their homes—even in their beds—their bodies drained, but with no blood anywhere.
September 19- the Carlson family is slaughtered in their Minnesota farmhouse, and the case gets its first lead: 15-year-old Marie Catherine Hale is found at the scene. She is covered in blood from head to toe, and at first she’s mistaken for a survivor. But not a drop of the blood is hers.
Michael Jensen, son of the local sheriff, yearns to become a journalist and escape his small-town. He never imagined that the biggest story in the country would fall into his lap, or that he would be pulled into the investigation, when Marie decides that he is the only one she will confess to.
As Marie recounts her version of the story, it falls to Michael to find the truth: What really happened the night that the Carlsons were killed? And how did one girl wind up in the middle of all these bodies?
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
All These Bodies will start your fall off with all the thrills. The unsettling way a murder in a small town sets off a firecracker of uncertainty and fear. Or how terrified people are of girls who dismantle what they expect. Beginning with intrigue, All These Bodies is a story about truth and belief. All the room for possibilities, twisting power plays, and reasonable doubt in between. How the truth loses meaning and images and illusions begin to mean more.
Marie’s story is revealed in fits and bursts. The story of a girl wrapped up in mystery in a world that wants to distill her story into words they understand. As we learn more about her story, we realize that it, at the end of the day, seems to matter less and less what she says as the narrative around her is constructed. The holes poked in clouds which drift across moonlit nights. All These Bodies is a book that always left me thinking.
About how much I believed, how much that even mattered, and where the truth lies. I find that a book that haunts you after reading, where even you aren’t sure how you feel at the end of the day, seems to be the ones that stick with me. All These Bodies has this almost atmospheric tone of reflective thought. This lends a sense of intrigue, suspense, and dread from the get go. I ended up devouring All These Bodies and would recommend to everyone who wants to be pulled into a book. Into a mood, a hazy foggy evening full of mysterious noises, an unreliable narrator.
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