Not for me. Too soapy (main character with selective amnesia, Wisteria Lane-like cul-de-sac exclusive neighborhood), cliches and writerly copouts everywhere, and then wraps up with an Epilogue where two characters have a conversation describing everything that happened. ( )

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. 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. ( )

This is a mystery with an unreliable narrator. Aarav’s mother disappeared ten years ago on a rainy night and 250k went with her from her husband’s safe. Aarav is at the family home recovering from a car accident when the cops knock on the door to let him and his dad know that his mom’s body has been found not that far from the house in a deep ravine still in the car she drove off in but it seems the money is missing. Aarav is nosey and picks back up his habit on spying on his childhood neighbors in this ritzy secluded neighborhood. He starts questioning everyone that knew his mom and was home on that day of the crash. As the story unfolds you find out more about the unhappy marriage of his parents and that his mom wasn’t always a good person. Things that he remembers don’t always add up and he even starts to doubt himself. The overall story is good and it was refreshing to read and not know what happened until the end.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through NetGalley
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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 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 ( )

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 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. ( )