Bone Gap

by Laura Ruby

[nannah]

I'm sorry to be so ... uh, Minnesotan? But this book was really ... interesting. Did I like it? Not really. Did I dislike it? Not really, either.

Bone Gap is a small town full of ... well, gaps to other worlds and planes of existences. So when the beautiful woman Roza disappears, they're not even surprised. Or so it says on the official summary. I never got an understanding of this--or that the people of the town actually know about this in the book, ever. In fact, I only understood that just one character know about these gaps in Bone Gap at all.

So right away going in I was a little confused.

But anyway, Bone Gap is a town full of gaps. Brothers Finn and Sean O'Sullivan finally find a great life when Roza, a Polish immigrant on the run from a kidnapper, stumbles into the picture. And then just one year later, she disappears. Finn swears she was taken, but Sean (as well as the rest of Bone Gap) don't believe him.

The twist in the book is so good, the writing is great, and the character interaction is even better. I just couldn't ... fully get into it. I'm not sure what it was. The kind of disjointed plot? The lack of the plot (Roza) fully affecting the protagonist (Finn)? I don't know.

Speaking of Roza, though, I really didn't like the way she was written. Her backstory was painfully pale -- and she seemed to be a foil for other characters' development (that didn't even matter, since those characters weren't even brought back). She's the most beautiful woman in the world, but also so sagely wise, so understanding, etc., etc., etc. And that's not even what bothers me. What bothers me is that she doesn't seem to understand how that affects other people. She's an old-world fairytale character that doesn't fit in a story like this.

She's also like ... the most stereotypical Polish folk-like woman character. It's like the author (and I don't know if Laura Ruby is Polish or knows anyone who's Polish so I'm just going off what I read) just went on the basic Polish wiki page for research. Roza's cooking skills include pierogi, gołąbki, babka, and kołaczki - four of the most common Polish recipes/foods. She's gorgeous (Eastern European, of course), cooks everything from scratch, lived on a farm from a town so small it was just called "Here". I don't know, it just got annoying the more I read.

Plus the plot involving her and her kidnapper was so stale. Sooo very stale. I don't want to spoil it, I guess, but I've had enough with this flat-like villain character. Maybe it was done for effect, but it didn't click for me.