The pace really picked up towards the end of the book, which had me turning the pages to find out what would happen, and there were a few surprises that I wasn’t expecting. I’d have liked her even more if it wasn’t for her people-eating, but as this was the whole premise of the book, it had to be. I liked the writing and the flow of the book and Maren was an engaging character. While there are some stomach-churning scenes, it wasn’t graphic enough to stop me reading.Īs I read, I found that the book, cannibalism aside, was quite a good read. Being squeamish, I was worried that a book about cannibalism was going to be far too gory for my weak stomach, but thankfully the book isn’t quite as gruesome as I thought it was going to be.

I was a little reluctant to start reading Bones & All. Maren is used to travelling light, so with her backpack and the envelope of money, she sets off to find her father – and maybe even learn a few things about herself. She knows nothing about her father, only his name and place of birth stated on her birth certificate. Maren decides to find her father, a man she doesn’t remember ever meeting. Her mother has left, leaving only Maren’s birth certificate and an envelope of money. The day after her sixteenth birthday, Maren finds herself alone.

Each time the urge overtakes Maren, she and her mother pack up their things and run, starting all over again in a new town. She has an urge she can’t control the urge to eat people. acquired in June 2022.įrom a young age, Maren has known she isn’t like other people. Though Maren-who isn’t really a fully developed character as much as she is a sequence of actions-embraces her vice come book’s end, it’s glaringly apparent that she doesn’t care about being “someone people admire and respect.” I enjoyed the ride, and Camille DeAngelis writes wonderfully, but Bones and All’s plot feels a bit like a patchwork quilt, and Maren’s ever-changing motivations were too disorienting to sympathize with her for long.This post was originally published at and is now at. It seems fishy that in 2015 Maren’s careless ways wouldn’t draw suspicion.

Unfortunately, Bones and All is unevenly paced, with some glaring plot holes for example, there are no police run-ins throughout the book, despite alarming body totals. A coming-of-age cannibal story? Juicy and original. (Eats them partly, or “bones and all”? It’s never really clear, and needs to be, seeing as bones are rather difficult to eat.) Maren and her mother leave whatever town they’re living in whenever Maren eats someone, or as she calls it, does “the bad thing.” One day, Maren awakes to find her mother has left and decides to track down her long-lost father. The protagonist of Bones and All, sixteen-year-old Maren Yearly, is described as wanting “to be someone people admire and respect.” The catch is that Maren, since almost birth, eats people.

Novel bones and all