The Rattled Bones by SM Parker Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“But I think this island holds more history than the university could ever uncover. And there are endless ways for secrets to slip out into the world.”- The Rattled Bones, SM Parker

Unearthing years of buried secrets, Rilla Brae is haunted by ghostly visions tied to the tainted history of a mysterious island in this haunting novel from the author of The Girl Who Fell.

Maine-bred, independent Rilla Brae is no stranger to the deep. She knows the rhythms of hard work and harder seas. But when she experiences the sudden death of her father, the veil between the living and the dead blurs and she begins to be haunted by a girl on a nearby, uninhabited island. The girl floats a song over the waves, and it is as beautiful as it is terrifying. Familiar and distant.

Then Rilla meets Sam, a University of Southern Maine archeology student tasked with excavating the very island where the ghostly girl has appeared. Sam sifts the earth looking for the cultural remains of an island people who were forcibly evicted by the state nearly a hundred years ago. Sam tells Rilla the island has a history no locals talk about—if they know about it at all—due to the shame the events brought to the working waterfront community. All Rilla knows for sure is that the island has always been there—an eerie presence anchored in the stormy sea. Now Sam’s work and the ghostly girl’s song lure Rilla to the island’s shores.

As Rilla helps Sam to unearth the island’s many secrets, Rilla’s visions grow—until the two discover a tragedy kept silent for years. And it’s a tragedy that has everything to do with Rilla’s past.

Normally, when I dislike the book, I dislike all sorts of things by it, the plot, the characters (especially the characters), hell, usually the writing is the thing I have the least problem with. Not in this case. Okay, the characters weren't the best, but the writing was just... bad.

The annoying thing about the writing is that it could almost be actually kinda good. And I tried to see that. But there's just something about it that just grated me. The writing is, well, a lot of things. It took me quite a lot of reading to figure out exactly what offended me so much about it. And then it hit me. I think the problem is that Parker doesn't know how to transition from one action to another, so it sounds kind of stilted and choppy, and that combined with the elaborateness of the sentences she's writing makes for a very debut-y writing style. This would be fine, EXCEPT SHE'S NOT A DEBUT AUTHOR. This is kind of a good example of what I'm talking about: "I'm grateful when the doorbell announces Brenda Sherfey on the step offering tuna casserole and condolences. I abandon Brenda's food to the counter because the fridge is already crammed with sorrow."

I also got a bit of a paranormal romance novel vibe, though I'm not quite sure why, especially since I've only ever read a grand total of one paranormal romance novel. 

Parker also does little annoying things, like narrate every action, make everything sound overly dramatic as if every little things has a deeper meaning, and, the most annoying thing out of all of it, stating the obvious. Like in this case: "His words confirm that he's 'from away'- a transplant to our state." No shit, I got that because the sentence before he commented about the directness of Mainers. If I said I like how nice people from the Midwest are, would you think I was from the Midwest? No, of course not. I despise it when people waste words. 

In fact, the writing reminds me of a point and click game, or more specifically, one of those Her Interactive Nancy Drew games. I was have expecting some sentence like "I jiggle the door handle. It's locked." to turn up at one point. Actually, if I'm mimicking her writing style, it'd probably be something more along the lines of: "I jiggle the door handle. It won't open. It's locked.". Look, okay, I have a strong nostalgic connection the those games. My sister, best friend at the time, and I all used to crowd around my sister's laptop or one of our two old desktops on some Saturday afternoon back in middle school and play them. I think we only ever actually finished one or two of them, but we still loved them. But that doesn't necessarily mean the narrative style of the games translates well over to print media.

One last point about the writing. I think Parker really needs to stop adding over the top metaphorical imagery to every goddamn sentence. Like this one: "I felt a shiver crawl up the ladder of my spine". Sure, if it had just said "I felt a shiver crawl up my spine" I might have thought it cliche, but I wouldn't hate it. For some reason, the addition of the ladder just irritated me. It still doesn't make it original, and just adds unnecessary weight dragging the sentence down. She really can't leave well enough alone, can she?

So what else is bad about it? The characters are extremely unoriginal. Rilla is your typical Strong Independent Womyn, who comes from a long line of Strong Independent Womyn- including her grandmother, who somehow managed to be a voluntary single mother despite growing up in a time where voluntary single motherhood was not a thing. Sam is like a watered down Augustus Waters, one who doesn't have a romantic attachment to Rilla. He's passionate about things, gives long, poetic speeches, and has quirky exchanges with our main character. He's also basically the personification of the male version of the much-hated Not Like Other Girls trope. Rilla constantly reminds us how he's Not Like Other Boys, he apologizes for interrupting her, he doesn't sit too close to her, he's smart and driven, and forgive me for saying this, but it seems very sexist. Like, a lot of people complain about how sexist the Not Like Other Girls trope is, because it puts down other women or whatever. The Not Like Other Boys is kind of like that, but in a different way, painting men as being idiotic, macho pigs, but not Sam because he's a gentleman. If you are going to condemn one, you must also condemn the other. 

There's other cliched characters, the wise, old, and spiritual grandma (where do all these wise old grandmas come from? Most of the sweet old ladies I know do things like go to church every Sunday, talk about their grandkids, and make sure nobody leaves before they've all gained at least ten pounds), and the old stodgy villain, who goes by the name of Old Man Benner because this is a bad mystery novel, we need a sexist old codger. There's also, in a nice change of pace, a dead dad and a missing mom instead of the opposite. This would be better if the mom's leaving wasn't excused. Interestingly, she seemed kind of unaffected by both. Frankly, if she didn't always explicitly always remind us how much grief she felt, I wouldn't have known at all that she felt any. In fact, the author is so bad at showing things she has to tell us things directly because if she didn't, I would think Rilla is either a robot or a sociopath.

All of this is a shame, because the plot really was a good one. The island of Maluga was an interesting place to set a book, and one with a fascinating history. If Parker had been a more original character creator or a much, much better writer, this book could have really shone. In fact, it probably would have reminded me much more of the Her Interactive Nancy Drew games. I kind of wish it was, called something like the Ghost Girl of Maluga Island because that would have been way more fun than this book ended up being.

2.5 out of 10