Told from four perspectives, Home is Where the Bodies Are narrates the story of three estranged adult siblings coming together for the first time in over seven years upon the occasion of their mother’s death. Their reunion is rife with resentment and notably lacking in filial love. As Beth (the eldest, who cared for Mom in her final days), Nicole (recovering drug addict middle sister), and Michael (youngest brother, working in tech in California with no interest in his family) go through the tapes, journals, and belongings their mother left them, they discover a mistakenly recorded tape from June 15, 1999 which documents

their parents burying the body of the town’s missing child, the younger sister of Beth’s high school boyfriend.

This discovery overwhelms all three siblings, and the resentment deepens as they try to figure out what to do with this new information. 

The suspense builds and drops, and I found the obvious withholding of information frustrating. Characters would find out information from a letter, or Laura (the mother) would acknowledge an aspect of her life, and then the chapter would end. This structure felt clumsy and irritating. 

That said, I did enjoy the epilogue, and I was relieved to see the characters together and getting what they deserved.