Home Is Where the Bodies Are
- 288
- Pages
- about 5 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 3 weeks on the list, peaked at #6
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
“Home Is Where the Bodies Are” is a quick family thriller with a strong hook: a dead mother, three estranged siblings and what their parents hid. Chapters switch between the siblings and their mother’s diary, which keeps the pace up. Some readers solve the mystery early and find the prose heavy with clichés and laboured metaphors; others are caught out by the ending and leave satisfied. It suits readers who want momentum above all.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
A New York Times and USA Today bestseller From #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Marriage and You Shouldn’t Have Come Here comes a chilling family thriller about the (sometimes literal) skeletons in the closet. After their mother passes, three estranged siblings reunite to sort out her estate. Beth, the oldest, never left home. She stayed with her mom, caring for her until the very end. Nicole, the middle child, has been kept at arm’s length due to her ongoing battle with a serious drug addiction. Michael, the youngest, lives out of state and hasn’t been back to their small Wisconsin town since their father ran out on them seven years before. While going through their parents’ belongings, the siblings stumble upon a collection of home videos and decide to revisit those happier memories. However, the nostalgia is cut short when one of the VHS tapes reveals a night back in 1999 that none of them have any recollection of. On screen, their father appears covered in blood. What follows is a dead body and a pact between their parents to get rid of it, before the video abruptly ends. Beth, Nicole, and Michael must now decide whether to leave the past in the past or uncover the dark secret their mother took to her grave.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 6.9 across 256 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 64% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Thriller average of 7.6. That is how 7.2 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 7.6 | 5 | 2% |
| Hardcover | 6.9 | 251 | 98% |
Frequently asked
How long is Home Is Where the Bodies Are?
It has 288 pages — shorter than 95% of the ranked books in Thriller.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Thriller — with scores between 7.1 and 7.2, closest to this book.
