Name: Colton Ray's review of Bone Gap by Laura Ruby
Item: Bone Gap
Rating: 3
Author: Colton Ray

Laura Ruby

Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps - gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza goes missing, the people of Bone Gap aren't surprised. After all, it isn't the first time someone's slipped away and left Finn and Sean O'Sullivan on their own. Finn knows that's not what happened with Roza. He knows she was kidnapped, ripped from the cornfields by a man whose face he cannot remember. But no one believes him anymore. Well, not quite no one. Petey Willis, the beekeeper's daughter, suspects that lurking behind Finn's self-loathing is a story worth uncovering. And as we, like Petey, follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap - their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures - the truth about what happened to Roza is slowly revealed.

Bone Gap

Sam Spott

"Bone Gap marks Laura Ruby as one of fiction's most original voices. She is capable of moving you to tears, terrifying you on deep and dreamlike levels, and making your heart shout with happiness. This book is magic realism at its most magical." —E. Lockhart, author of We Were Liars Bone Gap is the story of Roza, a beautiful girl who is taken from a quiet midwestern town and imprisoned by a mysterious man, and Finn, the only witness, who cannot forgive himself for being unable to identify her kidnapper. As we follow them through their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures, acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a heartbreaking tale of love and loss, magic and mystery, regret and forgiveness—a story about how the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.

Colton Ray

A very hazy read that jumps back and forth in time with a lot of dream sequences. It had a lot of ambition and a great eerie, rural setting, but I didn't always understand the motivations of the characters or even what was going on from scene to scene due to everything being metaphorical and magical. This is the kind of book that demands a very slow read-through, and unfortunately I had to skim this for a class I'm taking so that may be why I couldn't grasp everything the author was getting at.

Sarah Sammis

It's in the neighborhood of The Boneshaker by Kate Milford, Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. 

http://pussreboots.pair.com/blog/2016...

Kahli Scott

What a beautiful and unique story. My only minor criticism is that the first part of this book is a bit too dreamy and cryptic and takes a while to grab you, but I'd urge you to persist if you're feeling this way - you won't be disappointed. I really started to get into it when kickass beekeeper Petey Willis began showing up more. I'd call this surrealism moreso than magical realism, but all the best books are hard to define. Overall, it's gorgeous and meaningful and unlike anything else in YA at the moment.

Alexa M

3.5
this was strange but fun! pretty solid YA book. bit of Raven Cycle vibes to be honest..

National Book Award Finalist * Printz Award Winner for Best Young Adult Book of the Year “Ruby’s novel deserves to be read and reread. It is powerful, beautiful, extraordinary.”—School Library Journal Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. But Finn knows what really happened to Roza. He knows she was kidnapped by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember. As we follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap, acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a tale of the ways in which the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.

Jeannette Ordas

Magic realism fairy tales aren't generally my bag, but this book was so much more than that. Beautifully written, full of strong wonderful characters and straight up feminist. Enjoyable. 4.5 stars.

Briar Rose

*Review also posted at Briar Rose Reads

There's a gap in the cornfields, and if you fall through, you'll find yourself Somewhere Else.

Laura Ruby's BONE GAP was one of the most original books I've read recently, twining together the eerie and the mundane, the past and the present, in a truly haunting medley.

Finn knows beautiful Roza was taken, but he can't tell by whom. His brother Sean, who loved her, can't forgive him for that. Finn determines to find Roza, even as he falls for Petey, the local Bee Girl--called that both for the fact that she raises bees, and for her strange face which entrances Finn, even as others call it ugly.

In the past, Roza leaves her homeland for America, where she encounters a man who will do anything to own her--even pull her out of our world, through the gaps into Somewhere Else.

Weird and dusty and beautiful, BONE GAP was packed with original characters, in an ordinary little town that was anything but, beneath a looming threat as inexorable as a summer storm.

The greatest power of magical realism, in my opinion, is its plausibility: we've all had those moments where we could almost sense something more, just beyond the edges of the known world. This book made excellent use of that, weaving a story out of the ordinary otherworldly magic of cornfields, silvered and rustling in the moonlight... and the all-too-common, terrifying menace of men who would go to any length to possess women they find beautiful.

Nicole Dykeman

I flew through this. It was a super quick read, and I definitely enjoyed it and I loved all of the characters. The writing is really beautiful. The plot was easy enough to follow. But at the same time, I can't help but feel like I just didn't quite...get it? I must be missing something. Something about this book makes me feel like the themes just flew right over my head.

Emily Perkovich

This book was difficult for me to get into. I’m not really sure why. I just kept zoning out and having to reread passages in the first few chapters. But once the story got going, I really loved it.

Elaina Wells

I tried to like this book...I really did. The only reason I started to read this book was for one of my college classes this semester, and I started out intrigued by it because of the title and the blurb. However, it quickly became apparent that this is not a book for me. By the time I was sixty-five pages into Bone Gap, I had no clue what the plot was of the book, and what direction it would be taking. Usually, it doesn't take me long to get a feel for the plot of a book, but I struggled with this one.

It starts out with one of the main characters, Finn, becoming plagued with nightmares because he saw Roza, the other main character, get kidnapped. However, the other people of the town of Bone Gap don't believe Finn when he claims she was taken. I don't know, there were some interesting backstory flashbacks for Roza that I kind of enjoyed, and that's why I gave it three stars instead of the two I originally wanted to. I even tried to push through the beginning of the book, but by the time I was 130 pages in, I was just as confused as I was when I started the book. 

This is hard for me to write because I normally am easy-going when it comes to the books I read, and it doesn't take much for me to like one, but I just couldn't finish Bone Gap for some reason.

Sarah Vaughan

One of the best YA novels I've ever read. Magical, adventurous, exhilarating.

Jen Estrella

"I heard you weren't getting much sleep."
"Come on"
"It's Bone Gap. People talk."
"Which people?"
"All of them," 
"You might be wandering around in the dark, but we can all hear the hoofbeats."


Magical realism is a genre I can't quite get enough of. Normally, I would have gushed about how beautiful the prose is or how much of a page-turner the story is, but Bone Gap is different. It didn't have the same spark that The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender had, so I was really tempted to put it away. 

But I didn't, which was probably one of the better choices I've made. 

Not a lot of people would find this story engaging. The entire book is coated in prose which I normally would have appreciated had it not seem (at times) muddled and spacey. I can't quite put my foot on it. I've always looked forward to being captivated by worlds created by elegant words, but I didn't find a lot of things to like even after about a hundred pages or so. 

HOWEVER, things started to fare differently after the big reveal, and I found myself more wrapped up in the story than before. Only then did I see it - the mystery lurking behind those beautiful words. 

Still, the unique thing about the story is that it doesn't depend on the mystery to keep it going. There are heaps of ponder-able ideas. I found myself thinking about Bone Gap and the feelings of its inhabitants. I thought that a lot of people were to blame, even Finn, even Sean, even Petey, but the reveal demanded me to stop and rethink everything. Not everything is what it seems. Oh stop it. What a painfully cliche thing to say. 

This book can make you think and rethink a lot of things. Every character has something to hide. You think you've adjusted to their thoughts, but you haven't. Not yet, not until everything is out in the open. 


  Being gorgeous might be more trouble than it's worth.


This book isn't just about Roza and her disappearance. It's about so many things. It talks about beauty and love in their most complicated forms. It differentiates looking but not looking, seeing but not seeing, looking without seeing, seeing without looking. I don't want to give away any more specific themes because it might tarnish the mystery and the goodness of it all. 

Bone Gaps starts painfully slow but becomes brisk and enchanting along the way. It's a good read if you fancy fantasy and magical realism, refreshing relationships, and the comforting presence of animals. Oh and talking corns too.

Amanda Wells

Once this book had its claws in, it really had them in. 
I read this at the same time as I was reading Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant, and the combination of the two wove a very interesting web of near-realism into my thoughts.

Bone Gap is a wonderful book. Each character is both believable in and of themselves, and symbolic. The dialogue is at once realistic and lyrical. The magical elements are so seamlessly introduced that there is no sense of suspending disbelief.

Plus - at more than one point I gasped at how wonderful the writing was. I particularly loved the Theory of Love poem, as well as Finn's conversations with animals.

I'll stop myself before I gush too much - suffice it to say, I recommend this book highly.

National Book Award Finalist “Ruby’s novel deserves to be read and reread. It is powerful, beautiful, extraordinary.”—School Library Journal Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps. So when young, beautiful Roza went missing, the people of Bone Gap weren’t surprised. But Finn knows what really happened to Roza. He knows she was kidnapped by a dangerous man whose face he cannot remember. As we follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap, acclaimed author Laura Ruby weaves a tale of the ways in which the face the world sees is never the sum of who we are.

Dorian Avers

I had been interested in this book for a couple years. My sister's class was reading it and I was excited to borrow it. I was a bit disappointed. I thought most of the book was pretty obvious and the magical realism just takes over the last part of the book and it feels a bit disconnected. I liked the characters enough, but I don't really understand all the awards. My teenage sister really liked it though, so maybe I just missed it.


Quotes:
* "But a pretty face is just a lucky accident. Pretty can't feed you. And you'll never be pretty enough for some people" (92).

Anastaciya

2020 - still magical, still a favourite. Would give it another 5 stars if I could

2015 - Oh my god!.. that's a new favourite! It's a bit creepy, it's magical... really nice characters. Everything I love in a book. Reading this book was like having a dream! Perfect.

Elad Schulman

The writing of this book was lyrical, the characters complex, and the plot was something that you wished would never end. 

The relationship that Finn and Petey had was so beautiful, and everytime they would be together, I would smile. Sean and Roza were so amazing, both when they were together, and when they were not. Every single character added such depth to the story, and all I want to do is go back and read it all over again.

He'd been drawn here by the grass and the bees and the strange sensation that this was a magical place, that the bones of the world were a little looser here, double-jointed, twisting back on themselves, leaving spaces one could slip into and hide . . . Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps - gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza goes missing, the people of Bone Gap aren't surprised. After all, it isn't the first time someone's slipped away and left Finn and Sean O'Sullivan on their own. Finn knows that's not what happened with Roza. He knows she was taken, ripped from the cornfields by a man whose face he can't remember. But no one believes him anymore. Well, almost no one. Petey Willis, the beekeeper's daughter, suspects that lurking behind Finn's fearful shyness is a story worth uncovering. But as we, like Petey, follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap - their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures - the truth about what happened to Roza is slowly revealed. And it is stranger than you can possibly imagine

Stefie 

I really want to love this book. But sadly, it’s not for me :( Sorry!

I had this book on my TBR for quite a while, and thought it would be perfect for autumn since it sounds creepy from the summary. I mean, it has those creepy scenes. But, not all. I was mostly confused. 
I almost DNF this book after 80% reading it. Because it was slow, then it was filled with romance (that feels like YA contemporary) while I was expecting more adventure, magic, & creepiness. In addition to that, I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters in the book. It felt so distant and I just didn’t care of what happened to them.

Two stars is for the ending. Because the last 50-60 pages was good. The vibes, the creepiness that the ending part has, was what I have been waiting from the very beginning.

Sam Spott &
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby

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