Wake the Bones by Elizabeth Kilcoyne
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The Gist
Wake the Bones promises a haunting, Southern Gothic tale steeped in magic and decay. In some ways, it delivers. The rural Kentucky setting is rich and eerie. The prose is lyrical and strange—sometimes beautiful, sometimes overwhelming. But despite all that promise, the story never fully came together for me.
The Details
Laurel Early has always been different. She can read bones. She senses things in the soil. After dropping out of college, she returns to her family’s farm. There, strange things begin to stir. Bones move on their own. The woods seem to breathe. Something old and terrible is waking up.
It’s a strong setup. There’s grief, queerness, folklore, and a powerful sense of place. Kilcoyne clearly has talent. Her writing leans heavily into atmosphere, and the world she creates feels alive with rot and memory. But after the first few chapters, I began to feel lost in the fog.
The plot moves slowly. Too slowly. Moments that should build tension fall flat or pass by in a blur. The supernatural elements are often vague. Rather than feeling eerie, they feel confusing. I found myself flipping back, trying to understand what had just happened—and not always finding answers.
Laurel is a quiet protagonist. She reacts more than she acts. Her emotional arc—tied to her mother’s death, her own identity, and the land around her—feels distant. I wanted more from her. Her friendships with Garrett, Isaac, and Ricky had potential. But those relationships felt underdeveloped, like sketches that never became full portraits.
There are powerful themes at play: inherited trauma, queer identity in a conservative town, the weight of the past. But the book doesn’t dig deep enough. Everything feels just out of reach. There are moments of beauty and insight, but they’re buried in dense, poetic language that sometimes obscures more than it reveals.
Kilcoyne’s writing style is lush, no doubt. But it often works against the story. Scenes that should hit hard get lost in metaphor. The book reads more like a fever dream than a narrative. For some readers, that might be a strength. For me, it made it hard to stay grounded—or emotionally invested.
The Verdict
Overall, Wake the Bones is more mood than movement. It creates an atmosphere you can almost smell and touch. But it doesn’t do enough with it. The horror never quite lands. The characters don’t fully bloom. The plot fades before it can make an impact.
