Bones by K L Speer Book Review

 

Bones by K L Speer Book Review 

Bones by KL Spear and it is Bones number one. Now, according to Goodreads, it has a fairly high rating and I am sorry to say, but my rating is not going to be that high. I probably give this a three to a three and a half stars. And I will talk to you guys about why.

I almost never come on here and talk about a book that I didn't enjoy, but this one has a lot of things about it, and it has an audience that seems to have really enjoyed it. There were just a lot of things going on that we can talk about once I get the summary done. So, let's dive into that and we'll go from there.

Bones was born with a miraculous power to heal. But all her gift has brought is death. As a child, her older brother trained her to survive, and so survive she did. The blood on her hands will never wash off. She is broken and scarred in more ways than one, but she survived. After finally escaping the ruthless raiders who imprisoned her for 12 long years, Bones is haunted by her past and desperate for atonement. Freedom is short-lived, however, as the rumors of her abilities catch up to her.

Dragged to the northwest mountain stronghold known as the vault, Bones finds herself involuntarily drawn to the tight-knit crew who captured her, and the feelings she begins to develop for Trey, the heart of the crew, scare her more than all the horrors of her past. 

Bones struggles to maintain her distance, navigate her trauma, and deal with the new horrifying ways her healing powers are used to root out a budding revolution. As her defenses slowly break down, everything she believed about herself and the world is challenged, forcing her to confront the question, “What are you surviving for?”

This is the post-apocalyptic romantic that deals with dark themes. Check content warnings at the author's website: KL Spear. That's KLSpear.com/contentwarnings. It is considered a dark romance or romance dystopia. Maybe dark romance is not for me. It has some spicy scenes in it; I’m not mad about that. This book, though, drove me insane.

If this girl had said she was fine one more time, I was going to DNF this book so fast. But I didn’t, because she said she was fine more times than I can count, to the point that I think if one of my friends says they are fine in real life, I’m going to smack them and then tell them they are lying to me because there is no way I can ever trust anybody who says they’re fine. 

The thing is, the people around her don’t believe she’s fine. They know she’s not fine, but she’s so closed-lipped about herself that all she ever has to say to anybody is that she’s fine.

She was captured when she was young, maybe about 12 years old. She had been kicked out of her original home group due to something that really didn’t sound like it was her fault, but she was 10 years old at the time. She blamed herself, her father blamed her, her brother blamed her.

She’s not fine and she hasn’t been fine for a very long time—let's just say for the past 14 years. From the point she was kicked out of her family group to the moment she finds herself with Trey and his crew, she’s not been fine. She was barely surviving while she was in another raider group. 

This raider group was very rough and rugged, but she was treated as the personal property of their leader. She was not allowed to heal anyone except him. Then somebody else found out she could heal, and the crew found out, and it started a sort of revolution.

She finds herself locked up somewhere that seems like a vault. She is rescued or pulled out by Trey and his crew. Trey gets injured, so she heals him. They take her back to their madam, who is the leader of their vault. Every time they said vault, my brain went to Fallout. I assume it was more like a compound like in The Walking Dead with barbed wire, fencing, and guards.

I get that she can’t trust anybody, but there was just something about it where I felt like, “Girl, if you hate it so much, just leave.” Yet she was abrasive and mean at so many times. On one hand, I get it. On the other hand, it grated on my nerves. I didn’t see a single ray of hope in this book until one particular point, and then the author decided to extinguish that too.

I’m not a fan of Game of Thrones for similar reasons: torture, abuse, gore, starvation, trauma. I don’t read books for that. I already feel like my brain has enough trauma from the dumpster fire we’re currently living in. The more I read this book, the more I struggled. Yes, I did finish it, but will I read book number two? No, probably not.

I almost DNFed it at about 30% when people were trying so hard to welcome her and be nice to her. The madam is really hateful. She uses Bones as a torture device. She tortures someone to the brink of death, has Bones heal them, and does it again until Bones runs out of power.

There was a lot about this book that drove me crazy. I know I’m not the only one who almost DNFed it. Some reviewers did DNF at around 50%. I don’t frequently bring books that I don’t feel good recommending. This could absolutely be many people's cup of tea. They could like the angst, the characters, the buildup. It wasn’t for me.

I don’t feel like the world-building was really there. I don’t know what happened to create this post-apocalyptic world. Maybe we’re supposed to find out in later books, but honestly, I’m not that interested. It’s heartbreaking without any source of hope, and I need rays of hope to keep going.

Looking at Goodreads, it has 1,356 five-star reviews. I am not one of them. But 79% of reviewers gave it four or five stars out of over 2,800 reviews. So I know it’s a me thing. This book hit some triggers I was not ready for.

I wanted to see whether more people were liking it, and many are. There are 721 written reviews. Only 2% are one-star reviews. That’s impressive. It looks like the author only has two books, this and its sequel, Fangs. It leaves off on a big cliffhanger, but I’m not going into the next book. Maybe the brutality didn’t work for me. Maybe the unease it gave me made me want to stop.

For tropes, there is found family, grumpy sunshine, “who did this to you?”, “touch her and I’ll kill you,” love-to-hate, one bed, and spice. Trigger warnings include gore, torture, sexual abuse, poverty, starvation, PTSD, trauma, and mental health struggles. So please be aware.

If this sounds like something you might be interested in, please give it a chance. I’m giving it three stars. It’s not for me, but it could be for some of you. I wanted to bring my perspective because I know I’m an outlier.

So, with all that being said, I’ll leave this here and let you decide if Bones by KL Spear is something you're interested in. Bones is not her real name, but the name she goes by.

 

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