Great idea and concept for a book. A thoroughly enjoyable read. Highly recommended. .

Thank you NetGalley and Willow Hill Books for providing me with an ARC of <i>Earthbound Bones</i> in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

The Gist

I already had this entire review mapped out when I decided to double check a fact before giving my two-cents’ worth.

It turns out that this new series by the author is a spin-off her previous series called <i>Psychic Seasons</i>.

To most readers, who are familiar with Welling’s work this isn’t really news, but I think it’s important to point out to anyone interested in this new series <i>Earthbound</i>, familiarity with the previous series is necessary.

As I said, I was aware that this was a spin-off, but because I had no opportunity to enjoy the author’s other series, I was quite lost while reading this.

So, be forewarned, dear reader.

The Details

It’s difficult to comment much on the characters, since they have been previously established and developed.

Based on my initial, uninformed impression, I thought the main character came across as haughty.

Obviously, there is a lot of history between the characters that appear to know each other from earlier story lines, so it’s almost impossible for me to give any sort of accurate observation on them.

I thought the writing was very good. There were a few spots throughout that needed another read through and some editing. Some sentences didn’t make much sense. There were a few spelling mistakes and some of the transitions seemed abrupt.

What irked me a lot, besides the fact that I was clearly missing a lot of backstory, which made the full enjoyment of this story nonexistent, was the discrepancy in time.

The story begins with the heading “30 years ago”. After this part of the prologue, it jumps to “3 months later”, which is fine. Nothing wrong with jumping ahead a bit.

But I think in chapter 3 one of the characters takes out his cell phone to take pictures of a crime scene.

How is that possible? 30 years ago plus three months is still way before the advent of the cell phone camera. Or did I miss another jump in time?

That part bothered and added to the mounting frustration of not knowing the finer details of the greater story that had already been shared.

The Verdict

Overall, I wish I had realized that this story required knowledge of the previous series. Some spin-off series require little knowledge of the original series in order for the reader/viewer to keep up with the story. Others require more.

I think once I have some free time, I will try to find a copy of the book in the <i>Psychic Seasons</i>, <i>Rings On Her Fingers</i> to see where and how it all started.

While this book was intriguing based off description, I just couldn't get into it no matter what I tried.

I found the first couple of chapters quite boring but once the story had become established it got going and became quite interesting.
The story of an angel who because of some incident, which is never really clear in this novel, has lost her wings and is now earthbound. It includes a mystery of two murders, one a little boy 30 years earlier which was the most interesting part.