The Skeleton Key” has already been acknowledged in the UK as a best thriller/mystery of 2022 and deservedly so. It was released on Kindle Unlimited for subscribers in the US in September, and the hardcover will be finally available in January. Don’t miss this!

It’s a highly original story: imagine your author dad used your mother as the model for an illustrated puzzle book/treasure hunt. It’s based on a grisly fairy tale/folk song about a woman, Elinore, dismembered by her jealous husband, her bones scattered around Britain. Her lover, Tam, believes if he finds all the bones, she will be resurrected. Mom and Dad also fashioned a tiny golden and bejeweled skeleton that they took apart and buried across the country. The clues to the locations are in the book, “The Golden Bones.” Six of the seven troves were found; the final piece, the pelvis, stays hidden. Flash forward: the couple has a daughter named Eleanor, her mom’s doppelgänger. The book has a cult following and “The Bonehunters” are still looking for that pelvis. When Eleanor was fourteen, a deranged Bonehunter decided that the missing “golden pelvis” was inside the teenager, and attacked her in an attempt to remove her hips. Yeesh.

Flash forward again and it’s the 50th anniversary of the book. Eleanor is now in her mid-forties, works as a glass artist, is known as “Nell,” has a teenage stepdaughter, and is invited back for “celebration” of the book, which is being accompanied by the launch of a new virtual treasure hunt and television coverage of the “reveal.” Her younger brother Dom is the app developer. The grand prize? The missing golden pelvis. Again, the crazies (some now in their 70s) revive their twisted quest after years of stalking the family. At the parents’ house is also Dom’s young teenage daughter, Aiofe, another Elinore clone. And, of course, everything goes wrong with relaunch.

I was addicted immediately. It’s a fairly long book (545 pages), but the intricate story kept moving at a fast pace. It’s centered around Nell’s viewpoint and you feel her trauma as she reconnects with a family she tried to escape. 5 stars for an incredible thriller!

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton/ Hachette Book Group and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): YES That would be Rose.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO A rose garden, however, flourishes with an unusual fertilizer.

The formatting of the kindle arc made it hard to read. Though I assume this would be fixed for the final book.

I really like the addition of the map and family tree.

I found this book very interesting and fun to read. I loved the characters and all the plot twists. From the very beginning I was intrigued to know more about what was going on

What drew me in to The Skeleton Key were a) the cover of the book, which seemed to promise both magic and ordinary life and b) the fact that it was built around a book. In this case, a treasure hunt book that's now 50 years old, involves a quest to re-assemble a skeleton, has a world-wide, obsessive fan base, and has shaped the lives of two close families—one the author/illustrator's, the other his best friend's.

Erin Kelly has structured this novel brilliantly, switching back and forth in time, doling out crucial pieces of information at regular intervals, but never revealing the full story until the novel's conclusion. Normally, this might have been a DNF title for me because it's much more about family dynamics than about a book and the magic it creates, but Kelly kept me hooked.

The narrative voice alternates between omniscient and first-person, and in the first-person sections the voice we hear is that of Nell, short for Eleanor, the daughter of the author/illustrator. The book's skeletal heroine is Elinore, so not surprisingly Nell has been hounded her entire life by "boneheads," individuals attempting to solve the book's puzzles and locate the jeweled bones associated with them. Early on readers learn that, as a child, Nell was attacked by a bonehead who was convinced the removing a bone from the body of the living Nell/Eleanor would somehow complete the quest set up in the book.

The Skeleton Key spins out in multiple directions and readers come to see deep, often disturbing, links among the two central families and immense character flaws in each of these individuals. If you enjoy books drenched in suspense with characters you can never quite be certain of, you're going to love reading The Skeleton Key. I found that to be true—even though the novel wasn't as bookish as I'd hoped when I began reading.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own.

Do you remember Kit William's Masquerade? It was a beautiful children's book that contained rhymes and riddles that would leave seekers to an actual treasure! Like everyone else years ago, I was completely entranced.

The Skeleton Key has taken this idea and adapted it to our own modern electronic world. Nell is the daughter of the famous author of the Golden Bones - a picture book leading to a treasure published 50 years ago and. still unsolved. Her life has been negatively impacted as some of the fans of the book have transformed into fanatics and actually endanger her in their zest to solve the mystery.

Nell has returned to the family mansion for the 50th anniversary of the book. There is a unique cast of characters that shed light on the mysteries of why her parents act in the manner they do as well as what drives many of the other characters in the story. For me, this book could have been 2 novels - there is an awful lot there. But on the other hand,. I loved every minute of it!

If you dream of hidden treasure, love an English Mystery or just want to read a unique mystery thriller, The Skeleton Key is for you!



#Hachette

#TheSkeletonKey #NetGalley Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this novel. Really solid read.

I wanted to like this but found the mystery to not be that enticing and I wanted more from this. The overall thrilling aspects were... less than desired.