Home Is Where the Bodies Are is an adult thriller by author Jeneva Rose. She is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author in the thriller/suspense genre. Her best-known books are The Perfect Marriage (2020) and You Shouldn’t Have Come Here (2023). Additionally, Rose writes the Kimberley King detective series. Rose grew up in the small Wisconsin town of Allen’s Grove, which also serves as the setting for Home Is Where the Bodies Are. The town’s old tavern, The Boar’s Nest, also features in the novel. Through a family funeral set in this small town, the novel explores the themes of Trust Issues Break Apart Families, Trauma Traps People in the Past, and The Cost of Keeping Secrets.

This study guide references the Blackstone Publishing 2024 Kindle edition of the novel.

Content Warning: This guide describes and discusses the novel’s treatment of drug addiction and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

The story unfolds over a week during October in a contemporary year. However, the plot hinges on events occurring in 1999, and the novel’s last few chapters take place three years after the central narrative concludes. The story is told from four different perspectives by the deceased Laura Thomas and her three adult children. Each narrator speaks from a first-person perspective. The Thomas siblings describe events happening in the present while Laura’s chapters consist of journal entries and letters written prior to her death.

The novel begins with the elderly Laura Thomas dying of cancer. Her oldest daughter, Beth, observes Laura as she watches one final sunset through her window. Though she can barely speak, Laura tells her daughter that her missing father, Brian, didn’t really disappear seven years earlier. Laura adds, “Don’t trust...” (17) but dies before Beth can determine who or what shouldn’t be trusted. A short while later, Beth’s younger brother, Michael, arrives. He is a successful tech executive who now lives in California. Michael is scornful of Allen’s Grove, the small town where he grew up. He perceives his two siblings as losers who never made anything of their lives. Both Beth and Michael reserve their harshest judgment for their middle sibling, Nicole. She has a drug addiction and promises to kick her habit but never does.

The three survivors stay together in Laura’s house while they sort through her belongings and deal with funeral arrangements. As they play an old home video from 1999, they discover that their father is implicated in the death of a 12-year-old girl named Emma Harper, who supposedly disappeared without a trace. None of them know what to do with this information. Beth used to date Emma’s brother, Lucas, in high school, and his family never recovered from Emma’s disappearance. Lucas’s father died years earlier, and his mother has dementia.

The siblings argue over what to do with the information they have. Nicole suggests reading through their mother’s journals to find answers. They also wonder about their father’s disappearance. The note he left behind suggests that he abandoned his family voluntarily. However, Beth and Nicole never stopped searching for him. Nicole’s drug addiction is the direct result of a car accident that occurred while she was out searching for her father. She developed an addiction to prescription pain killers and has never succeeded in ending her dependence on opioids.

Beth and Nicole both envy Michael because they believe he received preferential treatment from their parents. Michael has become wealthy and successful in California, while his sisters feel stuck in the past in Allen’s Grove. As the siblings ferret out more information about the incident in 1999, they learn that Emma Harper died mysteriously, and their father buried her body somewhere on the property to cover up the crime. Their mother helped him. Later, a local eccentric named Charles Gallagher was accused of killing Emma and was beaten to death by the girl’s father. Brian Thomas also buried this body to keep his friend from going to jail.

Beth’s eventually discovers her father’s grave alongside those of Emma and Charles. Simultaneously, Nicole reads Laura’s posthumous confession that it was Michael who killed their father. Michael is also responsible for Emma’s death years earlier, whom he allegedly killed in a fit of temper. When Michael realizes that Beth and Nicole have discovered his secret, he tries to shoot them both. However, Nicole has already called the police, and Michael is arrested. He is tried and convicted for his crimes.

In the aftermath of these events, Beth makes a better life for herself by marrying Lucas and adopting a son. Nicole finally manages to overcome addiction and writes a best-selling memoir entitled Home Is Where the Bodies Are.