On Sale: 11th August 2026
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books, Inc
ISBN: 9781636799995
This novel is the latest work from author Bailey Bridgewater, and while both title and cover art suggest (to me at least!) that one is in for a nice Southern Gothic story (of which I am quite fond), this is a relatively solid but unflashy queer, mystery novel. There’s a vague hint of a potential gothic horror element to the storyline when ghosts start appearing, but it never really develops, so expect a mystery novel with plenty of murder, one bisexual FMC, who took ‘be gay, do crime’ a bit too literally and one absolutely oblivious lesbian FMC who needs a rapid introduction to the idea that your lover can be lovely to you but also be a bad person to everyone else!
The novel is primarily set in Louisiana, is not exclusively packed full of white people (hooray!), and does offer some very surprising twists. I quite like unpredictability in a story, especially a mystery, but they do need to have some grounding in the internal reality of the story. I’m not sure all of the BAZINGA! moments in The Bayou Keeps The Bones do meet that requirement. The plot isn’t so incredulous to be absolutely unhinged, nor does it stray into a state of incoherence, but it does, in places, absolutely stretch the reality of the setting to almost translucence.
What this novel does do extroardinarily well, is offer complicated main characters who defy the reader in terms of how one might categorise them. While Florence is clearly set up as our bad/dark/criminal character, with her hopelessly innocent and naive counterpoint in Cass, Florence is not (at least in the beginning) a clearcut ‘bad’ person. She’s complicated, in a way that is almost hilarious for the amount that Cass isn’t complicated. Reading through, it’s hard to dislike Florence, even when she’s doing extremely dislikeable things. It was harder (for me, at least) to like Cass, because she is one of the most vanilla characters to ever existed. Her desperation to please, and her lack of a strongly defined personality, somehow becomes a personality. It’s an extremely interesting dynamic to read through!
The big thing I disliked about the novel was the repeated flipping between narrating from the point of view of Florence and Cass. There was no formalised announcement of these changes, you just get about a page and a half of one character’s (first person) narrative and then all of a sudden you’re reading the other characters narration. I am not, in general a fan of perspective flipping like this, or of first person narrative, but there was something particularly jarring in the way Bridgewater deploys this approach. This shouldn’t stop you from reading the book, but it’s worth knowing about in advance.
Overall this is a solid but basic novel. There are no bells and whistles, it’s not something I’m likely to read again, but, it makes a reasonable addition to a mystery/thriller based book club list, it is an an enjoyable and untaxing read that raises some interesting questions. I would have LOVED to see the tantalising glimpse of a southern gothic novel storyline that is hinted at but never developed, but I love a gothic novel more than I love a mystery.
Rating (out of five): 🛡️🛡️🛡️
Do Expect: A decidedly queer, southern novel, complete with a NOLA Mardi Gras ball, and long haul truck rides
Don’t Expect: The ghosts to go anywhere
Books and Bothies 