The Bones Beneath my Skin

TJ Klune
Completed 9/27/2025, Reviewed 10/1/2025
4 stars

If you love TJ KIune, you’ll love this book.  I loved it, though I recognized it dragged in a few places and had some repetitive sections.  It hits all my buttons, particularly found family and unlikely gay romance.  This book is more of a sci fi thriller than a romance, but the relationship dynamics are awesome.  This book was an unusual turn for Klune, originally self-published, but rereleased by Tor in 2022 after he shot to stardom with The House in the Cerulean Sea.  

Nate Cartwright was fired from the Washington Post for having an illicit moment with a junior representative.  In addition, his parents recently died in a murder-suicide.  Estranged from them and his brother, he only inherited a mountain cabin in Roseville, Oregon, and an old pickup truck.  He decides to escape to the cabin, lick his wounds, and figure out what to do next.  However, when he gets there, he finds a young girl and her “bodyguard.”  They refuse to leave and after a brief, hole-filled accounting of their situation, Nate reluctantly lets them stay.  The bodyguard is Alex, who seems to be an ex-military type.  The girl is ten-year-old Artemis Darth Vader.  She appears to have some unexplainable gifts.  When the house is surrounded by black helicopters and mysterious federal agents, the trio goes on the run, resulting in a cat and mouse chase where Nate is eventually let in on the secrets Alex and Art possess.  

As in most of his books, the protagonist Nate is simply lovable in his brokenness.  You feel for his initial plight, and you understand his decision to protect Art and Alex even though he doesn’t understand it himself.  Nate is tired and empty, but also empathetic and caring.  For some reason he feels drawn to the snarky, wise-cracking little girl, though he can’t figure Alex out.  Alex keeps his feelings and background tightly controlled, only letting Nate learn as much as he deems necessary.  Of course, Nate slowly falls for Alex despite his frustration in his not being completely forthcoming.  

Artemis, or Art, is certainly a mystery through the first two thirds of the book.  At first, she says odd things, like she never met a waitress before or eaten bacon.  Then, on their first encounter with the feds, she uses superpowers to help them escape.  She is clearly not an ordinary child.  Klune keeps her character snarky in just the right amount throughout the book.  She is also very insightful, dropping hints that she knows that Alex and Nate are attracted to each other, despite their protestations.  Through her odd but adult statements, she helps Nate move through his thinking that this is a parental abduction or some scary pedophile thing to an unbelievable government coverup.  

The part that was most problematic for me was the constant bickering between Nate and Alex.  It’s interesting at first, then kind of fun, then just tedious.  When Alex finally starts opening up about himself and Art, the book picks up again.  Despite this, the suspense was still top-notch.  It kept me turning the pages well until late each night.  The science fiction aspect was pretty cool, though we don’t discover all the details until about two-thirds of the way through.  So I’m not revealing it since it would be a spoiler.  There’s also a creepy comet cult led by another ex-military guy from Artemis’ past.  That part made my skin crawl.  It’s clearly a reference to the Heaven’s Gate cult, and if I remember correctly, Klune even has a Nike reference in there somewhere.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  Despite getting all warm and fuzzy as Nate, Art, and Alex’s relationships grew, the repetitive nature of the conflict between Nate and Alex was tiresome.  Art kept it fresh.  I also appreciated the slow explanation of Art and Alex’s origins leading up to this point.  It kept it from feeling like massive info dumps.  The book has that TJ Klune warmth that makes me feel cozy reading his books, whether it’s his mainstream novels, or his more sexually explicit earlier romantasy works like Wolfsong of the Green Creek series.  I can’t wait to read more of his back catalogue, both genre and non-genre.