This book is what happens when you have a good idea but a terrible execution – Unbury Carol was a solid meh for me and I abandoned it midway though as it became awfully predictable (a quick glance at the ending told me what I already suspected).

The premise of the book is good. Carol Evers, married, no children, is attending the burial of her best gay friend in the wild wild west and the second person (actually third) who knew of her terrible affliction. She would sometimes go into a deep coma, spontaneously, and she would feel like eternally falling through the air in a new dimension called hollowtown. The thing is, she can still hear what’s happening around her.

Once back home from the funeral, she attempts to tell her maid, Farrah, what’s going on with her, but she faints and her husband rushes to declare her dead in order to get her inheritance. With the help of an unscrupulous doctor, he plans a quick funeral for her in town and acts the part – a husband hit with the early departure of his wife.

But there’s a third, an outlaw called Moxie, who dated carol briefly in her youth and when he hears of her death (from the maid), he rushes as quick as his outlaw horse can carry him to save her from being buried alive.

Every line in Carol’s face, every fold in a skirt she once wore, even the dust at the tip of her boots—any and all of it were the rendering of this guilt, this good-promise destroyed, by him, two decades past, before his name was known on the Trail, before he assumed the life of the outlaw for having broken his own inner codes, the laws within, without the knowledge of course of how to fix them.

There’s a conveyor-belt of characters and side plots and scheming but they don’t amount to much. Nobody is likeable. Not even Carol. I shelved it after about 4 failed attempts at continuing to read it.