It has been ten years since Abby Williams left her small town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago, she has a thriving career, a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless one-night stands. But a new case takes her back home to Barrens. Tasked with investigating the town’s most high-profile company and economic heart, Abby begins to find strange connections to Barrens’ biggest scandal from more than a decade ago involving the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friends—just before Kaycee disappeared for good. Abby knows the key to solving any case lies in the weak spots, the unanswered questions. But as Abby tries to find out what really happened to Kaycee, she unearths an even more disturbing secret—a ritual called “The Game,” which will threaten the reputations, and lives, of the community and risk exposing a darkness that may consume her.
Overall, Bonfire is a very intriguing book with multiple mysteries to uncover. Is Optimal poisoning Barrens? Where did Kaycee go? What is, and who started the Game? What happened to Abby when she was younger? There were so many questions which made me continue reading right to the end. One of my main concerns about these questions, is that the ‘Game’ doesn’t seem as important in hindsight as the blurb makes it out to be. I feel like it was something when Abby was younger, but now it has evolved to be something very different and I’m still unsure as to how Abby got from A to B when investigating. I may need to reread this one.
Bonfire is very well written and Ritter has done really well for a debut novel. But it does suffer from tropes and a love triangle. One of the big tropes is small town girl escapes small town, becomes lawyer, returns to small town to solve childhood mystery. It’s a very predictable plotline, although Ritter has made it quite interesting. The love triangle on the other hand made no indent into the overall plotline for me.
It’s not a bad book, but it’s also not a great book. The tropes, romance and slow pace getting into it just led me to think of it as mediocre. I read it over 2 weeks ago now and I’m already struggling to remember the details. It just wasn’t a book that has stuck in my mind.
Positives
+ Intriguing
+ Well written
+ Not a bad book…
Negatives
– Slow pace
– The ‘Game’ doesn’t seem as important as the blurb makes it out to be
– Had a lot of tropes in it
– Love triangle
I received Bonfire* by Krysten Ritter from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.
View Comments (2)
That’s interesting. Considering the ending of the book, the game seemed an important part of the book to me. But it was focused on very suddenly toward the end with very little lead up besides a light theme of sexual assault mentioned a few times.
Yeah I think the lack of build up (for me anyway) felt a bit off and made me disregard the game as an important plot point - I just think if it had been pulled from the book it could have still worked out as it did. But again, this is all my own opinion on it.