I loved The Woman Upstairs, found the relationship between the successful and unsuccessful artist intriguing, found its themes (shame and envy as the shadow side of admiration) and the plot very compelling. I found the mainstream teenage narrator of The Burning Girl less compelling. Her judgmental and at times condescending view of her wilder more troubled friend and her mother and her unquestioning belief in her own wise mother/good family flattened the narrative for me. I didn't think it worked having Cassie's story told thirdhand to her friend Peter and then to the narrator. Cassie's experience was poeticized at points but her point of view didn't come across in a particular way for me. Some aspects of the girls' experiences seemed real but not that interesting.

Claire Messud’s latest novel, set in a small town in New England, explores the friendship between two girls, Julia and Cassie, who having become close in nursery school, find their friendship disintegrating as they navigate their way through adolescence, partly due to the social differences between them. It’s a perceptive and accurate portrait of female friendship, of coming-of-age in a small town, of teenage angst and insecurity, but in the words of another Goodreads reviewer, who summed up my own feelings better than I can, “The Burning Girl is a novel that never really catches fire”. Nicely put. The whole book felt lacklustre and almost banal at times. It’s not an original topic, teenage friendship, and Messud brings nothing new to the subject. And then there are some superfluous sub-plots that add little to the narrative, plus some loose ends and hints about characters, (particularly concerning Cassie’s step-father, which promised to bring a sinister element to the story), that come to nothing. All in all, a rather ordinary tale which fell flat for me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Claire Messud and her team for providing me weith a copy of this book.

I dont know where to start with this one.

The story follows two friends Julia and Cassie who through school grow apart, we folloe the journey through Julia's eye's and thought's. Although i liked it I thought that it could of been a lot better, it was just a bit bland for me.

I would still like to saywell done to Claire for giving the readers a good book to read I did like it but I felt that there was mystery and suspence missing, if this had something more that readers could sink their teeth into I think it would of been a much more interesting read.

I really enjoyed Messud's new novel. Having really liked 'The Emperor's Children' and some of her other novels, this definitely didn't disappoint. It's a story of childhood and relationships, of darkness where there should be light - and how, as a youth, the distant realities of adulthood are exactly that - distant. Messud has written a thought-provoking novel about Julia and Cassie, showing how divergent similar children's lives can become with little warning.

This is basically about friendship and how devastating it can be when it goes wrong. Julia and Cassie are friends they come from totally different backgrounds but when they get to know each other that doesn't seem to matter.They explore the woods and quarry near their neighbourhood and also the derelict asylum building. They are sure they will be friends forever but when Cassie starts meeting with other people and leaving Julia behind the rift seems to be something they can get over and back on track, can't it?
I felt that there was no real explanation abut why Cassie felt the way she did and as this is told by Julia can we be sure that she is an honest narrator?. I did feel that it lost it's way in the middle of the book but all in all a good read and an insight into those friendships we all had and left behind.
Thank you to Netgalley for a copy of the book.

The Burning Girl is a coming of age story of best friends Cassie and Julia. As their paths diverge, Cassie starts to make more and more decisions which could endanger not just their friendship but her life. Julia worries but can Cassie really be saved? 

I wasn't quite sure what The Burning Girl was about when I started reading and found that the title isn't really related to the story. It's a very straight forward coming of age story for two friends who grow to be very dissimilar.

The Burning Girl is from Julia's point of view, but its Cassie who really has the story to tell. Although they've grown apart Julia still seems to know everything about Cassie. A lot of Cassie's story is given through second and third hand accounts. As Cassie has told someone what happened and that person has told Julia. So the narrative of the story is very untrustworthy. 

Nearing the end of the book there was tension and suspense but the majority of the book was quite slow. I felt the length of the timeline hindered the pacing as we follow Julia throughout years. There's not even that much of a story arc going on within her younger years. 

Another issue was that sometimes The Burning Girl was emotional and sometimes it felt like an objective overview. Julia was narrating Cassie's life for the audience with brief asides of emotion but it was mostly factual. Between the point of view being Julia and the objective feel, I never really cared for Cassie.  

Overall, I think The Burning Girl just wasn't a book for me, as I enjoy big epic fantasies and action packed stories. I received The Burning Girl* by Claire Messud as an e-book from the publisher via Netgalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.

If I were allowed a half star, this would get 3.5 stars. Alas, GoodReads does not allow for such detailed ratings, so we'll have to stick to three.

"The Burning Girl" explores the intense friendships between young girls, in this case, Julia and Cassie. It really captures how wonderful and terrifying they can be, particularly when you're thick as thieves but as also when things start to sour and you start to drift apart.

That being said, the story does tend to drift along for most of the book, until something finally happens in the final third of the book. The writing is beautiful, but it wasn't enough to keep me engaged.

I really liked "The Woman Upstairs"-- the final twist is still with me years later-- but I found this novel not to be as compelling.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

'The Burning Girl’ by Claire Messud tells the story of Julia Robinson and her friendship with Cassie Burnes during their childhood growing up in the small Massachusetts town of Royston. After meeting at nursery, they are inseparable throughout school but looking back years later, Julia remembers the circumstances which led to them drifting apart.

It is inevitable that any literary fiction about the nuances of female friendship in late childhood will now be compared to 'My Brilliant Friend' by Elena Ferrante, particularly when one character is dominant and outgoing (Lila/Cassie) while the other is awkward, lacks self-confidence and mostly lives in the shadow of their captivating friend (Elena/Julia). Like the first book in the Neapolitan Novels series, ‘The Burning Girl’ looks at the intensity of the complex and subtle power struggles that exist between girls at school but Messud’s fifth novel also focuses more on the often unspoken barriers presented by social class.

Julia and Cassie find that different expectations are placed on them by their peers and teachers based on the perceived circumstances of their home life and this divide is ultimately what separates them later in life, particularly when they develop different interests and they can no longer bond over make-believe worlds in the way that they did as children. Julia is from a stable family with educated and supportive parents whereas Cassie is a disaffected student and doesn’t get on with her mother’s sinister new partner, Dr. Anders Shute. Although Julia and Cassie’s friendship doesn’t end as explosively as the title and cover design suggests (it’s more of a slow-burn that fizzles out on its own), there is still a palpable sense of dread and injustice as the story approaches its sad conclusion when Cassie attempts to track down the man she believes is her supposedly dead father.

In a recent interview in the Guardian, Messud said: “In the last few years I have come to feel that maybe in 50 years there won’t be novels, that people won’t have the attention for it.” I don’t share such a pessimistic view of the appetites of future generations for complex narratives but the well-drawn characters of Julia and Cassie certainly sustained my interest and Messud is just as perceptive about early adolescence in ‘The Burning Girl’ as she is about women approaching middle age in her memorable rage-fest of a novel 'The Woman Upstairs'.

An insightful, unique & beautifully-written coming-of-age story that with moments of absolute brilliance but an anti-climactic ending in which nothing much is resolved and too many questions left unanswered.

Claire Messud's latest novel The Burning Girl, has been highly anticipated and with a great blurb and cover art it was one I was really looking forward to reading.

Julia and Cassie are the best of friends and this is a tale of how their friendship grows apart as they begin to grow up, as well as Cassie's steady decline. The novel captures the reader's attention enough to make you keep reading to find out what will happen - taunted by the knowledge that Cassie disappears, you are compelled read on to discover her fate.

However, as interesting as the story is from this perspective the reasons behind the events of the novel are evasive - rather than a gritty exposé on abuse, or teenage mental health, the causes of Cassie's downfall are murkily unclear and vague. It does offer a sense of ambiguity and mystery to leave these loose ends unrevealed, particularly considering the novel is from Julia's perspective as an outsider, though it is this perspective that fails to tap into anything deeper within the novel.

The concept is appealing - we all have friends that we have grown apart from and as a story to explore it has so much potential - we want to understand why this happens. However, alongside this lack of depth to the novel, the interactions and attempts to be up to date and relevant seemed a little clumsy. It is difficult to reproduce the speech of teenagers but it was hard to believe that girls of this age behaving or talking in the way they did - it is a fine balance when trying to pitch age between making teens sound too childish but also allowing them unrealistic freedoms. It felt like the novel was striving to be relevant and current with references to Instagram, rather than feeling like technology was a natural part of their lives.

The Burning Girl truly had the potential to be an incredible exploration of girlhood friendship - something which doesn't often get explored in literature, or any kind of media. However, it unfortunately missed the mark, which was a real shame.

This kind of books always appeal to me, but this time I couldn't get into The Burning Girl. Although I liked the author's writing style, I felt like nothing was happening at all. I guess I thought this would be a different kind of book so by the time I reached the second part I realized what this book really was about. And I think I would've wanted it to be shorter because I got so bored. And I gave up. I think I could've enjoyed this in another time, but this wasn't the right moment.

This was a so-so book for me, the setting and characters were interesting and the writing is good quality, however I didn't get the intensity of the story that some others have described, it pottered along and as the narrator had already told us something goes badly wrong you are sort of waiting for that to happen as she reflects back on her younger days. I think if I had read this during my teenage years it would have resonated more strongly, the emotions of that age are so raw and complex and the girls friendships and family relationships reflect that well.

The Burning Girl is a beautifully written coming-of-age story about a friendship that somewhere along the lines changed from what one would consider "best friends" to something entirely unrecognizable. Female friendship is a complex, intricate sort of thing. There are so many layers to what on the outside looks like a self-explanatory thing. This is the sort of intense friendship fueled by desire and toxicity that is more delicate than it first seems. The writing is standout here.

The Burning Girl is a beautifully written and really engaging coming of age tale, following the ups and downs of the friendship between Julia and Cassie – once inseparable, then peripheral, it is a story of growing up and growing apart.

Told from Julia’s point of view, we meet the girls when they are young, a little wild at times, but utterly joined, neither of them can imagine a time or a life without the other in it. But sometimes nurture tells, Cassie has a very different home and family life to Julia, as they reach high school and beyond it becomes apparent that both are faced with very different choices.

I loved this story – I was rooting for both Julia and Cassie – and Claire Messud brought them both to vivid life on the page even though we were seeing through one filtered eye. Julia loves her friend even when they are no longer close, ultimately though the hard truths hit her, you can’t save everybody. The friendship between them dies slowly and there is no one point that you can say there, its done. The descriptive prose is hugely immersive, the community in which they live, the people around them, all the little ups and downs that affect how they are, all come into play and this is somewhat of a page turner.

Mostly I found it to be hugely insightful. It got me thinking back to those friends I remember from my young years who have fallen by the wayside with no great fanfare. There one day, gone the next, you may never know how their lives play out. The feelings that Julia has about her friendship with Cassie hits home on more than one level and whilst Claire Messud uses a slightly more dramatic set of events than might be usual to show this dying friendship, it is authentically believable.

By the end of The Burning Girl I was slightly melancholy, inclined to think about my own coming of age and where it lead me, this is thought provoking and very very real.

Definitely recommended.

I'd give this book 3.5 stars.

The storytelling was very strong, as it felt like a real incident from someone's life. I enjoyed the writing style, as it evoked the senses and I was able to visualise settings vividly.

Although the plot kept my interest, it felt quite familiar from other YA books that I've read.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and would read others by Claire Messud in future.

I hate to be so harsh, but this book bored me a lot. I don't know if I'd have gotten through it if it hadn't been for review. Just so much of the book was just exposition and setting up the relationship between the two girls. It felt like nothing was really happening at all.

And even when things were happening, the plot was kind of obvious. I guessed easily where Cassie had gone. It was just predictable and there wasn't much at all to keep me reading.

I did like Cassie as a character though. Julia was a little bland, but Cassie was quite well written, at least at first. She became a bit of a cliché when she was trying to be cool and out at parties all the time, though it was made less so by Julia's insights into Cassie's life, such as the fact that Cassie wouldn't drink.

I dunno. I just like books with a strong plot and this was more based around Cassie as a character. It wasn't for me.

"Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid."

This is a strange one. I was expecting The Burning Girl to be a thriller, but it's more of an exploration of a friendship with a slow (forgive me for the pun) burn. It has depth and Messud's writing is beautiful yet realistic.

The Burning Girl reminded me a little of My Brilliant Friend, in that it explores the friendship between two girls, one who is a little more awkward and in awe of the other. The unravelling story feels very realistic, I recognised a lot of feelings I had when I was younger with intense female friendships; love but also envy and competition. Messud is very good at capturing the feeling and both Julia and Cassie felt like believable characters.

"Being in Bonnybrook was like being inside both Cassie's head and my own, as if we had one mind and could roam its limits together, inventing stories and making ourselves as we wanted them to be."

At times there was a little too much teen angst for me. Don't get me wrong, The Burning Girl doesn't read like a YA novel, but it obviously does dwell on a lot of high school elements with the ages of the girls. However, Messud manages to counter this with the depth of her writing and the introspection that Julia narrates with.

She also covers darker subjects, especially about what it means to be a girl and young woman. It's about the dangers we face, both physically and psychologically.

Messud also touches on other subjects, such as class, friendship, love and mental illness.

I really liked the writing style, Messud has some lovely descriptions which manage to be timeless yet also modern.

"From there, the last stretch of the summer unspooled like thread off a bobbin."

The pace of the The Burning Girl is slow, a little too slow sometimes, I did find myself wondering when anything significant was going to happen. But it was quite a nice break from the shock a minute thrillers that I've been reading recently.

My Rating: 4/5

I received a copy of The Burning Girl via NetGalley in return for an honest review. My thanks to the author and publisher.

The Burning Girl by Claire Messud is a lyrical, compelling coming of age tale about childhood friends who grow apart and start separate journeys. Cassie, the daughter of a single mother, grows up not knowing her father whilst Julia enjoys a comfortable home life with her parents. Best friends since nursery school, their paths diverge in high school, Cassie becomes rebellious and a boy magnet whilst seeking her father, Julia takes drama classes and enters public speaking competitions. An interesting book that questions the nature of female friendship.

“Sometimes I felt that growing up and being a girl was about learning to be afraid." This was a brilliant coming-of-age story revolving around the friendship of two girls. I found the main protagonist Julia very easy to relate to and her reflections of what it's like to become a woman and become aware of your own vulnerability rang true.

A story of the trials and tribulations of the teenage years. Some are successful ,some tragic but most eventually pass through unscathed. Some good, well described characters in a compelling storyline. Interesting conclusion