A compelling story of two friends who drift apart as they reach their teens. Julia is from a middle class,stable home and Cassie is from a single parent family. Their relationship becomes very strained when Cassie's mother takes in a boy friend. Its a well crafted novel and from the very beginning I was keen to know how the two youngsters' relationship would flourish and then die.
A good thought provoking read.

Claire Messud's début novel, The Emperor's Children, is one of my all-time favourite novels and I re-read it once a year. Eleven years later comes The Burning Girl, where Messud’s characters are younger and the setting more suburban but the themes remain the same. It took me a little while to get into The Burning Girl, but I was glad I stayed with it because I was rewarded with a tender, haunting and well-plotted novel.

Set in the fictional town of Royston in Essex County, Massachusetts, The Burning Girl follows childhood best friends Julia and Cassie as they enter adolescence and find that the bonds of friendship may not be quite so ironclad as they had once thought. Julia lives with her supportive, upper-middle-class parents, while Cassie's home life is more erratic, especially when her widowed mother starts dating an unsettling new man. But it's Cassie's betrayals that hurt Julia the most as Julia's former best friend falls in with the popular crowd and steals away and then discards a boy Julia liked. Julia is forced to find her own way, making new friends on the debate team, but she is haunted by the decline of her friendship with Cassie, particularly as Cassie stumbles onto a darker path.

The Burning Girl is an emotional portrait of a friendship — and a small town — in decline. Messud's prose is lilting, understated and tightly edited and although it isn't as much of page-turner as The Emperor's Children, with its mosaic of vibrant characters, The Burning Game's heroines are keenly observed and convincing. The cultural references date the setting to the early 2000s but the action could easily have unfolded during the 1980s or 1990s instead — Messud's writing has a wonderful timelessness that allows her characters to feel relevant to readers of all ages.

I found this novel both thought provoking and evocative. It made me reflect on friendships in life and how they remain or are lost . It is said that you retain one friendship from each era of your life. What happened yo the others. Do friendships need to be worked at by both parties. Cass and Ju Ju had grown up together and shared adventures through early school days but came from very different backgrounds with different expectations placed upon then. Cass initially from a one parent family and Juju from a comfortably off supportive home. They share adventures together but unaccountably drift apart. Cass is troubled. Unhappy not knowing who her father is and unhappy about her mothers relationship with Anders Shute. There is a dark side to the story and some questions are never answered. Cass sets off to find answers . She ends up missing and it is down to the early friendship that Juju is able to help find her.

Female friendship is trending all over and while Messud's take is controlled and thoughtful, it doesn't really add anything new to an increasingly well-trodden topic.

Here we meet Julia with her safe and comfortable middle-class home, and her wilder, more spirited, less socially-conforming friend Cassie. As close as they are as children, adolescence creates a break between the girls: nothing dramatic, to Messud's credit, but still unbridgeable.

Told by Julia with hindsight, this has an elegiac feel about it as what was once a close intimacy becomes spoiled and is lost. This is only a short read, nicely written but it feels quite slight, not least in the wake of much deeper explorations of the complexities of female friendship and social formations such as in the books of Elena Ferrante.

This is a story of a childhood friendship which starts with real intensity and then fractures as adolescence and family life intervenes. Julie narrates and we never quite get into Cassie's head, nor do we know the true happenings within her family. Claire Messud writes well about those seemingly unbreakable early friendships and of how we are excluded from parts of of other people's family lives and - especially when we are young - are powerless to help as our friends fall apart. The thing that resonated with me, more than the story itself, was how a girl learns to be afraid, how that becomes a part of everyday life.

Beautifully written novel that gives a sense of time , place and the people who inhabit it .

I never fully engaged , not sure why but i couldnt find an emotional hook

Messud works her magic in this novel, beautifully written and captivating from the very beginning. This was such an enjoyable read so much so I couldn't put it down once. I would highly recommend this to anyone.

A compelling and engrossing coming-of-age tale centered on two best friends, Julia and Cassie, and how kids develop at different rates, their tastes diverge and rock solid friendships drift apart.
If this was an experiment in raising teenage girls, Julia would be the "control" - stable family, middles class background, good grades, on track for university, whereas Cassie would be the "experiment" - single mother, weird wannabe stepfather, turbulent home life.
When you add adolescent hormones to this already heady mix, it signals the start of a derailment for Cassie that will test the limits of her most enduring friendship and everything she holds dear.
This is a great tale, that kind of creeps up on you, as you get involved in the lives of these two girls. Your heart breaks for Cassie as she struggles with life in an all-too-familiar tale of teenage angst.
Great writing, great characters, great story.

Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school and do everything together but as they grow older they grow further apart and choose different paths. Julia is academic, on the speech team at school and destined for college while Cassie prefers to party and have fun. During part one of the book I got the impression that something awful had happened to Cassie and Julia felt responsible. This wasn't the case and the book is more a story of friendship and how things change as young people grow up and I feel the blurb was slightly misleading.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Lyrical and very pleasing writing

A favourite example:

There are the social struggles, and the agonies and embarrassments of puberty, and the weight of the world that falls upon each of us in varying degrees, as we finally relinquish childhood's clouds of glory to live, ever after, in our earthly realm.

An interesting social commentary but too many unanswered questions for me. What did happen to the girl, where did they go?

Cassie and Julia were best friends. Past tense. Every one of their memories involved the other, but all that inexplicably changed. A rift formed between the two and neither could exactly place the moment it happened. The distance between them expanded as they grew, until passing greetings and fake smiles in the school corridor summed up the entirety of their interaction. But when Cassie needs help it seems Julia is the only know who knows how to save her. Whether Cassie wants to be saved is another question entirely, however.

Books focusing on the intricacies of teen girl friendships are my favourite type of stories. I find these topics infinitely compelling due to the complexity and intensity of emotion exhibited by the characters. This book was proof of that fact.

This tenuous friendship is viewed from Julia's perspectives and she recounts both their past shared memories and her current individual ones. To view the pair's once closeness in comparison to their current separate existences heightens the reader's understanding of all that has been lost. I think much of the book's emotion would have been absent if the reader had not been given the multiple chances to relive their lives through Julia's sequence of flashbacks. I also don't believe either character would have been so rounded and authentic, as they each worked to create each other, in the way only the best of friendships can do.

The book circled itself in a suspenseful chain of events that led to the final climatic scene. Everything I feared would transpire almost did and Messud kept me guessing about how the novel would actually conclude right up until the moment it actually did. The ending was the novel's crowing glory and incorporated all the seemingly unrelated stories and memories into one cohesive and thrilling whole.

This was a fascinating book, shining a light on the relationship between two young teenaged friends. As we get to know the Julia and Cassie better, events take a worrying turn as Cassie makes a decision which puts her life in danger. The bond between the friends is stretched, but Julia is determined to save her.
Thanks, NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Burning Girl.

This book took me a while to get into it, but I'm glad I persevered through the first part. I think this is because the beginning of the novel is quite a cliche, however, this changes throughout the book, immediately hooking me in. Overall, the book is really well written and really makes you question yourself and how well you can know another person. I would definitely recommend this one.

Julie and Cassie have been friends since nursery school and shared everything, but as they enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter their friendship.
Great Book

This book started off really well. The writing just flows and I powered through it in no time at all. There's a good amount of intrigue in Julia and Cassie's relationship, and especially when they're playing in the asylum I just couldn't stop reading. Although the book didn't lose momentum, it didn't seem to develop enough for me and the ending just felt incomplete, although I liked that the reader was left with the mystery of Anders Shute.

An easy to read story about Cassie and Julia growing up and their friendship. It talks about friendships, loyalties and the damage that gossip and rumour cause. A quick easy read that teaches us that not everything might be as it seems.

A brilliant story of female friendships. Sad, tense, an absolute must read from this talented author.

Absolutely loved this book, a real page turner and I didn't want to come to the end.