Rating 2.5/5

I’m not going to lie it was definitely the fact that I like Krysten Ritter as an actress that made me pick up this book, the blurb did sound interesting but maybe not one I would be desperate to read if not for her name attached. Bonfire was for me unfortunately, a little underwhelming, I think passable is the best phrase I can use, not a bad book but not a great book either.

The main character Abby felt like a character that Krysten Ritter has played or could play, she is initially portrayed as the big city lawyer who is there to root out the evil of the big corporation taking over the small town. That identifier soon becomes a little obsolete as the story becomes more about her trying to put the personal demons from her past to rest, Abby is not a character I would say I totally warmed to, I didn’t dislike her, I just didn’t feel like I got much past the surface with her.

The story does rely on some well-established tropes, which is fine, but whilst it felt like from the description it had a clear direction in the story itself it wasn’t so well defined, I felt like there were so many ideas thrown into the mix that it was a bit confused about what kind of story it wanted to be. A lot of the revelations and conclusions were a bit convoluted and relied on Abby suddenly picking up on clues that I don’t think anyone would naturally come to.

The writing was ok, with a few phrases here or there that made me roll my eyes but not difficult to read otherwise. For such a short book I found the pacing was a little slow, but I will say that I was interested in what happened to Kaycee and that did keep me invested enough to keep going but it did feel like a bit of a slog at times, until the end when it did start to pick up as the story reaches its climax, but I was left with a few things that I felt weren’t really resolved.

I think the story did have potential but it needed a bit more of a clear direction, and it did manage to shock me with one of the revelations even though the rest was fairly predictable, but I wasn’t blown away by this book.

A well written novel with an interesting plot. I really enjoyed the novel but it did feel like it needed something else to make it complete.
I would definitely by another book by this author

This is a wonderfully written book by an actress who has a knack for providing a thrilling element to her roles. I really enjoyed it and would definitely pick up another book written by this author.

A compelling thriller written by the actress who gave us Jessica Jones, about a woman who returns back to her home town after years away, only to be embroiled in a local mystery. Full of impressive imagery and page-turning twists, this is a great debut.

You can tell Krysten Ritter knows her story-telling and she can write. And yet...

And yet, I feel like we've seen this before. Is it an environmental thriller? A small-town thriller? Is it a thriller with an unreliable narrator? A flawed narrator reluctantly returning home where she was bullied every day of her childhood? This isn't breaking new ground.

But an easy thriller to read, but you're not going to get anything new.

Have had this book on my reading list for some time and I wish I had read it sooner. An interesting sort of murder/mystery where one is never 100% sure of who has done what to whom until the finale. I know that is the plan but one frequently guesses who some of the bad guys are. For me this was not one of those stories. It was a mystery to the end.

Certainly worth your time and effort to read as it has some nice twists to the tale. It will be even more enjoyable if you are able to curl up somewhere undisturbed and warm to read it - in front of an open fire would be just perfect.

Bonfire is a slow-burner, a mystery novel with heaps of suspense and all the hallmarks of a thriller without the usual breakneck pace. The story focuses on Abby, a young woman returning to her childhood town for the first time in years.

Barrens is the perfect small-town setting for this novel, and its residents are just as curious as the town itself. While Abby has gone away, grown up, and carved out a life for herself away from Barrens, the town seems to have got stuck in a rut, with little progress beyond ever-increasing reliance on the shady Optimal Plastics business. This makes the perfect premise for a novel, and the story certainly does not disappoint.

As Bonfire advances, the story digs deeper and deeper into Abby's past - driven partly by the investigation, and partly by her own desire to finally overcome her own issues with Barrens. It's a thrilling and exciting story, yet is told in a slow, suspenseful way. The senses heighten with each page, drawing you even deeper into the story.

The pace picks up as the story draws towards its conclusion, matching Abby's increasingly desperate attempts to uncover Barrens' secrets. It's full of twists and turns that you won't see coming, plus more than its fair share of excitement at the end!

Bonfire is a captivating story of one woman's quest to overcome her childhood ghosts and finally uncover the mysteries of one small, American town.

Bonfire - Krysten Ritter

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review thanks to Random House and Netgalley.

I was skeptical about this book as it is written by Krysten Ritter. I was worried that the hype would be for the wrong reason. However, given that I read this book in less than 24 hours I feel that the hype was justified.

Abby Williams returns to her childhood town of Barrens as an environmental lawyer investigating Optimal Plastics, the area’s largest employer.

Whilst the story focuses on the investigation into Optimal Plastics, there are flashbacks to Abby’s past. She also becomes fixated on finding out what happened to Kaycee Mitchell.

If you are a fan of mysteries and thrillers then I would recommend that you check out this book if you haven’t already.

Rating: 4/5
I look forward to see what else Krysten writes.

I will definitely be reading this again. I’ll be looking forward to more books to come from this author.

It took me a while to get into this but once I did, I couldn't put it down. This was such an incredible debut and I look forward to reading more from Ritter. Bonfire left a long lasting impression on me

This was really good!! thoroughly enjoyed it. The writing style was right up my alley and the plot was very interesting

I'll admit it, I expected this to be another lightweight celebrity novel, probably ghostwritten and only published because they're famous. But this was a real surprise: absorbing, pitch-black and beautifully written. I'd be surprised if film rights haven't already been sold – with Ritter in the lead role, I hope.

I received a copy from Netgalley.

I snagged this one when it was offered on a read it now for the first 100 members. I take a break from the YA I read for grown up mysteries and thrillers, this one sounded good and the fact it was written by Krysten Ritter caught my attention immediately.

Unfortunately, I just didn’t like this book. The story has been done before in one form or another, there wasn’t any particular character I necessarily liked. Most of them were horrible people. The story line was interesting enough – a small town girl leaves and goes to college, becomes a lawyer and winds up working for a centre for legal advocacy. Something to do with environmental law. Finds herself returning home to investigate a big company who make plastic and give the dying town new life and new employment opportunities. With some nasty side effects to the environment and some of the people who live there.

Nothing unfamiliar. The main character fell fowl of the school’s mean girls. The most popular one who used to be a childhood best friend turned toxic became the queen bee and disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Some sort of sinister Game is hinted at, to do with risqué pictures and blackmail and a whole host of perverted things related to it. There’s something going on and may be related to things that happened when the MC went to high school there, only things have taken a significantly darker turn. And of course there are people who don’t want the past digging up or the MC to connect the dots to what’s really happening.

Technically speaking there wasn’t anything terrible about the way it was written – it had its moment and really managed to capture the small dull life of a town without much going for it. The novel did a pretty good job of showing how horrible people can be behind the smiling facades they put on. Girls who were bullies in high school that don’t learn from it and don’t become good people. The main character is reasonably level headed and intelligent and the investigation is interesting enough that it kept me wanting to know what was going on. One or two characters had some redeeming moments, but for the most part, nothing stood out.

Overall, it was just okay.

Thank you to Random House UK, Cornerstone for the review copy.

This was an interesting enough story of big company greed (and worse) in small town America.
I enjoyed reading it, but it did drag a bit.

A fantastic read. Thoroughly enjoyed this and it is not something I would usually pick up. Will look for more from this author in future.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.  This review is spoiler-free.


So to get this out of the way: yes, this book is written by the marvelous Krysten Ritter.  I really like her as an actress and am a huge fan of Jessica Jones. I will be very honest, I was very curious about this book based on who she is -- I'm not sure it's one I would have picked up on my own in a bookstore.  However, while I don’t read a lot of thrillers, it’s a genre I’d love to get into and this seemed like a great fit. 

I enjoyed Bonfire, but I really think that her star power did help get it published.  This is a book that had great potential, but fell flat. If she had been a ‘regular’ person, I think that her author or agent would have taken more time to develop the story into something great.  While the bones of a good thriller were there, Bonfire was just okay.

The main issue is that Bonfire couldn’t figure out what it was.  Was it an environmental thriller with a kickass lawyer as a heroine? Was it another Girl on the Train that featured a twisted tale and an unreliable narrator?  Or was it the story of a woman dredging up her secretive past? It had elements of all three, but it didn’t really commit to any and I think the book really suffered because of this. 

Abby, our narrator, was supposed to be this big-city lawyer coming back home to shake things up, but she hardly did any lawyering. I really wanted her to be a razor-sharp legal mind, and while she you get an understanding of some of her legal prowess I just didn’t find her impressive in this sense.  Her career as a lawyer served more as a plot device to get her back to her hometown than anything else. The most interesting part of the book was Abby's return to her hometwon.  She must answer the haunting question that has been haunting her since childhood -- what happened to Kaycee Mitchell?  I really enjoyed her digging up secrets from the past and how those secrets related to the present.  I also really liked her return to the hometown that she has been trying to run from.  Funny enough, her career as a lawyer just got in the way of these much more fascinating plot elements. The story probably would have worked better if her career as a lawyer had been cut.

The story itself was interesting enough, but I didn’t find it particularly intriguing.  For me, there wasn’t a huge twist or surprise in the plot. It pretty much played out exactly as I expected it to, although I didn’t guess the exact details.  It was all a bit underwhelming, and I found that I just didn't care about her investigation into Optimal Plastics.  I wanted to know more about Abby's past and the way it has affected her life.

Despite all this, I see real potential in Ritter’s writing.  I powered through Bonfire in only a few sittings and found it entertaining.  It’s a fun and fluffy book (if a dark book can be fluffy) to pick up from the library if you’re on holiday in the summer.  It has an interesting and imperfect female lead and reads very quickly -- just don’t expect anything gripping and groundbreaking.


CW: bullying, slut shaming, suicide, off-screen abuse

This review will go live on 07 June 2018

Recommended: For the nights you randomly woke up on.
Reading time: Three or four hours should do it. Perfect to binge on.
Suggested: Watch Jessica Jones before or after. Just cuz it's awesome.

The problem with authors you know- or you think you know- is that you start to try to find underlying meanings in their works and try to connect in back to what you know about them in real life. Having watched Jessica Jones, it's not difficult to instantly start drawing parallels between the protagonists. It's involuntary as it's effortless; both are loners who want to forget their families and have no present "ties" to speak of. Both crave the sense of belonging. But no, I digress.
Other than this and fact that I read all of the narration in Krysten Ritter's voice, her debut novel is nothing short of a masterpiece. It leaves you constantly second guessing not just your own judgement, but also that of our protagonist- environmental lawyer turned compulsive detective- Abigail Williams. You don't trust others in the beginning. But by the end, you realise all that you have been basing your inferences on- Abigail's recollections of bad, horrific high school incidents- are not the holy grail either.
The writing is easy to devour in a single sitting- you just have to keep going on. This novel is an expert telling of how twisted the human mind can get. And surviving high school takes on a whole new meaning. Long story short, there was nothing Krysten Ritter could have done to better portray the fragility and volatility of human emotions and how our past isn't something static. It comes back to the future and shows itself to be ever-changing.

Honestly, I requested this mostly because of its author. I really liked Krysten Ritter in JESSICA JONES and I wanted to see if she would be one of those actresses who can branch out into other media and still be good. Answer? Yes!

This thriller takes a lot of the tropes you expect from similar novels and throws them away. And the tropes it does keep are executed quite well. The small-town mentality, for one, is so realistic (Abby's not been to her hometown in 10 years, but everyone she went to school with remembers her).

There was a really interesting focus on environmental law which made a change to see - this wasn't your usual thriller where somebody is murdered and the MC is investigating - the investigation is centred around Optimal Plastics, the company that essentially runs the small town of Barrens, Indiana. There's a really interesting sub-plot as well, which features Abby's childhood bully, Kaycee, and her band of friends.

This is definitely a gritty, fast-paced thriller. Don't let the celebrity name on the cover put you off.

For a first book, it is very well written and I have heard good things from other people before reading this. An enjoyable thriller

Bonfire starts with Abby returning to her hometown of Barrens. Abby is now working for an environmental advocacy firm and is returning to Barrens to see if the town’s main employer, Optimal, is polluting the town’s water.

Abby is still dealing with a lot of trauma from her childhood. After leaving Barrens ten years ago, she never had plans to return. Throughout the story, it is almost like she has been drawn back to solve a mystery that has been haunting her. Like any story about returning home, Abby is running into old adversaries, who are now acting like they want to be her friends. Abby’s memories of the past are coming fast and furious and she can’t shake the feeling that some of these people are trying to get into her head.

Misha the most violent of Abby’s bullies is now the vice principal at their old high school. Misha seems genuinely happy to see Abby and whilst reminiscing about the past, Misha seems to blame her previous behaviour on Kaycee Mitchell. Kaycee is one of those people whose behaviour impacts the people around them, but Kaycee ran away a long time ago, so Abby has to decide whether Kaycee’s actions are still causing repercussions ten years later.

For Abby, there is a lot of uncertainty as to what happened to Kaycee and herself, with lots of memories resurfacing, including an event that in its retelling seems to be reminiscent of The Crucible, when a group of teenage girls led by Kaycee start displaying symptoms of a mysterious illness. Abby has to decide whether Kaycee was really ill or as it was cleared up at the time that the girls were they all faking their symptoms for attention?

Abby has multiple issues to deal with, including finding out if there is a case to bring against Optimal. Abby also has to confront her family issues and work out if there is more to Kaycee’s last days in Barrens than she previously thought. There is also the fact that Abby is now seen as an outsider in the small town and not many people are happy to see her investigating Optimal when they are so tied to the town.

Conspiracies come thick and fast, and we are left questioning whether these are Abby’s imagination or if the town’s resurgence is due to a dark and well-hidden secret that not only resonates with the past but is being enacted in the present. Trust is a theme that is repeated over and over again, with revelations about people you would generally expect to be able to rely on, being turned on there head.

Abby is a great character who strove to break away from her past but is also haunted by it. Abby herself is a broken person, who self-medicates with alcohol which contributes to Abby’s compulsive, obsessive behaviour. Abby is so driven to get to the truth that she burns a lot of bridges with not only the people she works with but also potential allies. Abby makes a lot of missteps that, but this makes Bonfire a more compelling read, as you aren’t sure if the book is about one woman’s spiral into madness, or if Optimal is exactly the kind of corporation that would put profits over people’s safety.

Bonfire has so many heartbreaking secrets, as well as a lot of contemporary themes. The book switches between the corporate storyline of getting a case together and the personal. Although it feels at times like we are following Abby’s personal crusade, it also becomes that of the characters she interacts with. This is a much larger story than the awkward girl who made good, this is a story of what you are willing to sacrifice to understand your past.