Recycled plot? Yes
Somewhat predictable? Yes
Did I give any heck? No
Gripping, fast paced and easy to read? Yes
Did I hate it was Sunday evening and I had to go to bed early without being able to finish it?! Yes
Did I devour each page waiting for my suspicions to be confirmed?! Yes
Did I truly enjoy it independent of the fact the author is Krysten Ritter? Yes
Do I recommend it? YES

Being English I hadn't realised the author was a celebrity in the USA until I read the reviews. This is a good debut novel and I look forward to reading more from this author.

I really enjoyed this book it was a real page turner. That it was a debut novel by an author more famous for Jennifer Jones was a nice surprise, I would suggest that Kristen Ritter need not worry too much if scripts dry up at any point as she will surely have writing to fall back on.
Abby is a lawyer in Chicago, mothers early death and fathers strict upbringing left its mark. However she is forced to return to her home town to investigate an environmental issue. Returning home raises some ghosts best left buried.

I wont say too much more as I don't want to spoil the book for others, I would say read this book, it is worth a few days of your attention and look out for the next novel by Kristen Ritter

It appears that I am in the minority having not heard of Krysten Ritter before encountering this book. This may have something to do with the fact that she is American and I am British and she features on American shows that I haven't watched before. I don't mind this as this usually bodes well and means I don't have any expectations that others who know of her may have. It puts it on the same footing as the other books I choose to read - I will read anything that appeals to me regardless of whether I know the author or not. The synopsis is key in making my decision... and here it is...


Should you ever go back?

It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home and scrubbed away all visible evidence of 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 when a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana, the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crack. Tasked with investigating Optimal Plastics, 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.

With tantalizing twists, slow-burning suspense, and a remote, rural town of just five claustrophobic miles, Bonfire is a dark exploration of the question: can you ever outrun your past?


Firstly, let me just say that with this book Ritter shows that her talents don't just lie in acting - this is as well written and structured as any mystery/suspense novel. The writing is immersive and the action both fast-paced with some slower aspects that lurk in the back of your mind until the finale. The storyline has plenty of surprises and is dark and gritty with a menacing undertone that runs the whole way through. You may, like I did, guess some of what is going on but the way it unravelled still had some shocking moments that I didn't predict.

I admired the MC, Abby, a lot. She was able to eventually come to terms with her past in circumstances where it would be easier to just move on and leave it alone. Her courage and tenacity is a substantial aspect of the book for me. The more she discovers, the deeper the secrets run and this means Abby has no idea just who who or can't be trusted. This is a highly addictive read and I thoroughly enjoyed following Abby on her journey.

If Ritter happens to write more novels of this genre in future I would definitely read them.

I would like to thank Krysten Ritter, Random House - Cornerstone and NetGalley for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review.

Don’t we all remember the girl at school who ruled? The tyrant who could make or break your popularity with the group? Who had an uncanny knack for knowing how to rule – by hurt or flattery, by offering the privilege of their attention or the cruelty of ostracism.

Of course their dominance is short lived. You move on from the age when everyone wants to be the same, to one where suddenly everyone wants to be different, and then their power is gone.

But Abby, from a small town in Indiana, never moved on from Kaycee, because Kaycee disappeared. This came after another dramatic period in their school career, when Kaycee and several of her acolytes appeared to suffer a bizarre illness. They were going to sue Optimal Plastics, the industry that dominates Barrens, but then admitted that they’d made the whole thing up.

Now Abby is a successful lawyer in Chicago. She’s the one who got away. But she’s still haunted by Kaycee’s illness and disappearance so when new complaints come in about Optimal, she wants to take the case.

This is a promising setup. I love a legal thriller and the prologue, a flashback to the first appearance of Kaycee’s illness in high school, is beautifully written, capturing the conflict (as Abby perceives it) in Kaycee’s eyes – fear and pain, but also vindication in being the centre of attention. Abby’s return home is movingly captured – particularly in her tense relationship with her father.

However, for me Bonfire falls down in a number of areas and is ultimately disappointing. It doesn’t have the reversals and clever argument and big egos and cut-and-thrust of a legal thriller. In fact there’s not that much law in it. It’s much more about Abby coming home to confront her demons. Her depiction of small-town life is atmospheric, but the characters all feel like recognisable types – the bitch, the bad boy, the first crush. There are no surprises or ambiguities. This limited (in both senses) cast of characters means it’s not hard to guess where the story is going.

It feels like the author didn’t quite know how to structure the story. The plot didn’t give the characters enough to do, which in turn meant they did not develop or reveal themselves through action. Instead we get too much of Abby going back over the same reminiscences (I felt my heart sink each time her childhood pet dog came up again!).

However, I loved the prose and the power of that prologue. I’d be interested to see what the author does next.

An interesting concept but in retrospect not really what I was expecting. The cover is lovely, and the writing is easy to read. I felt like it had a bit of a slow start, but the last third was well-paced. Unfortunately, I did also come away feeling a bit like I’d seen this episode of Law & Order before.

A story that is based, as we know only too well, on frequent truths.

Small towns and political corruptions in return for jobs and a thriving economy and never mind the poor who live on the wrong side of the tracks and reap the rewards of this unholy alliance.

Chemical companies it is rumoured are the most frequent polluters of water and yet the list of the ten worst polluters are:

1. Agriculture
2. Mining
3. Fishing
4. Nuclear
5. Fuel
6. Plastics
7. Textile Manufacturing
8. Cleaning
9. Auto Manufacturing
10. Recreation
And the Daily Beast in 2010 claimed that the EPA estimated that there were 3,500 chemical spills each year, requiring $260 million to clean.
For instance, take  Milford, New Hampshire, with a population of 10,000, and the local Fletcher's Paint Works and Storage. Within 2 Acres  34 Toxic chemicals were found.
Soil and groundwater around the site was found  to be contaminated with arsenic, lead, PCBs, and other chemicals, including volatile organic compounds. Which were also in the municipal water supply.

So why should we believe the chemical company in this story when it claims that the reservoir tests clean?  And what will it and those involved in the local corruption etc do, to ensure that the plant keeps on working without interference?

A story that has obvious links as shown above, with reality, but is then stretched into a complex and intriguing novel that keeps you reading.

PS. Abby does not reflect the Jessica Jones character too closely - but definitely drinks far too much!

Kristen Ritter's day job playing Jessica Jones must be all consuming at times but based on the quality of this novel I can't be the only hoping that she finds time to write another book of this calibre. Originally hoping to turn this story into a tv series, Ritter realised that the idea had enough legs for a book. Abby Williams is working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago when a case brings her back to the aptly named small town Barrens, Indiana. There's old ghosts as well as old faces to deal with as Abby starts to think her current case may have a connection to the disappearance of the popular girl in town, Kaycee Mitchell years earlier.

Barrens seems like a miserable town and it soon starts to drag Abby down, especially as she struggles to cope with the ill health of her estranged father. She becomes the classic unreliable narrator as her drinking increases and she starts to see conspiracy and cover up at every turn. This is a well thought out and smartly paced book, skilfully skipping between past and present. Barrens holds a lot of secrets and its a pretty spot on depiction of a town staying silent to hold the status quo. The characters are evenly fleshed out and Abby is an interesting character to carry the story, Ritter never flinching from showing her flaws.

This is a really well written and enjoyable book. I hesitate to call it a thriller but the end few chapters could fit into that category. Theres a lot to enjoy, not least the author's writing style and I certainly hope to read more from her.

I received a free ARC from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for a fair review.

Krysten Ritter is an actress…I’ve only seen her once as Jesse’s rather unfortunate heroin-addict girlfriend in Breaking Bad. A memorable role. So…is she going to be a memorable author with this, her inaugural novel?

This is a story of environmental lawyer Abby Williams who returns to her home town, Barrens, after ten years to investigate a large company, suspected of poisoning the town’s water reservoir with their toxic waste. Not an easy task for her, as she’s returning to some bad memories. However, they not only resurface, she discovers a very unsettling secret making the investigation very complex indeed.

I’m not a great fan of the present tense, especially for dramatic novels…but it’s never a deal breaker in my choice of book. In this instance, however, it did confirm why I don’t like it. It just didn’t work, especially as this was also first-person POV. The run-up to the ending was tense and dramatic, but unfortunately, loose threads were hastily tied up in a clunky manner in the epilogue in a sort of ‘I later found out that this is what happened to me' way. It all fell rather flat.

However…this is a debut novel, and I would be lying if I didn’t say it was well written, well observed and for the most part, pacey and dramatic. Despite my misgivings, this author can only get better and has a promising future.

I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for her next novel.

A bit of an odd read. The story is based on an Erin Brockovich type story of a small town's water being polluted by a big chemical company that ironically causes the town to flourish through sponsorship and employment. The difference in this, is that the environmental lawyer (the 'Erin') was originally from the town, and the story follows her return, dealing with her childhood bullying, lending a stark reality to this somewhat gritty story.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House UK, Cornerstone Hutchinson and Kristen Ritter for a copy 'Bonfire' subject to my honest and unbiased review.

Abby Williams is an environmental lawyer in Chicago and hasn't visited her home town for ten years. She takes on a case which sees her returning to as part of an investigation into one of the town's companies. There are a variety of sub plots including a dark ritual called 'The Game' and a connection to Abby's closest friend who disappeared.

I found the style good and the novel is well written. Generally I really enjoyed it and would recommend it as a read.

Bonfire is a really competent debut novel, although it did seem to drag a little in places.
It focuses on Abby Williams, who is an environmental lawyer. She is sent back to her hometown by her law film to investigate Optimal Plastics, a large employer in the town. There is also a side story about her former best friend Kaycee who went missing - Abby suspects the two issues might be linked.
I enjoyed the book, but there were a couple of things that let it down - firstly, the writing gets a little repetitive in places, and secondly, far too much time is spent on setting the scene at the start of the book.
I like Krysten as a actress, which was the main reason I read the book. I'm presuming she wrote it by herself, rather than using a ghostwriter, which makes her debut more impressive.
It's a really good starting point for a future career in writing - I look forward to reading her next book and watching her develop as an author.

If you have a Netflix account, you'll probably know who Krysten Ritter is: Jessica Jones, Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 - plus a featured spot in season 7 of Gilmore Girls. I love how un-American she looks for TV land with her pale skin and black hair. I kinda love the fact that she's written a book, that it's good and I can totally imagine her playing the lead role. Abby is a little bit Jessica Jones, in terms of her energy: a dark, haunted seeker-of-truth who is determined to never let anyone fuck with her ever again. She returns to her small hometown after a decade away, ostensibly for work. Abby is an environmental lawyer and her team from Chicago are tasked with investigating the Optimal, the manufacturing plant who may or may not have been polluting the water. We quickly realise that Abby has a lot of ghosts she never laid to rest here and her homecoming is going to stir up a lot more than professional trouble. I really enjoyed this story and hope she writes some more books with awesome female characters.

I really struggled to read this and found it really hard to get in to. I usually love books based in small towns, but the characters felt flimsy and I just didn’t find myself caring enough about them or the plot. I can’t help but wonder if this was published because the author is an actress rather than due to her writing abilities. It wasn’t that it was bad, it just wasn’t particularly interesting and the writing felt forced at times.

I quite enjoyed this book once it got going but it took a little time. The characters felt a little flimsy and they kept making glib comments which did get a little annoying. Once I got into the story it was really gripping and kept me invested until the end.
It didn't grip me as quickly as I wanted it to but I did enjoy it overall.

An addictive, fast-paced, brutal, dark, beautiful book. I loved it! With a raw, protagonist female lead character, complex supporting roles, twists, misleading memories and conspiracies this story explores what it is to grow up in a small town that you never really leave behind. I enjoyed every page!

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.

This book shows that even if you leave you small town roots you never forget who you are and where you come from. The book is in similar vein to Erin Brokowitch in that it deals with the underlying conflict between employment and the causes of serious health issues in small towns. Is employment more important than health?

'The past is a trick of the mind. It's a story we misunderstand over and over'

I definitely came to this one because of Krysten Ritter as I don’t often find myself in the thriller genre. I really like Krysten as an actress, for the roles she plays and for how she comes across in interviews and on social media. She’s great at both writing, and playing, the broken but deeply resilient (even though they don’t always know it) character. You can see it in her writing as well, that she’s invested in the internal workings of a character, however messy they may be. There’s a lot of that in Abby Williams, the protagonist of Bonfire, who returns to her hometown as an environmental lawyer on a case. Her main memories of the town are of being an outcast and of the strange ‘fake’ illnesses, and a disappearance, that befell some of her school tormentors all those years ago.

There’s a murky, slow-burning atmosphere throughout the book which is quietly tantalising, I did feel that the fogginess surrounding Abby’s memories after a night of drinking had a tendency to become a bit too much of a suspense-engineering-device. The revelations at the end of the book also unfold too blearily and quickly – bursting into action and ending all within a few pages after the slow build of the past few hundred pages. It’s intriguing and controlled for the first half of the book but starts to slip as it goes on and the balance is off, meaning it becomes a little confusing and less powerful.

'There are the people of the world who squeeze and the ones who suffocate'

Ritter does write very powerfully about teenage girls in particular - the things they will do to each other and also the things that are done to them and the way they are seen by the world. She’s extraordinarily perceptive and those are the moments that have stuck with me since finishing the book. I recall reading somewhere that Ritter originally intended this as a TV series and I do think it would work well on screen, particularly the way the ending plays out and the setting of the atmosphere and flashes of memory. The legal/environmental angle was something a bit different for a thriller and I found the look at the way a faceless corporation can benefit and/or harm a community was engaging and very relevant to our society.

I would be curious to see what else Ritter writes as she’s clearly highly intelligent and creative and with a real illuminating interest in complex ethical and social issues. Bonfire was engaging and atmospheric for the most part, but I think there’s more to come from this writer.

*Thank you to Cornerstone and NetGalley for the chance to read and review this one

This surprised me with how good it was. I don't know why -- that is, I don't know why my expectations were so low that I didn't expect a twisty turny complex book that packed a serious emotional punch and kept me guessing right until the end, but that's what I got. Maybe it's just my inherent suspicion of books by people who are famous for things other than writing, which isn't necessarily fair (and anyway, you'd think someone who stars in fantastic storytelling would have some idea how to write, wouldn't you?).

But this was dark as hell, and occasionally brutal enough to make me wince without being gratuitous. It was complicated enough that I could never quite get ahead of it to figure out the answers (though I managed a couple of them), but not so convoluted that I couldn't follow what was actually happening. It was full of morally grey or downright bad characters, but you never knew entirely who those were. Periodically I'd have an inkling about a character, only to be proven wrong almost immediately.

It only took me a couple of hours to read this, once I actually settled into it. I hadn't been planning to read the whole thing, but I've never once kept my promise about things like that, and honestly, this isn't the kind of book that you can really put down and go to sleep as though you're not desperately searching for answers just as the protagonist, Abby, is.

I think one of the things that appealed was that Abby is ten years out of high school and there are a bunch of other high-school-aged characters, which means although it's an adult book and the protag is a lawyer, it still feels young enough to be accessible to someone of my age. A protag in her late twenties dealing with her own past as a teenager and with teenagers now makes for a more engaging novel than one where all the characters are twice my age, I guess. Not that it's something I noticed much while reading, but in hindsight, it did stand out.

So if I have such high praise for it, why does this get four stars and not five? Well, partly that's genre. I think this is a great example of a crime novel, if that's what it is, but that's not a genre I'm super into, and thus even the most enjoyable examples of it aren't going to hit the spots in the same way as an awesome urban fantasy novel or something. So that's just my personal taste. I also found it a slightly harrowing read, and it's definitely not for the faint of heart: it deals with murder and poison and so on, but also the sexual exploitation of minors. Which isn't an easy thing to read about: while the tight plotting might be enjoyable, the plot ITSELF can't really be described that way, if that makes sense.

Finally, there were some time-jumps and scene breaks that I found confusing and which occasionally threw me out of the story while I tried to figure out what was happening. However, I think that was partly deliberate (Abby didn't know what was happening either) and partly due to formatting of the eARC -- chapter headings weren't always visible and sometimes figuring out the breaks was a matter of guesswork, so obviously that's not a reflection on Ritter's writing.

But no, I was impressed by this. It kept me engaged and desperate for answers, which miraculously I didn't guess (I hate accidentally spoiling endings for myself by guessing the twists), and twisted and turned all over the place so that you could never get entirely comfortable while reading it, without ever losing me completely in its convolutions.

This review is on Goodreads, and will be cross-posted to my blog in January.