The plot centres on Abby who has returned to her home town of Barrens in a professional capacity as a lawyer investigating a possible environmental health issue with local company Optimal. Optimal manufacture plastics and have put a lot of cash into the town in the form of donations to education, sports, a community centre and many others ways. Abby and her team are trying to investigate whether this really were philanthropic donations or whether there was strings attached to try and get people on side.

Abby felt somewhat of an outsider when she left Barrens ten years before and her return doesn't go down well with many people. There were suspicious illnesses amongst Abby's friends when they were teenagers as well as current ones and a baby born with deformities.

This was a well written story which kept me interested as Abby met more friends from her childhood and tried to piece together what happened then and what is happening in the present and what part Optimal, if any, has in some of the issues. We learn more about Abby's family background as the story unfolds. It was a good read which kept me interested.

With thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Throughout this book you swerve from believing one person to another
This is a tale of corruption, bribery, secrets and murder , it is down to Abby who once lived here to try to find out what is going on in her home town, one she swore she would never return to
Memories are they real or false Abby doesn't know and stumbles on not knowing she is in real danger.

Boy was this a corker of a novel. I loved it.

I’m a sucker for books set in small towns, towns where secrets are kept, where things slip under the radar and where everyone keeps each other’s secrets. Barrens reminds me a lot of Derry which features in Stephen King’s work. The book reminds me a lot of The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates.

The book starts off innocently enough, with Abby investigating what appears to be a simple case of environmental neglect by a big corporation. I loved how the author gradually reveals that something far, far darker is going on.

I liked Abby. I found it interesting she returned to investigate the complaints against Optimal. Surely the fact she’s grown up in Barrens would pose difficulty in her being objective? She’s a feisty character. She lets her emotions and past connection to the town cloud her judgement at times but that makes her human.

Bonfire is amazing.

I liked this book and found the concept interesting. The plot regarding a plastics factory and the effect of it's pollution was interesting and very topical.
It was well written and I enjoyed it.

Really disappointing - the book is very badly written with flimsy characters who occasionally make absurd asides that come across as Ritter showing off that she knows a factoid. I had such high hopes for this book but felt very let down, and I doubt I'm the only one.

The story got so compelling towards the end I really needed to find out what happened. Would give it around 3.5 stars and would recommend as I’m not normally a crime lover.

When Abby returns to her hone town of Barrens to find potential evidence that the local big corporation is polluting the local water supply she doesn't suspect the turmoil that will ensue. She has her own emotional journey to go on and becomes determined to find out what really happened to her childhood friend. Fast paced and well written.

Review to come next week on www.youtube.com/thebooklife. There will be a video review for this book, as well as the book being mentioned in my "wrap up" video.

I apologise but I didn't finish this. It may be my prejudice (is she published because it's a good book or because she's a famous actress?) but I couldn't get past whether or not it was a vanity project and it distracted me and clouded my judgment of the writing. That being said, I just wasn't engaged by the environmental impact plot either. On the plus side, it didn't seem like bad writing.

Firstly, thank you to the NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me a pre release copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The plot, in a nutshell, Abby Williams is a high flying environmental lawyer based in Chicago who returns to her small town home in Indiana to investigate complaints that a local factory is polluting the water supply and is involved in some major corruption. There's also a back story of Abby's one time friend then enemy, Kaycee Mitchell, who alledgedly ran away a decade or so earlier amid a scandal of faking sickness caused by the same local factory in order to get make a claim.

I'm aware that the author is a well known film and TV actress, although I've never seen anything that she's been in. On the whole, the book itself is well written, although for me it seems to drag on. For a thriller it doesn't really flow all that well, and for the first two thirds just rambles on with just a hint that something has either happened in the past that piques your interest, or something is about to happen. Once the pieces start to slot together, it's not that difficult to figure out what happened and who was involved.

Although it's far from a page turner for me, we must remember it's a debut novel. I do think the author has a talent for writing and I think she has a lot of potential for future work - I think she just needs to put a bit more thought into the pace of her books. I'm certainly not put off reading other books by her.

OK I will admit that I requested this book through Netgalley because I loved Krysten Ritter in Jessica Jones and thought why not?! I was very pleasantly surprised and thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Abby Williams, an environmental lawyer from Chicago, takes on a case that returns her to her childhood home of Barrens, a small town where everyone knows everyone else's business. A place she has tried so hard to forget. A place she realises still haunts and torments her after all these years away. She is investigating an accusation of water pollution from the big company in town, Optimal. This is one of those companies that has a fingertip in every pie possible - Orbital have basically bought their way into every part of the lives of the people of Barrens - from school scholarships, to providing heaps of jobs in the town, to extending the high school, to building new playgrounds and community centres and to providing the town with a water supply. It seems everyone loves Optimal, or do they?!

Abby's childhood was not a happy one and very quickly she has to face the ghosts of her past. However, she cannot shake them completely and is convinced that a situation 10 years ago is somehow linked to her current case. She follows many a trail, which do not generally lead anywhere. People just won't talk and if they do know what is going on they certainly won't tell her about it. Only when she receives an anonymous tip does she manage to get on a trail that leads to somewhere!

I really enjoyed all the twists and turns and the different paths Abby had to take to uncover what was going on, which was a bit more than polluting the reservoir! She drives herself to drink and her colleagues think she is going mad - maybe she was a bit with everything going on in Barrens. It was certainly not a healthy place for her to be, but one I think she needed to get through to clear all her worries and nightmares about what happened all those years ago! Although the culprit was an obvious one, the little speech in Abby's house convinced me (for a while at least) that I was wrong!

I am really glad I requested this book and will definitely keep my eye open for more of Krysten Ritter books.

Reviews for this are going one of two ways - either 2/3 stars acknowledging the book's flaws or 5 star reviews going OMG Krysten Ritter!!!! I am the former. This is a passably good book within the thriller genre but it's not mind-blowing. The characters who are at fault are super shady and relatively obvious from the get-go, and it felt like there were too many mysteries to be solved. <spoiler>(Of course they all conveniently come together into one conclusion, so it doesn't really matter.)</spoiler> Add to this the fact that Abby is annoying, naive and should have lost her job many times along the way and you're left with a perplexing book that doesn't really hit the mark. Pretty well written for a celebrity penned book though, even if there was a lot of telling not showing at the start.

I enjoyed this book, it was different and kept you guessing.

Neither great, nor awful. Would have given it 2.5 stars were that possible. Ritter’s tale of small town escapee Abby returning to relive and reinvent her youth whilst investigating as to whether there is a case to be brought against an enormous corporation is a quick, dark read with a reasonably predictable plot and a host of shady characters that haven’t outgrown the misbehaviours of their youth (in some cases these misbehaviours have blossomed into heinous felonies).

Abby’s character is the highlight of the novel, her continuous development is surprisingly slick and warrants a respectful nod of approval.

All in all, okay, plenty of smoke but no fire.

I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in order to provide an honest review.

The book charts the return of an environmental lawyer to her hometown, set on uncovering negligence on the part of the town’s biggest employer, Optimal. Her investigation leads her down a darker path, blending her past with the present.

Written in the first person, Ritter’s protagonist is extremely believable - flawed, but well-intentioned. The narrative jumps in places to reflect Abby’s memory gaps, giving the reader a sympathetic sense of confusion and disorientation.

The combination of an authentic narrative voice and a compelling plot make Ritter’s debut novel a fantastic read, and one I would definitely recommend!

I didn’t know when I requested this book that Bonfire is a debut novel written by Krysten Ritter, an actress from such well-known shows like Netflix original series, Marvel's Jessica Jones, Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 and AMC’s Breaking Bad.

It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home from her small-town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago. When a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana she involved in investigating Optimal Plastics, the town's most high-profile company. Abby begins to find strange connections to Barren’s biggest scandal from more than a decade ago, involving the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friends, just before Kaycee disappeared for good.

Abby begins to unearth very troubling details about the company. She also interviews a crucial witness whose information is very similar to that which destroyed many of her classmate’s reputations during high school. While her assistant Joe wants Abby to concentrate on events occurring in the present, Abby cannot shake her conviction that much of what is happening now is connected to the things that happened in the past. Certain that locating Kaycee Mitchell will provide her with the answers.

With the right amount of twists and turns and it also has an environmental message in this mystery thriller. There is plenty of detective work, and lots of small town weirdness to uncover. This is recommended for mystery lovers. Bonfire is dark, suspenseful, and good read.

Lastly many thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, for providing me with a copy this book in return for a fair and honest review

A thriller which explores the extension of the school bully and peer group pressure . A few twists right to the end.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I have loved Krysten Ritter as an actress since her early days and to be quite honest that was my whole reasoning behind picking up this book. This and a small intrigue after reading the description.
I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised - I found this book very engaging and hard to out down. At the very beginning I found the protagonist a bit frustrating (a feeling which to some point stayed with me throughout the book) but as I read I found myself being pulled into her crazy theories and kept on reading more, wanting to find out what will Ritter reveal next.
All in all this book was very much to my liking - even though similar stories have been told before. I do think Ritter deserves an applause for a great debut novel.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Bonfire! It took me a while to get into but once I’d got past the first fifty pages I was hooked. I raced through this and the shocks kept coming right until the final pages. I genuinely had no idea how the story was going to resolve itself but, boy, what a resolution! Well worth a read, particularly if you’re a fan of thrillers and love trying to get to the bottom of a well-crafted mystery.

Oh wow. I truly loved this book. I have always loved Krysten Ritter in her roles in Jessica Jones and Breaking Bad and so I was eager to pick this up. Luckily, I was able to get a digital copy of it a couple of days before the release date so it was amazing to read this before it hit the shelfs. I read this in the ramp up to Halloween and it definitely provided the vibe I was looking for in this read. I would class this book as a mystery thriller and I was so enthralled by it.
For fans/readers of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins