I have such an immense love for Rory Power. Wilder Girls is one of my favorite reads and Burn Our Bodies Down is no exception. Burn Our Bodies Down is a story about family, secrets, and trauma we pass down to our children. Centering on the relationship between her mother and Margot, it's like a single point constellation. Burn Our Bodies Down began with tenderness and heartbreak. Emotional observing all the cracks in the foundation and feeling it crack a little more each time. When you see fractures and try to plaster them up, knowing they will always be there. Until that one splinter of a second which rattles them open again, destroying whatever remained.

The writing in Burn Our Bodies Down is lyrical. Margot embarks on a journey to find her family. Searching for that feeling of acceptance, a love we know without testing. What Margot finds is a home full of unspoken secrets and mystery dripping from the pages. The horror peeks through cracks in the fields, dripping from the plants, and in shadows on the walls. At the heart of Burn Our Bodies Down is a story about family and putting the past to rest.

This was wonderfully weird. I enjoyed Wilder Girls, but didn't feel like I got enough explanation for what happened. I felt like this was better explained at the end, but not fully since it's crazy stuff, but I was okay with that. I love her blending of humans and nature and hope to be reading more from her.

“Keep a fire burning; a fire is what saves you. The first, the last, the heart of them all.”

I spent the majority of this book thinking that it was just sort of a weird little book, and kind of confusing. I thought about how I could see the deeper message, but wasn’t quite sure where the horror side of things would come through. Well, by the end I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I fell in love with this “weird little book” and the messages that were weaved between the stalks of corn. The horrors both real and ones only possible in fiction started to unfold slowly and had me shaking my head and even tearing up a bit.

Margot is a character that I think many people will find relatable. Her life as a reality and even in many metaphorical ways. Clearly this one needs to be read going in moderately blind, so I won’t say much more than, this one starts off a bit ominous and slow, but the end is like multiple gut punches that will make every confusing moment worth it.

“It doesn’t sit right, that nobody will ever know all of it. Even the parts that were mine.”

WHAT. THE. HELL.

After Wilder Girls I knew that Burn Our Bodies Down would be just as creepy, and it did not disappoint.

Our story is about Margot, a girl who feels trapped under her mother and her odd rules, her inability to buy groceries properly, her consistent arguments, and how she hides everything from her.

Margot wants to know where she comes from, why her mother is the way she is, who her family is, who her father is, who she is.

One day, Margot accidentally discovers where her mother is from, and the grandmother that she never new. As her adventure takes her to to Fairhaven and the town of Phalene, Margot learns more about where comes from then she expected, and at a cost much higher than she expected.

I absolutely adored the town of Phalene. Right away Margot meets Tess (who not gonna lie, Margot is not the only one here who had a crush on her) and Eli, and her introduction to Fairhaven is through a fire that is spreading across her grandmother’s land – and a dead girl who looks exactly like her.

Things only get weirder from there, with her grandmothers odd behaviors, the fields of corn that shine with a pinkish tint, and bleed pink when you open them up, and the fact that this has been the second mysterious fire on the FairHaven property, the first one resulting in Katherine’s disappearance. But who is Katherine? Why is the produce so odd? And who was the dead girl? And what’s up with the Apricot grove and the strange amount of frozen apricots Gram keeps in the freezer?

These questions all get answered as Margot learns more about her mothers past, her Grandmother, and the town as a whole.

This is an odd book to review because its hard to say much of anything without giving away spoilers…there’s just so much going on and so much mystery.

I absolutely love Rory Power’s writing style, and if you liked her slow reveal about what happened in Wilder Girls, you’ll absolutely love the format of Burn Our Bodies Down. It’s a slow but beautiful story, cultivating in one giant decision that can either save or destroy everyone.

I finished "Burn Our Bodies Down" within a 24 hour period. 'Wilder Girls' had been one of my favorite books last year, and I was slightly nervous that Burn Our Bodies Down wouldn't be as good, but I was wrong to worry.

The whole time I was reading, I was trying to solve the key mystery at the center of the story. I wasn't sure if it was going to be something realistic, fantasy, or science fiction. The fact that I wasn't sure which path it would take was something unique and totally new. I generally pride myself on being able to at least solve 90% of the mystery before it's revealed, but honestly I barely got half of it in Burn Our Bodies Down. I absolutely loved the pacing of this book. The whole thing takes place in the span of only a few days, and that's definitely something you feel in the short, quick chapters. I never forget the short amount of time Margot has been in Phalene, and how that time frame really plays with her emotions - both good and bad.

I was so close to thinking of this as a 5-star book, and for so many, I think it will be! What took the one star off for me was the quick turnaround at the end of the novel. I understood the timeframe and the reasons why Margot and her grandmother did what they did, but I would have loved to have dwelled on Margot a bit more at the end. Margot's story is messy, just like she is, and that's what makes her such a strong protagonist. I would have loved the legal situation at the end to have been a bit messier as well. It all seemed to wrap up a bit too neatly for a mystery that was decades in the making, but maybe that's just me being super picky!

Overall, I'm going to strongly recommend this one!!

If you need a twisty turny wtf... look no further!!! Rory Powers writing is amazing and she does tension and suspense like no other. Highly recommend!

Burn Our Bodies Down, by Rory Power, features the same creepy, horrifying, gripping, mysterious tone that made her debut, Wilder Girls, a breakout bestseller. It’s a true page-turner that presents a ton of questions and releases answers slowly over the course of the novel.

Burn Our Bodies Down starts with the relationship between Margot and her mother. There’s an implication of some kind of mental illness, or PTSD, and we are, like Margot, left with a lot of questions and no answers about why she is the way that she is. It’s exciting when Margot breaks free from her mother and starts a quest to find those answers from her grandmother. Like Margot, the more time we spend in her mother’s hometown of Phalene, the more questions we ask, and the harder it is to find answers.

Much like she does in Wilder Girls, Rory Power presents strange and odd scientific anomalies without spending too much time on the mechanics of why things work the way they do. I like how we’re left to accept that these things have happened, and we can focus on the way what’s happened has affected people and their relationships.

Burn Our Bodies Down is a white-knuckled read, and if you’re like me, you’ll find yourself staying up way past your bedtime, unable to put it down. It’s scheduled to be released July 7, 2020. Add it to your Want To Read list now and thank me later.

I LOVED Wilder Girls so I was beyond excited when I was approved for this arc. Burn Our Bodies Down has that signature Rory Power atmospheric presence that makes me feel like I am a part of the story or like it is playing like a movie in my head. The characters are messy and complicated and I just felt this pervasive sense of dread the entire time I was reading it.

In Rory Power’s sophomore book, she yet again manages to create a world that feels unfamiliar and eerie, though it’s entirely relatable in a way that everyone knows the chaotic barrenness of a corn field (have I spent too many falls stuck in corn mazes? Maybe, why do you ask?

Though I’m not a huge fan of thrillers because I’m the wussiest of wusses, I really enjoyed this book. The plot was fascinating and had me trying to figure out the twists and reveals before they happened. I immediately loved Tess, as the free-spirited and popular girl that I never could be but always fell for. Margot, on the other hand was a tough sell. I didn’t quite connect with her, though since that seems to fit with her character and how the world treats her, maybe that just shows the skill Power has when creating these people.

All in all, I earnestly loved Burn our Bodies down. It was a quick read with a good mystery and I eagerly await anything else Power will put out, whether it be a $19.99 grocery list, or the next NYT best seller.

Burn Our Bodies Down follows Margot, who has lived with her mother Jo all her life—and it’s always been just the two of them. Jo has something of a murky past and is generally very closed off from her daughter. Despite Margot’s constant desire for Jo’s love and approval, they have a deeply dysfunctional relationship and life.
But one day, Margot discovers a clue to Jo’s past hidden away inside an old Bible, and starts off at a run to find the town where Jo grew up, as well as the grandmother she’s never known, and any other family she might have been missing out on. But what she finds is so far from what she expected, and so far from normal. As soon as her feet hit the ground on the main street of town, she encounters mystery, deception, and strange looks from everyone she meets—people who seem to already know more about her than she even knows about herself. And the longer she’s there, the more she starts to see why. Her grandmother is hiding something—something dark. Slowly, Margot begins to unearth the horrifying truth, and see that this darkness spreads further than she could have imagined.

It’s difficult, sometimes, not to compare an author’s sophomore release to their debut, and I definitely found myself doing so during my reading of Burn Our Bodies Down. Power deals in secrets, a currency she’s familiar with and handles deftly. Wilder Girls took on government secrets, medical secrets, the secrets of survival in a post-societal breakdown environment. Burn Our Bodies Down takes on family secrets, small town secrets, and the secrets of the darkness within.

I’ll admit—this one got off to a bit of a slow start for me. The first few chapters deal with Margot’s current life with her mother and the discovery of the clues about her past, then her arrival in the town where her mother grew up. She immediately meets some people, including a couple kids her own age, who unintentionally lead her right to her grandmother’s farm, where things are already going down.

But then it felt like we hit the brakes a little bit, and we got wayyy deeper into the family dynamics and mother-daughter drama, which is fine if I had known that was what I was in for, but the whole time I was just waiting to get to the horror/thriller part, when it was reading more like a generational family drama. And don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing wrong with generational family dramas. But that was so not what I was here for. I wanted to get the meat of the story. I started to lose a little bit of traction on the emotional stuff and the dysfunction between mothers and daughters. While I get how it plays into the story, it just slowed me down a bit.

BUT THEN.

Then we got to the end chapters. And then we got into the meat of the story (ironic, considering I don’t eat meat) that I had been really waiting for.

And once we found out the “big reveal” and what kind of messed up stuff had been going down, suddenly we weren’t slowing down anymore, or hitting the brakes at all. We were pushing the gas pedal to the floor and barreling full steam ahead and I was loving it. The last few chapters and ending of the book actually completely made up for the slower chapters that I hadn’t enjoyed as much, and made it all make sense why Power had been writing them that way and how everything stitched together really nicely.
I will not go into spoilers, because this book isn’t out yet, and I want people to go read it, but I will say this about the big twist/big reveal: it was actually not exactly what I was expecting. I could see some of what she was setting up, and where it might be going, but the magnitude of how horrific it is and what had actually been going on behind the scenes did surprise me, and kept me quickly turning pages trying to find out more and more and more about it. The scene where our main character discovers everything is such a gradual dawning and as it goes on, there’s this sense of dread just falling over everything like a fog rolling in and it is so intense to imagine what she must be going through.

The details of the situation are so visceral and vile, and there were a couple things that actually made me recoil a little bit. One of the details played on a certain concept in horror that always sends shivers right down my spine. The big reveal was also reminiscent of a certain subplot in one of my favorite video games, which may have made me enjoy it even more.

Overall, I’d give this one probably four out of five stars. The only drawback for me was that I felt it played a little too heavily on the generational family drama portion of it when I was wanting to really go in on the horror aspect. It’s just that Rory Power does horror so well, I wanted more of that. But I see that the way she set it up did make it more impactful, and the horror I did get was really enjoyable. I liked this one a lot, I think Power is really making a name for herself in the YA horror/thriller world, and I would recommend that you check this one out when it comes out in July!

this book deserves all the hype. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. The characters, the world, the writing, it was all pretty amazing and I couldn't put it down. I want more from this world

Oh my goodness, the twists and turns this book took me on! I was so surprised by some of the plot points, which is usually not the case, unfortunately. I think this book was a fun read, but I'm not entirely sure I would purchase it or recommend it to a friend.

Rory Power is such an exceptional writer. This book was absolutely beautiful right from the very first page. I'm honestly in awe of her writing style.

This was such an intriguing read. It was quiet and sort of slow, but even though it wasn't necessarily fast-paced, I could hardly put it down. All I wanted was to figure out this family mystery. It was all so quietly unsettling, and while I'm not normally a thriller/mystery fan, I think I've found my exact brand of them.

CWs: (attempted) murder, body horror, gore, corpses, fire

I read Rory's previous books two months ago and enjoyed it but for the ending. I was still very excited about Rory's new book and was very happy when I got approved. I went into this book not having read the synopsis (not that it tells me much) and was quite surprised. Personally, while I did very much enjoy this book I did think it dragged a bit. I had hoped for a bit more action, but it was still a very enjoyable book. I couldn't put it away and read it in about three days. Highly recommend if you love slightly creepy books.

Well that just thoroughly creeped me out. Rory Power strikes again with a chilling horror novel about familial abuse and the secrets we keep from each other.

My favorite thing about this book was that it didn't keep the action from me. This is more character-driven, yes, but the twists and turns and mysteries are there from the beginning and usually one has to wait until a third of the book before something gripping happens. In Burn Our Bodies Down, the action starts happening 15% of the way in.

You know something is off right away, you know that Margot can't trust the people she so desperately wants to connect to, but you understand her needs and so you watch her sink further into something that she should be running as far as possible from.

Chilling, creepy, shudder-inducing, this story kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time, never truly feeling at ease even after it was over. Highly recommend.

This was a super fast creepy read that I couldn’t tear my eyes away from! Literally finished it in like 2 hours!!!
The story surrounds a teenage girl with a strained relationship with her mother and no knowledge of her real family. She finally contacts her grandmother and escapes to her house and that’s when it all begins.
A lot of weird stuff happens and you really don’t know what’s happening until the end- I guess that’s why I couldn’t stop reading!
This book comes out July 7th- put it on your TBR.
Thanks to Netgalley for my advanced ebook copy!

4 Stars - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Definite Rec

*My thanks to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review*

BURN OUR BODIES DOWN is a tense, heart-clenching YA thriller from Rory Powers that stays true to her form of causing you to not realize you’re holding your breath until your chest aches.

Margot Nielson has lived a half-life, toeing the edge of her mother’s bitter and blackened emotions just to keep her assuaged long enough to survive the next day. Because it is only them, their shared guilt, and the flames that keep the ghosts at bay. Desperate for a tie, any tie, to the family she longs for, Margot finally finds the number for a grandmother she never knew and leaves to claim the life she’s owed. But her Grandmother keeps just as many secrets, and Margot realizes very quickly that she has entered into a situation far more frightening than the one she left behind.

This left me contemplative. I had to take a moment to let it sink in. I took a shower, half expecting to feel the grit Margot describes when she turns on the faucet at her grandmother’s house. I tended to my plants, pressing dirt into the whorls of my fingers and wondering what it must have felt like to watch a burn spiral white and root-like across someone’s skin.

And isn’t that just like a book? To leave you hovering in that weightless space between one and the next?

There were plenty of times I thought to myself, “I do not like this book.” even as I soared through the pages, drawn in once again by Powers’ fluid and quick prose. Even as I got to the end and shook my head, wondering, “That can’t be all?” And I can understand that many people will not get to that point because it is simply not a story everyone will be able to sit through. The pacing, for some, may seem slow as Margot ambles through the oddity that is her life and the mystery surrounding her family and the girls who died. The almost-perfect normalcy of the rest of the book may rub against the absolute insanity that is the final 20%. All I can say is that it is one heck of an immersing story regardless.

The truth is that I long for happy endings, and when a character is put through terrible situations I want it to have been for something. It’s just that sometimes, what you want for them is not necessarily what they need. There is triumph here, but it is deeply personal for Margot, some may even consider it selfish. But that ability to be selfish is in itself a type of freedom. I wanted to feel more, and so I did not expect the book to linger afterward. It did, and has, and as far as I’m concerned Rory has a strange and powerful gift. She plants seeds so quietly you don’t realize how far they’ve dug in until it’s too late.

Besides having a drop dead gorgeous cover, this thriller was fantastic. Thank you to @netgalley and @minotaur_books for my ARC copy in exchange for my honest review. --
--
Margot and her mom, Jo have never had a traditional mother, daughter relationship. Aside from the fact that her mother won't tell her anything about other relatives, she also regularly takes Margot through some pretty narcissistic trips. In an effort to discover her heritage, and break away from that unhealthy hold, Margot heads to the place where her mother was born. What she finds there is beyond normal, and something no one should ever know. --
I enjoyed this book! I loved Margot's perspective and the way she weighed each decision she made. It is a good portrayal of a child who has had to take care of an adult. It is refreshing that there are no romances in this story. In truth, there isn't a good time or place for one that wouldn't feel forced. I read this in about 5 hours, it was so addictive! There was one point where I started to suspect what might be going on, but the details of it never formed until she revealed it in the story. Very interesting concept. Loved it and now need to get Wilder Girls. --

I could attempt to explain the magically weird captivating nature of this book in an eloquent review but I worry I would fail to capture it. Just read this book I promise you won’t regret it.

This book feels like a coming of age story wrapped in a thriller. Margot is a dynamic voice carrying the action forward. However, there are moments where it seems the story gets lost in the weeds and it takes a few pages to move forward. Overall, this is an interesting story with a strong lead that I would recommend to anyone looking for a slow burn thriller.