The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor is a riveting, fierce thriller about murder, abuse and the secrets of a small village that haunt its residents for centuries to follow.

SUMMARY

"...He swallowed, his mouth as dry as the summer fields. 'Dear Lord-what has taken place here?'
'I told you. I told you that the devil-'
'Enough!'
He spotted something on the bedside table. He walked over to it. A small black box. He stared at it for a moment and turned to the mother hovering in the doorway. She wrung her hands and stared at him pleadingly.
'What shall we do?'
We. Because this was upon him too.
He looked back at the bloody, mutilated body on the floor.
What kind of man am I..."

Chapel Croft has a deep and violent history. Five hundred years past, eight Protestant martyrs were burned at the stake during Catholic Queen Mary's purge. Of these eight, two were young girls, found hiding within the Church. They were tortured and then burned. To this day, in this small village in Sussex, England; twig dolls are created to commemorate the martyrs and the dolls are set on fire. These dolls are called the Burning Girls.

"...She looks back to see what tripped her. A toppled headstone, submerged in the undergrowth, half covered in moss, the inscription almost worn away. She raises her camera to take a photo and then frowns. It seems a bit blurry. She fiddles with the focus. Still not quite right. She turns to try and refocus the camera on something else in the distance and almost jumps out of her skin.
A young girl stands a few feet away.
She's naked. And on fire.
Orange flames flicker around her ankles and lick at her legs, blackening the skin and stretching up to her smooth, hairless pubis. That's how Flo knows it's a girl. It would be hard otherwise.
Because she's missing both her arms and her head..."

Reverend Jack Brooks and her fourteen year old daughter, Flo, arrive in Chapel Croft. She is the newly assigned Vicar and hopes to make a new start of her life and career in Chapel Croft. She is leaving behind a scandal in her prior and this new posting is both a Godsend and a punishment. Jack is determined to not make the same mistake again. But the small village is not completely welcoming to the new Vicar. They are closed knit and traditional and a female Vicar is something very new to them.

Jack finds a welcoming gift on her first day. A black box containing an old exorcism kit. There are secrets here in Chapel Croft, secrets that begin to reveal themselves slowly. Thirty years ago two young girls and a young Priest trainee went missing. Never to be heard from again. The prior Vicar, who Jack came to replace, committed suicide with the Church. It is said that The Burning Girls haunt the village. That they appear not to cause harm, but to warn and they are appearing to Jack and her daughter Flo.

Chapel Croft has many secrets. Secrets that it would kill to protect. But Reverend Jack Brooks has secrets of her own and she would do anything to protect her child.

Review -

The Burning Girls is a thriller that weaves the supernatural and the evil that is man's own into a novel that may not find it's equal this year. There are so many twists that it is hard to write a review without giving away too many secrets woven into the tale.

So this is my review.

Buy this book! Check it out from your local library! Whatever you need to do and then clear your weekend because once you start, you will not put it down. You will be thrilled, horrified and entranced. You will read it in one sitting like binging on Netflix, only better...way better!

Then tell your friends, and then have them tell their friends and then...hell you might even want to read it again!

The Burning Girls is the book not to be missed in 2021.

One hell of a great read!

I love this author and everything he has written this far so I knew this would be no exception. He delivered. I loved this story! I’d highly recommend it to people and I think people are gonna love it!

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC. I was hooked right from the beginning, and though i figured out some of the twists, there were still more that I never would've considered and I was very shocked. I definitely recommend this book as it kept me intrigued throughout. It was suspenseful, a bit gory, and just the right amount of creepy.

Ghosts. Mystery. Thrill. This book has it. I constantly hear people say they don’t like ghost stories and I’m here to tell you that despite mentioning ghosts and there being a bit of a ghost element to this book, you will not regret reading this one. C.J. Tudor has a way with writing and it always grabs your attention from the first page to the last and that’s reason enough to read this book. The characters are different from many of the others characters that are often included in books of this nature and completely relatable. I highly recommend this book.

If you love horror and terrifying books this one is for you! I don’t usually get creeped out but the book did it for me. I stayed up and finished this book in one setting because I needed to know the ending. CJ Tudor is one of my favorite authors!

Really engrossing book that gives off cultish vibes. Did really well intertwining different times in history,

After an unexplained incident, Reverend Jack Brooks is transferred to the small village of Chapel Croft and moves there with her 14-year-old daughter, Flo. Chapel Croft is a town with a sordid history. Five hundred years ago, eight protestant martyrs were burned at the stake here. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. Two months ago, the vicar of the local parish killed himself, and Jack is taking his position. While Jack and Flo get acquainted with the town, the deeper they are drawn into its mysteries. Flo starts seeing visions of the burning girls, which predict something bad, will happen. In a town where no one trusts an outsider, even a reverend, is uncovering the truth worth it?

C.J. Tudor writes very creative mysteries. There is usually a bit of the paranormal involved, and that is why I love her books. The Burning Girls was no exception. There was a lot of suspense and some thrilling moments mixed in with the story. I was intrigued the entire time and had to know what happened to the two girls that disappeared and the vicar that hung himself.

I loved the twists and the horror aspects throughout. There were times I was a bit scared to read what would happen next. There were also times I found the story moved slowly, but overall I thought this was a great book. I look forward to reading Tudor’s next book, as she has become an auto-read author for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

From reading the synopsis, The Burning Girls sounds incredibly interesting. Four different storylines that intersect and combine history, religion, and crime? I couldn’t wait to dig in. Instead I was met with a poorly written story that relied on painful stereotypes and cheap twists to develop the plot.

Reverend Brooks and her daughter (yes the reason that Jack Brooks is an “unconventional vicar” is because she’s a woman) are the main narrators of the story. They’ve moved to a small village after an incident at Jack’s previous church caused public scrutiny and uproar. Jack and Flo embody the “not like other girls” trope and I found both of them to be unlikeable. I repeatedly had to remind myself that the book was supposed to be taking place current day because nothing about the way they acted felt current. I never felt any sympathy for them and I was quite bored overall because neither of them ever really revealed any motivations that they had. I figured out early on the twist that would involve Jack and I think this could have been a well done story arc had it been developed more. The main problem I had was that I picked this twist out of very few clues because Tudor more or less just dropped this part of the plot onto the reader last minute. There were plenty of moments that could have been used to hint at things but as with most of the story it just played out until things needed to be moved along and then “bam” a bomb is dropped on us instead of working it slowly into the story. Before I move on to talking about the plot more, I also wanted to note that I thought that this story had a few too many characters. It was hard to keep track of who was who and really not a single one of them was memorable enough for me to even want to keep track of.

So I will say that the plot had its moments but it began quite slow and ended feeling rushed. I felt as if there was one too many plot lines added last minute that left so many other aspects of the story dangling. The last hundred pages of the book contained so many twists that I can see how readers could get caught up in this whirlwind and fail to view the story as a whole. As the synopsis described, there are four unique stories that could be explored however, Tudor abandoned the title story about the martyrs from which the “burning girls” are named and I think this was the major cause of boredom on my part. There were brief chapters added from a third perspective, a male character who is unnamed as well as flashbacks to a young girl’s perspective and I was able to figure out large parts of the upcoming plot based solely off of these. The Burning Girls had the potential to have been a book that impressed me but it played into stereotypes and tropes that are not only overdone in this genre but are also harmful which is what ultimately turned me off of this book completely.

This was the first book by Tudor that I’ve ever picked up so I’m unsure of how her other works compare but I genuinely couldn’t get past how many problematic tropes were central to this story. There were moments of outright homophobia, including use of a slur and bi erasure. The plot line involving Jack’s reasons for leaving her former church involved quite a bit of racism and a lot of blame placed on mothers as being entirely responsible for how children turn out. On top of this Tudor also vilified people with disabilities and played into harmful tropes involving mental health and disability which is rampant within the horror and thriller genres. It’s a cheap way to manipulate characters within a story and when authors rely on this I automatically think less of the book. At this point, a good thriller can be written without using mental health as a plot device. If you have to rely on tropes like this when writing your book, you may need to re-evaluate your own biases. I was also disappointed in the choice to add in a sadistic pedophilic priest. With religion as a central plot line I was hoping for something better than this and that’s coming from someone who is not religious.

The Burning Girls was flat and poorly written. The plot lines all boiled down to an ending that left me with more questions than answers and it consisted of numerous harmful tropes that detracted even further from the story. The characters were either unlikeable or entirely forgettable and after figuring out who Jack was I was annoyed that she really revealed nothing of her identity despite the trauma that she had endured during her childhood. Everyone, but especially the villains got away with a lot considering this was supposed to take place in a “everyone knows everyone” sort of village. The title related very narrowly to the story as a whole and it felt like the author chose this title but with a different plot and tried to smash things in to keep it as is. This was the first Tudor novel that I’ve picked up and I don’t think I’ll be seeking any more out in the future.

Wow. Everything about this book was perfect - characters, plot and ending. Can't wait to read more by this author. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the free copy in exchange for my honest opinion.

Reverend Jack Brooks arrives in the small town of which she has been assigned after the death of the previous vicar. She brings with her, her 16 year old daughter, Flo. They are both just trying to settle in when they start to realize that things may not be as they seem in this little town.

As I always say with C.J. Tudor books, if tons of characters that you have to take some time to piece together is not your thing, maybe skip this one. Ultimately, I think it is worth it all in the end as each piece comes together from each story line in the last 5% of the book. If you’ve read and enjoyed The Chalk Man and The Other People, I feel like you will enjoy this as well.

4.5 stars rounded up to 5 !This is my favorite C.J. Tudor book. It was a delicate blend of thriller, horror, and mystery.

I finished this book in 2 settings. I was fully engaged from page one. The half star it did not get, was due to it being confusing at parts because of the jump in time and or perspective. However, the twist endings to these chapters provided a piece to the puzzle in a "page flipping" way! If you can read a book and enjoy it while being a little confused then it won't be a problem. I let Tudor tell the story, went along for the ride, and was bot disappointed!

It was mysterious, edge of your seat thrilling at times, creepy at others. The characters were written extremely well in my opinion and added so much to the plot and mystery while being unique and interesting on theory own. I also enjoyed the mother daughter dynamic.

Burning Girls was a fun twist on the usual new-vicar-moves-to-sleepy-English-village tale complete with cold case disappearances, town secrets, religious martyrs, and a powerful multi-generational family with secrets. In this story, the vicar is a hip, pop-culture referencing single mother with a talented artistic daughter. While the story was a bit far-fetched at times, it was a fun and absorbing read. Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review!

The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor ☆☆☆☆

This book pulls you in from the first page; it's a mix of thriller, mystery and horror. There was a bit going on in the present and past, and with the secondary characters, but it was very well written. I kept wanting to know more about everyone and everything, and just couldn't put it down!

Creepy and dark in the best way possible. This book kept me on edge from start to finish. Unsettling. My first read from this author but definitely not the last.

Ominous, spooky, murder filled book. I definitely enjoyed reading it, although realistically how many dead bodies can there be in one book? It was somewhat confusing as - warning, spoiler - there were different killers and also some of the chapters were intentionally vague. One thing I didn't like was [ getting a glimpse into Jack's thoughts in her head, as she had her own chapters, but the fact that she was really Merry wasn't revealed until the end. Seems like a cheap trick. But, I wasn't able to guess everything and the ending was action packed and disturbing. A good read!

Telling a story in first person, present tense is a difficult think to do. And in this case, it was not successful, at least in my opinion. The plot would have flowed much better without that as a distraction. With the addition of characters who I found it hard to empathize with (no matter what their plight or motivation), it was somewhat of an effort to finish. In short, there is little here for me to recommend.. Maybe just not my cup of tea.

Source - Review copy (Random House/Ballantine Books via NetGalley)

Wow! I love CJ Tudor’s writing. It’s hypnotic and fun and perfectly campy. This might be my favorite so far - strong women characters, an eerie small town, ghosts, and moral quandaries.

I could not put The Burning Girls down! I read the whole book in less than 24 hours! The main character, unconventional vicar Jack, and her daughter Flo are relocated to Chapel Croft. This turns out to be an eerie, creepy place with a dark history of death and sadness. As Jack and Flo get to know their new community, they begin to learn of its dark secrets and twisted path. I loved all the twists and turns this book had! Every time I thought I had something figured out, a new twist came along and left me shocked all over again. I also loved Jack’s character. She was so different than any female protagonist that I had read before, and I found myself rooting for her from beginning to end. The only complaint I had about the book was the slow start – it took me about 75 pages to really get into the book. However, once I hit that point, I couldn’t put it down. Thank you for allowing me to read and review this book! It is my first book by author CJ Tudor, but certainly will not be my last.

I look forward to Tudor's new book each year. I thought this was the perfect blend of creepy and mysterious. The story focuses on the legend of the burning girls in a small town. I found it to be like reading an episode of Unsolved Mysteries. I really loved the end when all the pieces started to fit together!

Thanks to Netgalley and Ballentine books for allowing me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. Also, advance copy is a bit of a misnomer since this book actually came out earlier this year. So I've read both the Chalk Man and The Hiding Place by Tudor and really liked both of them. This is a departure from those in that it wasn't as heavy a reimagining of a Stephen King novel. She does throw in a reference to King, but otherwise this story was all her own. Super fast paced novel set in a small town. A vicar with a rough past has recently moved to the parish with her teenage daughter. There is a local legend of the burning girls (if you see them you are certain to suffer some ill fortune). So guess what Jack sees her first night there? There is a little teenage angst, exorcism, obnoxious men, and old mysteries. Very dark and engaging.