This one was not for me.
Thank you NetGalley for providing a copy of this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I struggled a bit to get into this. I will say I've never hated a grandmother as much as I did in this novel. My heart hurt for rusty but I didn't feel a genuine connection with him. The writing style was a bit cringy at times but I did finish it.

i enjoyed this book, it worked as a mystery novel with an interesting character and a great plot in the book. I had a lot of fun reading this book.

This book was sent to me as an ARC on NetGalley. However all opinions are of my own.
Unfortunately, I did not like this one. Repetitive and no real structure. The story didn’t make sense and there was no apparent build up to anything - disappointing.

This is one of my favorite genres, so I hate to say that I struggled a bit through this book. I wanted to love Rusty’s story. I sympathized with him because life really can be that shit. I certainly don’t know that I’ve ever hated someone’s grandmother so much. There were so many times where I had to stop and audibly curse his circumstances. You knew the blunder was coming, but it still got me each time.

It’s not that it’s a bad book, but the writing left the feeling of something missing. The style was occasionally a bit too crass and cringe. Anything sexual was awkwardly described. This was a dark crime-thriller and Generous has a style for an acquired taste. It’s downright morbid at times and not for the weak of heart.

*I received an ARC of this book from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

“It wasn’t until his late teenage years that he understood his grandmother didn’t like him, and that in needing her, he’d cramped her existence...He was too easy to pick on: dead family, scarred face, short fuse.”*

The fire that killed his family except for his dad, who is doing time for arson, set Rusty up for a life full of pain. He works a crappy job while trying again and again to finish his high school degree to become qualified for a better gig. Meanwhile, he barely makes ends meet living at a boarding house where his nosey neighbors critique his every move. His coworkers ask him to help with a heist to rip off their awful boss, and Rusty thinks his luck might be changing. But he ends up risking everything for the chance of a little bit of cash.

I like the way the novel is bookended the prologue and epilogue set up in September 1982 on the day of the life changing fire, and the bulk of the novel in current time. This nicely provides an added theme of predestination and gives a glimpse of some characters’ younger selves.

Rusty has a ton to pluck for a kid who faced so much rejection for things beyond his control. Those who showed him kindness really stood out to me in the story, but some of them had reasons that went well beyond being a good person.

Generous did an excellent job of getting me to care for Rusty and wanting him to rise up from the baggage life burdened him with. The heist itself was one of my favorite parts, seeing the plan unravel like we’d expect anything Rusty was associated with to do. Each time he took a misstep, I couldn’t help but cringe, but the continuous conflict made that extended scene shine.

I finished the novel satisfied with the story resolution, but craving some Timbits from Tim Hortons. Also, I wracked my brain trying to remember the last time I had a Filet-o-Fish sandwich.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to NetGalley and Unnerving for providing an Advance Reader Copy.

*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.

I really appreciate a book that has a great cover image to represent a significant part or traits in
the story. This book has a simple cover image, a burning match, a match that weighed almost
nothing yet its impact on the story is way heavier than you could think.

Rusty Talbot, the protagonist, is in the verged of losing everything. He has almost got nothing to
lose and when presented a chance by a co-worker to get back to their boss. He has taken part
in it immediately. I know and felt what Rusty was feeling. Being almost at the bottom, you will do
everything within your reach to go up and for life to agree with you. Having experienced the
worst would make you also think that things can get a lot uglier. As if the worst has a lot more
levels. And thus it happened when Rusty thinks that he is at his worst, then it got a lot more
what he had not wished for when he visited his father at the prison.

This book has a perfect representation of this quote “There is beauty in simplicity”. I had read a
lot of complicated stories than this book has but nothing that I had read that I can compare to its
simplicity. It is almost a representation of life that almost doesn`t want to have you. Life on the
edge of collapsing yet keeping it together for the sake of living.

Be still my enlarged, chain-smoking, trash panda heart, this book is everything I wanted when I was 22. It reads like a serialized, zine draft published by the overnight clerk at Kinko’s. The thing is, it’s not very good, rampant homophonic errors aside. The actual heist takes three-quarters of the book to get to, as Generous takes too long languishing in the main character’s (Rusty) second try at high school, dead end manual labor job, Rusty’s jerkoff boss, fatphobic language, and fart jokes. Rusty is too self-aware to be as dumb as he is supposed to be, and women are as secondary- be they knights or snakes -as the details of the heist, which devolves into a bloodbath before Rusty gets an implausible, cloying resolution.

*AN ARC OF THIS BOOK WAS PROVIDED TO ME.

**DNF at 35%

Our main character Rusty is trying to pull his life together when his co-workers approach him and ask for his assistance in a heist at their workplace. However, their plan begins to fall apart.


The concept of this novel was interesting and had me excited to read it. Once I got into it, there were a few issues in the book that made me unable or unwilling to finish it.

The way that women and the female body is described in this book is...less than satisfactory. Additionally, there is a lot of disturbing sexual descriptions that don’t appear to be necessary to the overall plot. I felt generally uncomfortable while reading a majority of the book.

I also feel as if the plot and character relationships were not established properly. While I did only read about 1/3 of the book, I feel like these things should have been set in stone (or at least explained better) at this point. By the time the heist was planned, I was still unsure of how all the characters were involved with one another (other than the fact that they worked together). I would have also liked Rusty’s backstory to be more thought out and described.

We are given a prelogue, but there are a lot of holes in it and not all of it makes sense. For example, we are told that baby Rusty survived the house fire because his sister left him in a bath tub with water. But if the house burned down, the amount of water in a bathtub would not have saved him. We’re also told he almost drowned in this same tub before the fire started, so why didn’t he drown when he was left unattended?

I think the idea of this book had potential, but there were too many inconsistencies and undeveloped ideas to make it a worthy read in my opinion.

I received this book as an ARC from NetGalley.

Rusty Talbot has had a difficult start in the world. Growing up in an infamous family, foster care, a grandmother who does not want him. Difficult.

Rusty gets roped into a heist that will steal from his boss. However, nothing in Rusty's life Goes as it should.

SUMMARY
- Burn Scars is a crime novel that follows the protagonist Rusty Talbot as he tries to get his life together. Coming from poor circumstances and generally disliked by the town, he alone is in charge of choosing to do something with his life. When offered the chance to make some easy money, he agrees to take part in a heist with his co-workers. But as the description says, Rusty isn't a lucky guy, and it doesn't go the way anyone planned.

CONTENT WARNINGS: Alcoholism, drug abuse, explicit sexual content, character death, murder, implied incest, paedophilia.

REVIEW
I was intrigued by the plot of this book, and went into the experience expecting high octane action, mystery, murder and deceit. What I got was an entirely different vibe.

You follow the story of Rusty Talbot, a victim of poor circumstance with burn scars on his face. The story build's his character as a very put upon individual, who is struggling to do anything of note with his life, and only has the support of his girlfriend.

The atmosphere from the outset is very graphic, you get the sense that this is a very gritty novel, populated by lowlife characters and dingy room settings. You immediately get an understanding of the protagonists despair at how challenging it will be to escape his crappy life; a view that is backed up in the first quarter of the book to the point of overdoing it.
The plot was fairly simple. He wants a different life though isn't particularly motivated to achieve this through hard work, hence following through on a crime he would never have committed otherwise.

However I felt that leading up to the action, reading in general felt forced. I felt that the characters could have been developed more to build the readers empathy towards them. While the plot has a clear direction, and there are reinforcing hints throughout the text indicating where the story might go, I didn't feel compelled to see what happened to the characters. There was plenty of dialogue establishing relationships, but these interactions lacked depth and didn't really build an understanding of each character as an individual. Their motivations were mostly the same, gritty, hard done by and lightly sympathetic toward the protagonist. It felt a little one-dimensional.

From my experience reading this book, I'd recommend it to a male audience. The writing appeals to the male gaze, with.. interesting descriptions... on the female body in its various states of undress. This book wasn’t my cup of tea, but if you’re looking for something down and dirty, it could be for you.