4.66 stars rounded up

She’s too pretty to burn is Wendy Heard’s Young Adult, LGBTQIA, romantic thriller reimagining of one of my favourite classics – The Picture of Dorian Gray. 

We follow best friends Veronica and Nico, each an artist in their own right. Veronica is passionate about photography and Nico lives and breathes chaotic performance art. Then, they meet Mick, an incomparable beauty with a rocky relationship with her mother. One picture changes everything: we see Mick and her mom’s relationship crack, Mick and Veronica fall in love, the best friend’s dynamic completely change with the addition of a third person. 

When two becomes three, disaster follows. I couldn’t say it better than the description “One fire. Two murders. Three drowning bodies. One suspect . . . one stalker. This is a summer they won’t survive.”

I listened to the audio book, and I loved how Frankie Corzo, Bailey Carr, Stephen Dexter brought She’s too pretty to burn to life. They made the perfect ensemble and delivered a great paced audiobook. I couldn’t imagine any other narrators.

I am not really into romance anymore, but I have to give props to Heard. Mick and Veronica’s relationship was beautiful and crucial to the plot. Their relationship was poignant, intense, epic and treated with respect. As teenagers you can feel their angst and their abandon to everything they do. 

All the characters in this book were very well drawn and developed. I appreciate that there were consequences to the character’s actions and that there was a parent present. This book read as real life and, for YA fiction, it didn’t feel far fetched.

Wendy played fair with her solution and ended the book in a perfect note. I highly recommend this book to anyone who love thrillers, atmosphere and characters who feel real.

You don’t have to wait long to read this book, it comes out on March 30th and until then you can visit Wendy Heard’s website to read the first two chapters!

I am so thankful to Wendy Heard, Dreamscape Media and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of She’s Too Pretty to Burn Audio Book in exchange for my honest review.

I loved listening to this book so much more than I thought I would. This is the first LGBTQ themed book that I have read and I have to say that I noticed no difference in the story at all, except for the fact that there were very minor instances of pushing to normalize same sex couples, so subtly that it just feels normal. I did not think this book was too mushy or had too much romance, which I was originally afraid of, The mystery and suspense of the book were great and the narrators are fantastic, as well.

Okay so I don't want to say to much about this book cause I think its best to go in blind but just know you are in for a wild ride! This reimagining of the classic "The Picture of Dorian Gray" is absolutely phenomenal both as a reimagining or as a great thriller in its own right! I loved that this was the first time I have seen a Dorian Gray story keep the LGBTQ+ vibe as well. This book really is a fast passed ride though an amazing thriller. This is deffinatly on the list of best books of the year!

Uhmm what?! This book was originally not on my radar AT ALL but I am SO HAPPY I found it on Netgalley to listen to. I listened to this all in one sitting because I literally could not put it down. I also went into it blind and completely recommend everyone to do the same. This started out like a cute  YA contemporary fiction but took a dark twisty turn and I really enjoyed every second. The last half or so of the book had me on the edge of my seat and I couldn't wait to see what was gonna happen.

I've never received an audiobook from Netgalley before, so the poor quality of this audiobook may just be the upload quality, but this audiobook sounded like a computer was narrating it. Not only did I have to put is at 2x speed for the voices to resemble anything human, but I actually had to double check if there were voice actors reading this or if it was an automatic narration. This has nothing to do with the inflection of the voices of the narrators, but they literally sound machine. The narrator for Mick sounds especially computerized. That being said, I really enjoyed the book, and will be posting a review of it on the books page, and the narrators were good at general inflection and emotional acting.