Unfortunately I had to DNF. Completely missed the mark as to what the book was even supposed to be about. The MC wants to be a PI, but doesn’t investigate anything, or has anxiety about the smallest inconveniences. This was supposed to be a story about finding a missing girl, but she’s hardly ever mentioned and we get little to no information about this missing character, and when we do, it’s completely irrelevant.

4.25 stars!

This is my first book by Rachel Howzell Hall, but it will not be my last! This book followed Bailey Meadows as she stays at the illustrious Beckham property as a writer in residence in Topanga County in Southern California. Growing up in Southern California myself, I thought all of the conversations about fires and living in a place where wildfires happen, were very relatable. I also liked how the idea of fire was used to add tension to the events of the novel.

I do think the beginning 35-45% of this book was a little slow, but once the action really gets going and things get revealed I was absolutely hooked. I had to know what was going to happen and I was ripping through the pages.

Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

No. Just no. If I have to suffer through one more fucking ellipsis or dash I'm going to scream! Seriously, I've tried, but sometimes you just KNOW it isn't going to work. On paper, What Fire Brings should have been a great fit for me. I love a good remote setting and a bookish angle; add a missing person case as well as the promise of danger and I was all in. Not that I'm denying that it was the absolutely stunning cover that first caught my attention of course... But still, I fully expected to have an excellent time with this story, and to my surprise the complete opposite ended up happening. I'll try to explain briefly why I ended up making the decision to DNF below.

First of all, I have to say that I still love the premise of What Fire Brings. This story had SO much potential, and it's a shame I wasn't able to convince myself to read any further. I've seen reviews mention that the last third of the book makes it all worth it, but that only makes me question if it can be called 'worth it' if you have to trudge through what is basically the majority of the book first. With the way I was struggling, for me personally I don't think it was. Sure, I would have liked to get to the interesting part and truly see what What Fire Brings was all about, but this ment skimreading more than half of the book to get there, and I just didn't see the point.

Why did I struggle so much with What Fire Brings then? In one word: the writing. To say that I despised the writing style is an understatement, and it is something that is VERY hard to overcome with it being such an essential part of a book. The punctuation, the unfinished sentences, the word choice, the messy structure and random incorporation of information... It all just grated SO much on me, and I started to hate ever single second I had to spend with this story. You know something is wrong when you stop reading to browse other reviews to see if you are the only one struggling... And there is definitely something wrong when you would rather iron or clean the bathroom than read another page. Oh yes, this story was just about as fun as a trip to the dentist for me! And seriously, if I have to suffer through another ellipsis or dash in the middle of a sentence, I might just murder my kindle.

This wasn't all though, because I also had issues with the main character Bailey Meadows. There is no way on earth you can convince me that Bailey could be a decent PI one day, or even one in training. She is basically a complete mess and a tense ball of anxiety, and it is a miracle people don't see straight through her. I don't think I would ever be able to connect to her, and even though I've seen in her reviews that her 'state' is later explained, I honestly don't think it would have redeemed the story for me. I also wasn't a fan of how it was set during the pandemic with multiple mentions of masks and other elements and no clear function in the plot other than being a filler.

Anyhow, I know that I only read 14% of What Fire Brings, so you should probably take this review with a grain of salt... There are simply some things that are impossible to overcome, and having such a strong aversion to the writing style is one of them. I'm sad I had to add to add another DNF to my list this year, but I really don't want to waste my weekend reading something that is so clearly not for me.

I’ve enjoyed the author’s previous efforts, but I’m not sure how I feel about this one. The following may contain minor spoilers so please bear with me. Bailey Meadows is such an unreliable narrator, that I figured out the main twist from the beginning. I also had issues with one of the plot points: how could a rookie PI write well enough to make an established author give her an opportunity many professionals would kill for. This is explained in the end, but it bothered me throughout the novel. It also mixed police reports and newspaper articles, Bailey’s journal, as well as parts of the fictitious novel that made Jack Beckham famous. The puzzle pieces fit all in the end, and there was a big reveal that I didn’t see coming, but the parts seemed disconnected. I loved the author’s writing and the way she describes Beckham’s mansion and the nature in Topanga Canyon. I was also involved in the story and rooting for Bailey. Possibly my biggest issue was that it relies too much on true crime, which is a genre I don’t like. I was really looking forward to this one, I may just be the wrong reader.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, #NetGalley/#Thomas & Mercer.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this book for free in exchange for my review! All opinions are my own.

In my opinion, this book wasn't horrible, but it wasn't. a five star read either. Still I think this book would be worth a read for fans of Colleen Hoover, Sally Hepworth or Megan Miranda. I will also still check out other books by Rachel HH in the future!
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Many Thanks again to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with this book in exchange for my honest review.

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Big thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a fast paced thriller. I have Red on her books from Kindle unlimited and I was very excited to read this one. This is a nailbiting page that will have you at the end.!

City girl Bailey Meadows is at the Topanga Canyon ranch of mystery writer Jack Beckham, supposedly as a struggling novelist/attendee to an emerging writers conference plus the chosen recipient of mentorship with Beckham. In reality, she’s a private investigator in training looking for another Black woman who disappeared in this area, Sam Morris. Morris herself was looking for her missing mother and also had applied to the writing program. The best-selling author, a person with a murky past, wants Bailey’s assistance with the sequel to his novel about….a serial killer responsible for missing women in the same canyon. Too close to true life? Bailey wants to find out.

Rachel Howzell Hall has a track record of creating strong, smart, confident Black women who can solve puzzles and independently get solutions. Bailey, is, however, a tad scatterbrained and forgetful (on painkillers after a mugging incident), and unexplainably distressed at times (a food allergy that requires a life-saving Epi-pen shot also has her on edge). The book is interspersed with moments from dreams, passages from the missing woman’s life, old police reports, and flashbacks to a devastating fire years ago — which sometimes made transitions from chapters challenging. Fire is also a looming character: especially once we learn it takes 90 minutes for a wildfire to sweep from the canyon to the ocean, but it would take over 7 hours to evacuate the residents on the lone escape route.

The last third of the book is action-packed and filled with surprises — Bailey is a bewitching main character and the author has again created an amazing portrait of a complicated young woman. 4 stars!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO Guilty, guilty, guilty: Jack rants that he’s criticized for characters with green eyes, because…yeah. Anyway, no green eyes in this book.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO The drought in Topanga is its own character and properly described as a fire magnet. And the author knows her Barbra Streisand rose bushes.

Thank you to Thomas and Mercer and NetGalley for a free advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

What Fire Brings is slow to start and in this readers opinion this makes the beginning of this thriller a bit lackluster. I don’t mind details in a story but feel like it was a bit overdone at times throughout the read. The plot doesn't truly pick up until about halfway through but once it does, I did end up enjoying the story. Although imo, we stay too much inside the main characters head; Bailey is an enigmatic character and I liked how what happened to her mom tied into this current investigation..

At the end of it all, what makes up for the lack is this authors writing. Because by the end of What Fire Brings, you’re truly invested in a good outcome for Bailey.

Thank you to the publisher for the opportunity to read/review.

It was a slooooooow burn with multiple POVs - that is not for me and always makes me score lower because of it. This book may not be my favorite but loved the story just found myself rushing to get through it!

This book was so many things. Thrilling. Confusing. Unpredictable. Consuming.

The story follows Bailey who is working as an undercover PI that is searching for her missing friend under the guise of a writer doing a 1x1 workshop. As you read you start to predict who you think the killer is… what you think is going on… but the wild twists in the final chapters are something you won’t see coming!

The multiple POVs was a bit confusing at times on what was going on or whose POV I was reading. In the end it makes sense but in the middle I was for sure lost.

The main character is an inspiring PI who is assigned a missing person. Sounds good right? Bailey the MC joins a writing program to find said missing person. This book was promising but it left me board, it was all over the place. The joinery entries was random but worked in this book at the same one. I did like this author other books but this was just a little boring.

Thank you NetGalley for this ARC.

This book was a wild ride with lots of little tidbits and trails and flashbacks and evidence logs and cuts to another book throughout. Unfortunately, there's unreliable narrators and then there's whatever Bailey was. There was so much going on in the book, I really found it unnecessary to also have the main character be confused and stressed all the time, it made all the breadcrumbs hard to follow when literally no one in the book was. It also kept a couple of the bigger twists from really hitting bc of the main character being so out of it.
Also idk why this is based during covid, I've read a couple books that used covid as a closed door murder scenario but this just talks about masks and testing occasionally it's odd.
Premise: great, extra components: could cut a couple.

This story is the definition of controlled chaos. I spent so much of the book completely confused, and that’s exactly the point. The story is told so much through Bailey’s point of view that we, the reader, can only know and experience what she’s thinking and feeling. Because Bailey is scared, disoriented and confused, we are scared, disoriented, and confused.

Reading What Brings Fire is a full body experience. I was immersed in the environment of Topanga County - the smells of the burning fire, the remoteness of the Beckham estate, the looming woods, and the shadowy figures. Howzell Hall expertly executed this story from start to finish. If you’re reading it not and sure if you should keep going, or reading this review and not sure if this story is for you, keep going, pick it up, everything comes together brilliantly.

Thank you to Netgalley and Thomas & Mercer for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoy this author and I have no problem suspending disbelief for the sake of a good story. And there is a good story here; but the book needs some serious editing.

There are breadcrumbs throughout but the issue with being told about a specific mind condition with no context and how the story moves....deflates the reveal. The setup is abandoned almost immediately, which would have made for a more interesting story, and the fractured storytelling doesn't have the payoff I want it to. The dialogue is stilted. But the mystery is there, the threat and danger are there and theres still enough to figure out that I really do think you should push through to get to the end. Even if the last sentence is infuriating.

Twisting, anxiety-inducing and filled with misdirection, What Fire Brings will leave you sweaty and breathless on this decent into the abyss to find the truth. Rachel Howzell Hall skillfully pairs the suspense of a missing persons investigation with the intensity of an approaching wildfire to craft this tension-filled thriller where no one is who they seem.

Bailey Meadows is the new writer-in-residence at the home of best-selling thriller author Jack Beckham, where she’s expected to improve her craft while helping Jack write his next big hit. But Bailey is really a private investigator in training, searching for a missing woman who disappeared in the canyon around Jack’s property. As she conducts her search, she learns about other disappearances, weird occurrences and questionable characters that puts her on high alert. And as a roaring wildfire bears down on the estate, Bailey must quickly uncover the truth before she becomes the next victim.

This novel has a great premise – going undercover as a developing writer to find the truth about a woman who disappeared around the home of a famous writer. Going into the belly of the beast if you will. And it grows into something even more promising with the introduction of additional missing persons, a wildfire that threatens to cut the investigation short and the realization that each character has a hidden agenda. All of which gives What Fire Brings a sense of urgency and depth that engages the reader. It also results in a lot of moving parts, some of which will seem confusing. But choosing to stick with it is rewarded handsomely by the author with a fiery and explosive race to the finish that will rock your world.

I just finished What Fire Brings by Rachel Howzell Hall. I was a huge fan of We Lie Here and was excited to get an advanced copy of this, her latest thriller. Glancing at other early reviews, I see a handful of people saying they got about a third of the way into it but didn’t finish. That’s a bummer cause if they had just held out a little bit longer, they’d have been hooked. This book is the definition of a slow burn. It hits that halfway point and just catches fire… You see the pun I’m making here? — But seriously, I think the slow burn was totally intentional.

Written in the first person, the story follows Bailey Meadows, an undercover private investigator masquerading as an aspiring author. Bailey is searching for Sam, a friend of hers who went missing in Topanga Canyon outside of Los Angeles. Fabricating herself a convincing backstory – and with the help of some mysterious allies – Bailey lands a fellowship with Jack Beckham, a highly successful mystery author who wants her to join him at his remote canyon estate to co-write his next best-seller.

So this location is super important: Topanga Canyon is nestled deep in the Santa Monica Mountains, which—thanks to climate change and all that—are primed for a catastrophic wildfire—hint hint.

This book juggles many cool things, and I applaud Hall for making it work. You have the mystery, which, as it unravels, just gets bigger and bigger and more out of control—like a wildfire. WINK WINK. But you also have the whole aspiring author, book-writing thing, which gets wonderfully meta. And then there’s the actual wildfire threat, which is… terrifying.

To sum up, Rachel Howzell Hall’s books are fast-paced and fun to read, and What Fire Brings is no different.

What a book! I thought this was going to be similar to Hall's crime series and, well, it's not! Imagine picking up a book and reading about a third of the book, then turning the book on it's side and reading it from that angle, then turning it and reading it upside for a white, then turn it back correctly to finish it out. THAT'S how I felt reading What Fire Brings. It wasn't that I was lost, I was just reading it tilted, right? And then, just when I had it all figured out and it made sense I read the last page! What the hell was that about!? I don't know, I just don't know. Is this a review or me just rambling. It's review of a book that totally confused me and yet I absolutely loved it all at the same time.

Solid thriller/mystery about a missing woman in the canyons outside LA. Liked the different angle it used as a PI posing as a writer and the backdrop of the fires in southern California added to the suspense. Had some decent twists but felt a little too long at times giving it 3 stars. I want to thank NetGalley and Thomas & Mercer for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

Oh this book. I could not put it down, and loved every minute of it. It had everything I loved in a book and more. Thank you thank you!

I had a great time with it and was excited to pick it back up. My only gripe is that the ending became a little too dizzying for me. I’m not entirely sure I understand what happened in the last bits. I think this will be a fun book to read again knowing some of what’s really going on and picking up new clues.

Energy: Wary. Confident. Instinctive.
Scene: 🇺🇸 A luxurious estate in Topanga Canyon, California
Perspective: We follow an aspiring PI undercover as a writer-in-residence at the estate of a famous thriller author. They are trying to discover what may have happened to a colleague and friend who was last seen in the area before going missing. We also get flashbacks to an earlier time in the same region when a killer was preying on women.

🐕 Howls: Dizzying cluttered ending. .
🐩 Tail Wags: Use of natural and man-made situations to create unease and high-stakes moments. Bursts of high stakes. Disorienting and unreliable narrators and characters. Our main character. Unhinged villains.

🤔 Random Thoughts:
Disorienting in the best way (on purpose and consistent) so I could still overanalyze characters’ actions and puzzle through the clues even while in suspended disbelief mode. I love when I can mentally yell at a character and then have it all make sense 🫢.

The lead up to the ending was a little too all over the place and I was getting whiplash, but I still liked how it ultimately ended. Just be okay with open and unresolved endings, though!

Not a big fan of action movies or film noir, but this felt like a mix of those in a way I wanted. It had the elements of those genres that I enjoy (bursts of high stakes, misinterpreting dangerous situations) without the bits I dislike (no prolonged fight scenes or repetitive cat-and-mouse games).

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🎬 Tale-Telling: Choppy, staccato, gritty.
🤓 Reader Role: On the shoulder of the main character. Thrown right in the story with no idea what’s happening or who is who. We discover everything as it happens around us.
🗺️ World-Building: Sensory, atmospheric, cinematic.
🔥 Fuel: Starts with PI sleuthing to uncover what happened to the missing women in this area. Is Bailey’s colleague safe, in danger, or worse? Moves to what is actually going on? Who can we trust? Who is who?
📖 Cred: Plausible to suspended disbelief but in an intriguing way.
🚙 Journey: Memorable weekend getting lost on dusty, twisty roads with some great views.

Mood Reading Match-Up:
-Sundrenched hills. Wildflowers. Cicadas. Bacon sizzling. Smoothie blending. Frosted grass. Smoke-filled skies. Owl hooting. Footsteps on gravel.
-Gritty whodunnit…did anyone do it? mystery
-Casts of potentially unreliable characters

Content Heads-Up: Medical (allergies, stitches/blood). Prescription drug use. Parental abandonment (brief, recall). Mental health (dissociation, fugue). Racism, prejudice (virtue signalling, characters). Loss of a parent. Murdered or missing persons. Natural disasters (fire).

Rep: Black, White, and Latina Americans. Cisgender. Heterosexual.

📚 Format: Advance Reader’s Copy from Thomas & Mercer and NetGalley

My musings 💖 powered by puppy snuggles 🐶

Obsessed! I was on the edge of my seat turning the page needing more. I was completely captured by the story and drawn in. I was hooked from the first chapter!