Reviews

As controversial as it was, I loved Burned. It was a great book and it had an ending that was not happy or tacked on or false, but one that felt right for its character. It was a book about a girl who really wanted happiness, had a shot at it, had it for a brief moment, and then it all got ripped away in one horrible moment, which is something that happens to people. It all felt very real.

I wanted to like Smoke. I started out liking Smoke, even. I liked the addition of Jackie's voice, and her struggles at home served as a great contrast to Pattyn's life on the run. I liked where Pattyn's story went, and I didn't necessarily mind her developing feelings for someone else. Pattyn maintains a balance between remembering Ethan and slowly finding herself able to move on.

So, these were good things. The writing was mostly good. So what ruined it for me?

The ending. It's the ending. Never has an ending done so much to completely spoil a book for me.

I don't like to spoil things for people, not even bad endings to stories. But the ending to Smoke is so unusually happy that it never once feels authentic. It wraps everything up perfectly; it resolves everything wonderfully for all of its main characters. It feels so false and contrived that it makes me angry. These characters DID NOT have a happy ending originally. It feels like seeing a story on the news about a mother and three children getting brutally murdered in an alleyway and writing a fake news story where a random superhero comes out of nowhere and saves everyone.

I won't necessarily say that this sequel wasn't needed, because a sequel to Burned could have been done well. It would have been dark, but it could have worked. This almost feels like an insult to the original novel. A tacked on happy ending was not what this story needed and it certainly didn't make it better.

The only reason I gave this two stars was because the story itself started out very well and wasn't actually that bad. It really is just that ending. Possibly the only case in recent memory of a book that was consumed by its awful ending.