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stephie209's review against another edition
2.0
Would have been a great book if it did not have so many subplots.
nikki_mariya's review against another edition
4.0
Has multiple subplots that can be distracting and a bit pointless but the core plot was engaging enough to keep me reading about the emotional struggles
filemanager's review against another edition
3.0
A little choppy, with a few sub-plots, but over all pretty good. Great ending!
sbojo32's review against another edition
3.0
This book took awhile to get through. It was about 400 pages with small print, but it just wasn't gripping. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be or not, but after reading books such as A Nearly Normal Family and Miracle Creek I wanted a bit more. I loved the plot idea - a blended family of step-kids, a car accident where one ends up dying - was it the fault of her step-brother at the wheel, drunk, or not?
The book is written by a lawyer, but it doesn't come across as too legal. Rather, there is a good blend of the legalese alongside the story. There are a couple of flaws with this book, though. First, there is a side storyline with a priest that doesn't go anywhere. The other side storyline with the sheika also doesn't go anywhere. I'm not sure why they were brought in except to add to the page count. By the end I wanted them all to tie together, but the story didn't. The priest helped provide some snippets about death and grieving and lying which fit, but there was way too much real estate in the book dedicated to that storyline. The sheika one fit even less.
The end did seem rushed and got a little off the rails. I almost would have preferred an ambiguous ending in this case rather than how it ended, and I usually hate ambiguous endings!
The book is written by a lawyer, but it doesn't come across as too legal. Rather, there is a good blend of the legalese alongside the story. There are a couple of flaws with this book, though. First, there is a side storyline with a priest that doesn't go anywhere. The other side storyline with the sheika also doesn't go anywhere. I'm not sure why they were brought in except to add to the page count. By the end I wanted them all to tie together, but the story didn't. The priest helped provide some snippets about death and grieving and lying which fit, but there was way too much real estate in the book dedicated to that storyline. The sheika one fit even less.
The end did seem rushed and got a little off the rails. I almost would have preferred an ambiguous ending in this case rather than how it ended, and I usually hate ambiguous endings!
bookish_blonde's review against another edition
2.0
Too disjointed and a flop for me. The pre.ise drew me in. The synopsis on the back gave too much away. The two story lines were unnecessary in my opinion.
bhunsberger's review against another edition
4.0
I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for a review.
Leigh and Peter are celebrating their young marriage and the successful blending of their families. But, tragedy can strike in an instant, and lives upturned. An accident, a death, and a court case pull the reader in to the story. I was pulled in to the book and read through it in a day. There are several different story lines, and my primary draw was to the legal thriller aspect of the story. While I appreciated the different story lines, at a few points in the book, it felt like too much was going on and I couldn't really understand why different story lines were continuing on. However, I enjoyed the book and the escape it provided on a cold weekend day.
Leigh and Peter are celebrating their young marriage and the successful blending of their families. But, tragedy can strike in an instant, and lives upturned. An accident, a death, and a court case pull the reader in to the story. I was pulled in to the book and read through it in a day. There are several different story lines, and my primary draw was to the legal thriller aspect of the story. While I appreciated the different story lines, at a few points in the book, it felt like too much was going on and I couldn't really understand why different story lines were continuing on. However, I enjoyed the book and the escape it provided on a cold weekend day.
ellasreadingnook's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
justjoel's review against another edition
4.0
I received my copy of House on Fire as an ARC via a Goodreads giveaway, which has no impact on my review.
House on Fire is Bonnie Kistler’s first novel and will be published on March 12, 2019, by Atria Books.
Pete and Leigh Conley are each on their second marriage, and with five children between them, they feel amazingly blessed to be able to make this blended family work. There are no “your kids” and “my kids”: only “our kids.” At least until Pete and Leigh are out of town celebrating their anniversary and receive a call that his just-turned-18-year-old son, Kip, and her 14-year-old daughter, Chrissy, have been in a car accident.
While both teens say they are physically okay Kip failed field sobriety tests and already had a suspended license from a recent drinking and driving incident. But a few hours later, Chrissy is dead, and manslaughter charges are brought against Kip, endangering his summer political internship, his educational future at Duke University, and his freedom.
Battle lines are drawn and the family begins to fracture even more when Kip asserts that he was actually not the one who was driving that night: Chrissy was. Leigh cannot believe her perfect daughter would do such a thing, while Pete clings to the hope that this time his imperfect son is telling the truth.
This book is sure to draw comparisons to Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You as it is also a novel that explores the effect the loss of a child/sibling has on a family. Although Ng uses delicate phrasing to evoke literary imagery, I greatly prefer Kistler’s writing style. It is obvious her years as an attorney have helped her develop her ability to look at a situation from multiple angles. Consequently, her characters feel more three-dimensional and less like stereotypical caricatures.
Kistler does an excellent job of exploring grief here—far better, in fact, that last year’s National Book Award winner (Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend) which was ostensibly about grief, but which I found to be as shallow as a paper cut. The grief here is the Marianas Trench, threatening to entrap the family in its depths.
As Leigh tries to move through her grief, she develops a new friendship that adds a philosophical element to the novel. When is it okay to lie? Kistler’s exploration of this is wonderful, and it’s one of the reasons the book will stick with me for a long time.
The only faults I can find with the book lie in the subplots. One of them took an unforeseen left turn about 80% of the way through the novel. While it had been subtly foreshadowed and was well planned, it also came across almost as a trick devised to propel the plot instead of something organic. I didn’t feel it was executed all that well, and the fact that it (along with a couple other subplots) were left unresolved was a blemish on what otherwise was almost a perfect debut novel.
I did like the ending and how it cycled around to echo the past while looking toward the future. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on what Kistler has to offer in the future.
4 out of 5 stars.
House on Fire is Bonnie Kistler’s first novel and will be published on March 12, 2019, by Atria Books.
Pete and Leigh Conley are each on their second marriage, and with five children between them, they feel amazingly blessed to be able to make this blended family work. There are no “your kids” and “my kids”: only “our kids.” At least until Pete and Leigh are out of town celebrating their anniversary and receive a call that his just-turned-18-year-old son, Kip, and her 14-year-old daughter, Chrissy, have been in a car accident.
While both teens say they are physically okay Kip failed field sobriety tests and already had a suspended license from a recent drinking and driving incident. But a few hours later, Chrissy is dead, and manslaughter charges are brought against Kip, endangering his summer political internship, his educational future at Duke University, and his freedom.
Battle lines are drawn and the family begins to fracture even more when Kip asserts that he was actually not the one who was driving that night: Chrissy was. Leigh cannot believe her perfect daughter would do such a thing, while Pete clings to the hope that this time his imperfect son is telling the truth.
This book is sure to draw comparisons to Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You as it is also a novel that explores the effect the loss of a child/sibling has on a family. Although Ng uses delicate phrasing to evoke literary imagery, I greatly prefer Kistler’s writing style. It is obvious her years as an attorney have helped her develop her ability to look at a situation from multiple angles. Consequently, her characters feel more three-dimensional and less like stereotypical caricatures.
Kistler does an excellent job of exploring grief here—far better, in fact, that last year’s National Book Award winner (Sigrid Nunez’s The Friend) which was ostensibly about grief, but which I found to be as shallow as a paper cut. The grief here is the Marianas Trench, threatening to entrap the family in its depths.
As Leigh tries to move through her grief, she develops a new friendship that adds a philosophical element to the novel. When is it okay to lie? Kistler’s exploration of this is wonderful, and it’s one of the reasons the book will stick with me for a long time.
The only faults I can find with the book lie in the subplots. One of them took an unforeseen left turn about 80% of the way through the novel. While it had been subtly foreshadowed and was well planned, it also came across almost as a trick devised to propel the plot instead of something organic. I didn’t feel it was executed all that well, and the fact that it (along with a couple other subplots) were left unresolved was a blemish on what otherwise was almost a perfect debut novel.
I did like the ending and how it cycled around to echo the past while looking toward the future. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on what Kistler has to offer in the future.
4 out of 5 stars.
pnkern's review
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5