A review by fiekesfiction
Fire Becomes Her by Rosiee Thor

adventurous emotional hopeful lighthearted fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I am giving this 3 stars, but some aspects of this do deserve 5 stars, it is just that other parts did not. Lurking beneath a very predictable plot and some cheesy writing is a wonderful exploration of love and the different shapes it can take. 
 
This book had some lines and some moments that really hit me hard. We follow Ingrid, a young woman born into poverty. She lives in a world were magic is a currency. Ingrid is determined to improve her life. She wants to rise to the top with Linden Holt, heir to a hefty political legacy and the largest fortune of flare in all of Candesce. 
 
I love the way this book intertwines the different problems and obstacles Ingrid faces. She is really determined to become rich and powerful, which is her goal in itself. As someone who is unhappy, she has this idea of things she needs to do and be to become happier. This belief that if she just gets Linden as a boyfriend and earns his father’s respect and becomes rich, it will be like her background does not matter anymore. Until of course, she finds herself among some people who might accept her for who she already is. 
 
I loved the conversations between Ingrid and Alex on what love means to them. They discussed how love looks different to different people and it should be up to people in a relationship to decide for themselves what that relationship means to them. 
 
 “ ’Everyone has an opinion about what a relationship should look like, what romance is supposed to feel like, and not only who can love whom, but how.’
(…)
‘You don’t have to fall in love in order to love. You don’t have to fall in love to be loved. Nowhere is it written in stone that you must love only one way, only one person, only one time. You haven’t missed your shot at love, because love isn’t just one thing. Maybe what you had with Linden was one kind of love, but there are others. Love is family, love is friends. Love is caring whether the people in your life survive a rebel attack. Love is love, Ingrid.’ ” 
 
I like that because often when people say “love is love” it is about romantic love. I like the emphasis on this idea that love is many different things to different people and just because it is different doesn’t mean one is better than the other. 
This book has a lot of representation and lots of people who want different things. There’s Charlotte who is happy to be surrounded by platonic love, but who prefers to have her own space. There’s Ingrid who feels uncomfortable about romance, but she still wants a kind of close relationship. There’s Alex who does not like physical gestures of love, but who does have strong feelings for Ingrid. And then there’s a lot of friendship between these people and other characters in the story. I really liked the way Linden and Ingrid eventually worked things out. Ingrid also has a complex relationship with her father that got multiple nuanced discussions. She has a childhood friend who she does not see often at all but who still had a big (positive) impact on her life. For how short this standalone book is it feels like it is really filled with a lot of different relationships and love. 
 
Ingrid is an original character because she is extremely flawed. Especially at the beginning it can be hard to get behind her way of thinking and acting. However, it does make a lot of sense with her background. You see how she has been struggling for years and how people have made her feel worthless. It is really painful but not unrealistic to see her try to pretend to be someone just to fit in. 
 
For that reason, this book could have been a new favorite.
Unfortunately, there were some parts that really dragged down my rating.
This book has a plot that to me seemed to try to be more surprising and interesting than it actually ended up being. There is some really cool magic in this and the action scenes with the magic were really cool to read. I liked how easy it was to understand how the magic works and how clear the rules of it are. There's just a story happening around it that was too obvious to me. I could guess really early on how this book was going to end. There was a moment that I think was meant to be some kind of reveal or plot twist, but it did not come across because I already knew. 
I also did not particularly like the writing. I think the characters were really well written and their dialogue was realistic. The moments where they talked about their emotions really worked. But throughout the book there were some lines and descriptions that felt overly-dramatic and not really helpful. Especially the last few lines of almost every chapter felt like a forced dramatic ending that just did not land for me.