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A review by heamarhar
The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor
3.0
This book was a good read and I'm glad I picked it up. There were a lot of mysteries woven into the storyline spanning different years and I liked how the author left little breadcrumbs in the alternating viewpoints to help readers piece it together with every chapter. I was pleasantly surprised that the answer to the modern mystery was not what I had expected at all! The ending was overall satisfying and ended at the right time.
However, I have complaints:
-There is a chapter with really cringe "edgy teen talk" that I don't think the author did well at all. Not a huge fan of Flo's "I'm not like other girls" internal monologue.
-I get really confused when there are more than 5 characters in a book, and I get especially confused when the characters are different church clergy members whose roles I don't understand. (But they're all integral to the plot and history of the setting, so I'll let it slide this time.)
And a huge spoiler complaint:
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-This is at least the second, maybe third "the main character is a referenced past character who got enveloped in a town mystery / crime and they changed their name and came back years later to solve everything and no one knows it's them" book I've read this year. As a reader, it's really frustrating for a character's inner thoughts to not align with the facts when we experience them pretending to hear brand new information. Jack thinking that a picture of a "mysterious" "unknown" man gives her the creeps and she can't pinpoint why doesn't make any sense when later it's revealed that she was abused by him as a child. That made me think the author got to the end before deciding to make Jack the assumed identity of Merry. Felt like an enormous afterthought. This might be my biggest pet peeve with books that take on the "double identity" trope.
However, I have complaints:
-There is a chapter with really cringe "edgy teen talk" that I don't think the author did well at all. Not a huge fan of Flo's "I'm not like other girls" internal monologue.
-I get really confused when there are more than 5 characters in a book, and I get especially confused when the characters are different church clergy members whose roles I don't understand. (But they're all integral to the plot and history of the setting, so I'll let it slide this time.)
And a huge spoiler complaint:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
-This is at least the second, maybe third "the main character is a referenced past character who got enveloped in a town mystery / crime and they changed their name and came back years later to solve everything and no one knows it's them" book I've read this year. As a reader, it's really frustrating for a character's inner thoughts to not align with the facts when we experience them pretending to hear brand new information. Jack thinking that a picture of a "mysterious" "unknown" man gives her the creeps and she can't pinpoint why doesn't make any sense when later it's revealed that she was abused by him as a child. That made me think the author got to the end before deciding to make Jack the assumed identity of Merry. Felt like an enormous afterthought. This might be my biggest pet peeve with books that take on the "double identity" trope.