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A review by forgedopulence
Bonfire by Krysten Ritter
1.0
It gives Mean Girls X Mystery in the worst possible way imaginable. I'm going to take my time with this one, because it shouldn't have been published.
A lot would be explained if this happened to be ghost-written by a man. If this really was written by a woman, that woman talks about other women like absolute shit. It's giving the antithesis of 'Girls' Girl' and I hate it.
~To The Details~
1. About the author: "She is the founder of Silent Machine, a production company that aims to highlight complex female protagonists."
The FMC is the literal definition of the unhinged and unreliable substance abuser trope. She was struggling to stay lucid and sane for the ENTIRE book. The only characters in this entire book who managed to be written with some semblance of sense were the male side characters.
2. We're first introduced to Condor on pg 32. His character and sub-plot line serve absolutely zero purpose outside of swooping in to save the FMC at the last second.
3. The amount of stories about animal abuse and deaths in this story also serve zero purpose. I'm not even giving credit for "the clue" because ABSOLUTELY MISS ME coming to the rescue of the person who killed my dog.
4. Routinely in the first half of the book and still present throughout, we're reminded that every other female character being written is fat and that Abby is very pretty.
"She is enormously fat, wearing teal polka-dot stretch pants and an oversized shirt with a Carhartt logo across the chest." This is how the author chose to describe a completely innocent side character whose purpose was to further the FMC's plot line.
The plot was all over the place. The characters were hollow, if not completely daft. The sub-plots were agonizing to make sense of. The twists were so poorly set-up that they may as well have not existed.
The only good thing about this book is that so many of the asshole characters died.
A lot would be explained if this happened to be ghost-written by a man. If this really was written by a woman, that woman talks about other women like absolute shit. It's giving the antithesis of 'Girls' Girl' and I hate it.
~To The Details~
1. About the author: "She is the founder of Silent Machine, a production company that aims to highlight complex female protagonists."
The FMC is the literal definition of the unhinged and unreliable substance abuser trope. She was struggling to stay lucid and sane for the ENTIRE book. The only characters in this entire book who managed to be written with some semblance of sense were the male side characters.
2. We're first introduced to Condor on pg 32. His character and sub-plot line serve absolutely zero purpose outside of swooping in to save the FMC at the last second.
3. The amount of stories about animal abuse and deaths in this story also serve zero purpose. I'm not even giving credit for "the clue" because ABSOLUTELY MISS ME coming to the rescue of the person who killed my dog.
4. Routinely in the first half of the book and still present throughout, we're reminded that every other female character being written is fat and that Abby is very pretty.
"She is enormously fat, wearing teal polka-dot stretch pants and an oversized shirt with a Carhartt logo across the chest." This is how the author chose to describe a completely innocent side character whose purpose was to further the FMC's plot line.
The plot was all over the place. The characters were hollow, if not completely daft. The sub-plots were agonizing to make sense of. The twists were so poorly set-up that they may as well have not existed.
The only good thing about this book is that so many of the asshole characters died.