A review by megnotmargaret
The Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I just finished Firekeeper’s Daughter, a YA thriller/mystery/crime drama(?) by Angela Boulley! While there were a few nitpicks I have with it, overall, I thought it was a really great read and was beautifully written. 

Book content warnings: substance abuse and drug addiction, death and murder, sexual content (non graphic) and sexual assault/rape (non graphic)

The book follows Daunis Fontaine-Firekeeper, an 18 year old who has never really felt a part of any one world, as a biracial girl living in a town near an Ojibwe reservation with strong pulls on both sides of her family. After a family tragedy alters her post-high school plans, Daunis is feeling a little lost but finds comfort in the routine of her life. Things are uprooted once again after tragedy strikes her community, and Daunis is faced with some difficult decisions regarding how she can help her tribe and community while still staying true to her values. 

While I enjoyed the book, there were a few things that stuck out to me as pain points (spoilers ahead): 

- Daunis as a protagonist is written to be very perfect, which at times was a bit much. She falls into the YA trope of Not Like Other Girls, and comes off as a lot of internalized misogyny, which isn’t addressed in the book as a negative thing— the other girls are written to be exactly how Daunis perceives them. While it can be justified by her background, it felt a little much at times and didn’t feel like a big enough plot point to justify so much “screen time” to me. 
- the romantic elements felt underdeveloped to me and didn’t develop at a reasonable rate (in my opinion). Jaime is a very one-dimensional character and as he isn’t the focus of the story, he doesn’t grow or change much… at all.
- I’ve been out of the genre for a while, but I felt that the ends of chapters were needlessly cliffhangy and nearly always fell flat once you got two paragraphs into the next chapter. Boulley’s writing was captivating enough to me thah I didn’t need a comically large worm on a hook to keep me reading, and it felt a little patronizing (however, I am not the target audience for YA, so maybe that’s just my cynical, grown-up perspective.) 
- There was a LOT going on in the story, and while it touched on important topics, I feel that some elements may have landed better had they been given more space and time to resolve. The big one I feel was Daunis’ sexual assault, and it’s tough because I can understand why it was written in the way it was, but feel that it added a layer to the story that didn’t have the appropriate fall-out. On the one hand, life keeps moving on after traumatic events, something we see played out in the story time and time again— why should this one be any different? However, if it was a point that the author wanted to address in the same way that other topics were, it may have been better in a different story or with more time to process and develop, the way the other topics were given. 

Things I loved about the book: 
- Boulley paints a very rich image of the location and culture, and I love that things aren’t always just handed to you to understand. The words are written the way they need to be, and aren’t dumbed down to be more readable or palatable for readers outside of the culture. 
- the mystery of the story felt well-paced to me, though I see a lot of other people complaining about the contrary. It was believable, I was able to figure out the who and the what before Daunis as the omniscient reader that has the time to  pick up on all the clues. I think that makes a mystery good! 
- This book explored identity and belonging in a really beautiful way and touched on a lot of important topics regarding life as a Native American in the 21st century, and how our country can and should do better to support the communities affected by colonialism. 
- I also thought that the book handled and represented grief and the different ways it manifested very well. There are a lot of heavy topics in the book and the way the characters respond to them all feel very real. 
- I really like how Boulley humanized victims of addiction and the characters who made “bad choices” because it is always more complicated than that. Lots of media takes the other stance and this was a refreshing, raw, sad, and unfiltered look at what addiction and substance abuse can do to individuals, their loved ones, and their communities. 

All-in-all, I think I’d give this book a flat 4/5. It isn’t the type of book I usually read, but it was impactful and beautiful and got me thinking a lot, and I look forward to reading more from Boulley. 
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