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Abandoned by Booklikes

Government drone by day and book lover and geek girl by night!

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Book Falls Apart

Bonfire - Krysten Ritter

 I have to say that this one didn't work for me at all.

 

I think the main issue is that there are way too many plot elements going throughout this book. I also don't think that the main character Abby Williams was that engaging at all. I kind of ended up disliking her and her indifference to her father just turned me off. Her also being obsessed with a childhood friend that's been gone didn't didn't ring true. The whole  book read like a Lifetime murder mystery.

 

"Bonfire" is about an environmental lawyer named Abby Williams that returns to her small town of Barrens, Indiana. Abby's returns home to lay some ghosts to rest and also to see if a big chemical company (Optimal) in her town is behind a recent rash of people becoming sick.  While there though Abbey starts looking into the disappearance of a former friend of hers that was never seen again after senior year.

 

Unfortunately I don't think that the character of Abby was very developed. I think that most of this book was a lot of "tell" not show and the secondary characters never really come alive. I also was able to figure out who the guilty party was because there's very few people in this book so you know it's not that hard to figure out who the guilty party(is) are while reading this.

 

The writing at times was really clunky. Ritter is also little bit repetitive, actually I'm going to say it, she's a lot repetitive. Be prepared to read about crows. l also think that the writing was hampered by the lack of flow. This book just stopped and started in a lot of awkward places and I think ultimately the mystery of Kaycee and all of that just didn't work along with everything else that was happening in this book.

 

The setting of Barren's is a small town with a lot to hide. It was interesting to read about what was going on underneath the surface of the town, I guess part of me just didn't think that something like that could be kept hidden for as long as it was especially in this day and age and with how much kids talk and social media these days. That part of it didn't really work for me and it didn't help that Abby is given a pretty big clue in order to figure things out. I rather she had realized it instead of her fumbling along with things as she did. The whole collar (Abby's dog) explanation equaled zero sense. I had to re-read three times and just didn't buy it. There's a lot of moving parts that Ritter tries to force fit. 

 

The ending was not good. It honestly doesn't make any sense to me like the decisions that's Abby is taking feels like she's just going to force herself to be alone and sad just because she definitely seems to want to still be seen as a victim to me. I don't know if Ritter has plans on continuing with this character in a future series, but I definitely hope that Abby gets developed a lot better than she was in this book.