Ava survives a fire which claimed her parents and her cousin, Sara. After going through dramatic changes physically in hospital through endless skin grafts she is finally released home. Or rather to her new home where Sara used to live. Now with her aunt and uncle, th y get her to start high school and we see how the kids react to her



At her support group she meets Piper, a loud mouth car crash survivor who's in a wheelchair seemingly only temporarily she also likes music like Ava and likes a band called Atticus only in real life the words are by Atticus the poet you can find on Instagram who I'm a huge fan off and was great to see mentioned in the book.



As Ava gets encouraged by Asad and Piper to reclaim her place on the stage in drama not just hide away and be a stage hand as her voice is better than queen B Kenzies she learns about Kenzie and Piper and how they used to be friends and just how their relationship changed.



Ava also has to deal with her aunt and uncle wracking up debt in her name for her surgery needs and how she copes with the memories from the fire after she remembers how she escaped and has to also deal with the mental scars from their separate accidents as Piper needs her.



Ava and Piper deal with a lot that's relatable from being social outcasts in school, dealing with stares, whispered chatter about them, healing, depression, counselling, unrequited crushes and more the girls bond is a united, complicated unity that highlights how healing and recovery are better with a support network around you. It was a great tale about dealing with the aftermath of death and escaping that despite gaining life changing injuries.



Many thanks to the publishers for allowing me to review this book for them!

I absolutely loved this realistic and heartfelt look into the life of a teenage burn survivor, this is a raw, moving story that deals extremely well with hard, often taboo subjects.

[This review is on Goodreads.]

WHOOPS, I messed up by reading this one so early. I could have sworn it was coming out this summer. I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna prioritise the ARCs that are coming out soon! I'm gonna get reviews up in a timely manner! This is a great plan!" Anyway this comes out in October, so I screwed up there.

I feel like I should wait until later to write a proper review, although I will inevitably have forgotten all the pertinent info by that point. In the meantime I'll say that I really enjoyed the style of this. The 'voice' is great, especially in the early chapters (or at least, that's when I noticed it most, because it was new); those opening scenes really dragged me in, and I liked how organically the backstory was revealed, even though the story begins a substantial period of time after the fire that changed the protagonist's life so dramatically.

I also enjoyed the musical theatre nerdery; though I'm not particularly familiar with many of the shows referenced (I've never seen Wicked, sorry), a school experience with more focus on musical rehearsals and backstage shenanigans than parties and prom is one I can relate to. I spent too many hours of my young life in rehearsal for one show or another -- usually in the band, but not always -- and I also love it when books have a school extra-curricular or hobby as the main in-school focus, because like... so many YA characters don't seem to have hobbies and it's wild.

This book also doesn't shy away from the nasty details of dealing with the aftermath of a fire: aftercare for scars is dealt with pretty extensively, and it was clear the author had done her research and talked to survivors (as was also evident in the acknowledgments). As far as I'm aware, she doesn't have personal experience of dealing with disability or being disfigured; it seemed to me that it was a sensitive and well-researched approach, but as someone who also doesn't have personal experience of disfigurement, I'm happy to be corrected if those who do feel differently about it. I saw another review mention that it was based on a friend of hers? Which would make sense; it certainly felt like she knew what she was talking about. I'm still interested to know what those who have been directly affected by fire and disfigurement have to say.

Finally, I liked that friendship is a significant theme of the story, especially the ways in which friends are key not just to surviving, but to thriving. So overall, I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Sadly, this book just wasn't for me. By about the halfway point I was losing interest and towards the end, I was just skimming the pages. I don't have any fundamental issues with it and it appears to be well researched; it is not easy to take on subjects such as the one featured in this book.

My main issue was the plot. The events were repetitive and didn't seem to develop. I actually thought one of the subplots was far more interesting and would've liked to have seen it better developed and more prominent within the book.

From other reviews I have read, it is clearly very popular and I wish Erin all the best with her book.

Scars Like Wings was a pretty good (if a bit predictable) read. Ava is a teenager who was involved in a house fire and lost her parents. She's been badly burned and had 19 surgeries over a year but they haven't been able to 'fix' the horrific scarring that causes people to stare at her in public. Ava is going back to high school and promises her aunt and uncle she'll give it a try for two weeks but doesn't expect to stay. It's an interesting YA novel that takes a look at how appearance matters in high school.