Book Review:
Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman
⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis:
Hannah Dexter is ridiculed at school by golden girl Nikki Drummond. In their junior year of high school, Nikki's boyfriend walks into the woods and shoots himself. In the wake of the suicide, Hannah finds herself befriending new girl Lacey and soon the pair are inseparable, bonded by their shared hatred of Nikki.

Lacey transforms good girl Hannah into Dex, a Doc Marten and Kurt Cobain fan, who is up for any challenge Lacey throws at her. The two girls bring their combined wills to bear on the community in which they live; unconcerned by the mounting discomfort that their lust for chaos and rebellion causes the inhabitants of their parochial small town, they think they are invulnerable.

But Lacey has a secret, about life before her better half, and it's a secret that will change everything.

Review:
The premise drew me in and I really wanted to love it; I'm a Doc Marten wearing grunge fan myself, and darkly intense is how I might usually describe books I can't get enough of! Girls on Fire somehow missed the mark for me. The teenage angst - yes there is death, which I'm not downplaying for a second - is just a bit over the top, and it seemed too fantastical overall.

*I received an eARC from the publisher via NetGalley. This is my unbiased review.

#BookReview #GirlsOnFire #RobinWasserman #NetGalley #LittleBrownBooks #Bookstagram

I struggled to connect with the story in this book and don't feel it would be fair to give a constructive review as I didn't finish it,

This was an enjoyable read and I would recommend it. thanks for letting me have an advance copy. I'm new to this author.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to read and review this book.

After losing and replacing my broken Kindle and getting a new phone I was unable to download the title again for review as it was no longer available on Netgalley.

I’m really sorry about this and hope that it won’t affect you allowing me to read and review your titles in the future.

Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.
Natalie.

I’m glad I was on my holidays when I read this book because I don’t think I would have bothered to finish it otherwise. My time is too precious I feel. Maybe it’s a generation thing but it was depressing to see what these three young girls were like. The style seemed repetitive and a bit wordy too.

Like a lot of places, the town of Battle Creek, Pennsylvania is a town where nothing much ever happens – until it does. The year is 1991, and Hannah Dexter is trying her very best to survive high school by not drawing attention to herself. It doesn’t work. No matter how she tries to blend into the background, Hannah remains Nikki Drummond’s number one target. Even fact that Nikki’s boyfriend Craig has just committed suicide doesn’t make this mean girl change her ways. Enter Lacey Champlain.

Confident and feisty, Kurt Cobain worshipping Lacey is everything that Hannah is not. Hannah can’t figure out why someone like Lacey wants to be friends with someone like her, but she doesn’t question it. Truth is, Hannah is just happy to have a friend. Soon Hannah, now known as ‘Dex’ since Lacey decided that Hannah wasn’t really working as a name, is sneaking out, fooling around and rocking out to Nirvana. She’s also determined, with Lacey’s help, to get her revenge on Nikki Drummond.

Girls on Fire, the first adult offering from prolific YA author Robin Wasserman (The Book of Blood and Shadow, The Waking Dark), is a twisted and violent, yet ultimately underwhelming affair. Like Emma Cline in her novel The Girls, Wasserman’s prose here is often vividly purple in colour, while the storyline, though shocking in its final act, is repetitive and even mundane at times.

Read this if you like: Pretty Little Dirty by Amanda Boyden; Suicide Notes from Beautiful Girls by Lynn Weingarten; 90’s nostalgia.

I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher, in return for an honest review. This review is based entirely on my own thoughts and feelings.

Overall rating : 4*
Writing skill : 4*
Suspense : 5*
Plot: 4*
Characters: 4*

I'm not entirely sure what genre this falls into but YA it is not. This is a raw, powerful, sinister and very believable storyline. The characters and the narrative make you really feel like you are hearing the story from two completely contrasting perspectives. The story twists and turns, a couple of times I could see where it was heading then bam, another twist. I was guessing the ending right up until the start of the last chapter. I've seen a couple of reviews that were marked as DNF but I implore you to stick at it. I recommend it for anyone who's seen and enjoyed the mid-noughties film 'thirteen', you won't be disappointed.

Really enjoyed this crime thriller. Great cast of characters and a gripping and entertaining plot with enough twists and surprises to keep this reader guessing. I Couldn't put it down.

Apologies to the author but I could not finish this book. I had the feeling that this was done already.

This is the story of three girls, Hannah, (known as Dex), Lacey and Nikki and their interchanging relationships. There is love, both emotional and sexual and game playing and treachery. It is quite a dark story and is therefore quite a depressing and disturbing book to read. The climax was easy to predict so although it was an easy read it isn't a book I would ever want to read again.

I started reading this book several times. I really wanted to give it a good chance and continually gave it another shot, mostly because I'd read and loved previous books by the same author and also partly because I found the premise so intriguing. However I just could not find my feet within this book at all. Despite several attempts, I'm afraid I've had to abandon reading this book.

Brilliant exploration of teenage, female friendship and how toxic it can be. I couldn't put it down because I needed to know how things would be resolved. It's very dark, but I was expecting that. I'm not sure I enjoyed it as such, but it was certainly compelling, and Lacey and Dex have stuck in my mind for a long time after reading.