Bonfire - Krysten Ritter Review

First of all, thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK for providing me with the ARC for this! All opinions in this review are my own. You can pre-order this on Amazon UK and it's due for release on November 9th!

I have to admit that I was skeptical going into this with Krysten Ritter being the celeb that she is, I think how good could this book be? But wow did she prove me wrong and make me feel like an idiot because I loved this!

Abby Williams left her hometown of Barrens and didn’t look back, moving to Chicago and making a career for herself as an environmental lawyer. But she’s brought back when her Law firm starts investigating Optimal Plastics which proves highly unpopular with the Barrens-Locals as Optimal has single-handedly rebuilt their town. Abby arrives back and has to deal with her father and his possible illness along with seeing all her high school friends and reliving the mystery of her missing best-friend, Kaycee. She soon realises that things really don’t see to have changed that much in Barrens despite how much people try to prove that they have.

I really enjoyed the character building in this and felt that I got to know not only Abby really well but also the side characters who help to make the story. This was a thriller / crime and so this intense character building for the main side characters just made the plot really come together when the twists were revealed and I felt like I wasn’t missing any information on the characters which would have helped with the plot outcome.

The sub-plot about Abby’s father was really well done and it didn’t feel like it was shoved in as an after-thought to try and pad the book out or to give the main character even more to deal. It was well thought out and actually added to the story and plot as a whole. There was also a love triangle involved here with two of the old boys she knew from high school and yet again this wasn’t made a focus of the book. It added more to the story but didn’t compete for attention against the main plot and yet again, it added to it which was great. The way it was concluded was also very well handled so well done Krysten Ritter!

I wouldn’t say it was a quick read, especially at the start and I know I read things near the beginning and thought ‘Why do I need to be told this?!’ only for it to make so much sense later on in the book when it all came together. But I loved that! It’s annoying when a write includes a lot of stuff that just isn’t required for character building but then isn’t needed later on in the book and is just unnecessary information. 

One of the other great things about this was that I saw some of the twists and plot devices coming but there were also a few which I didn’t see coming at all! Plus the twists that did happen seemed so believable because of the character and story development and I think they actually benefited best from the reader knowing what was coming for some of the story.

I really hope that Krysten writes another book – be it a continuation of Abby Williams and her dealing with the fall-out from the this book & more of her twisted environmental law practices or a different thriller crime book. Either way I’d definitely be picking it up and I’ve been really pleasantly surprised.  

Also that book cover is so gorgeous! It's so simple yet it works and it really is just beautiful!