Bonfire

Abby Williams returns home for the first time since she left a decade ago to investigate a large company. Traumatic events haunt her there  from the cruel teasing of a high school clique to her father’s anger. Returning makes these suppressed feelings and memories rise to the surface. As her investigation deepens, it seems to be inextricably tied to her past. Her actions get more desperate and erratic, calling into question if she’s simply traumatized by the past and having a mental break or if the company is really the cause of the trouble of her teenage years.

Bonfire drew me in with the concept of a small town with secrets and kept me glued to the book with the characters, the writing, and how deep those secrets go. Abby Williams went from high school outcast to environmental lawyer. As a teen, she was tormented by a clique of popular girls who went so far as to make fun of her mothers' death and her own suicide attempt. They made public polls about her and offered to help her with her next suicide attempt. As an adult, the town hasn’t physically changed much and the same people live there. She's the one who has changed, gaining fame for actually leaving and building a new life for herself. While people tend to speak highly of her, the company she's investigating pretty much owns the town, leading the townspeople to mistrust her and make their allegiances clear.

The mystery had some predictable elements and other surprising turns. History is repeating itself. A tactic to humiliate teenage girls in the past was to get them drunk, take compromising pictures of them, and circulate them around school. The present holds the same, but is there a more insidious reason? Why would this practice be exactly the same after so many years? Abby finds out much more about her main tormentor, Kaycee. In the past, Kaycee and her friends came down with a mysterious sickness that proved to be fake in all but Kaycee, who is conspicuously absent in the present. Abby delves into the past and discovers that there was more to Kaycee than she ever expected. As she gets closer and closer to the truth, Abby starts to break down, drinking too much, sleeping to little, exhibitng erratic behavior, and bending or breaking laws to get information, calling into question her capability of completing her investigation.

When I picked up Bonfire, I expected a fairly generic book. Krysten Ritter weaves a compelling story with a flawed protagonist who can't truly move on with her life due to her unresolved pat. Although I didn't agree with everything Abby did, I understood and related to her overall reasoning. I hope Krysten Ritter writes more books after this. I would recommend this to fans of Gillian Flynn and other twisty mysteries.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins