Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago, she has a thriving career, a modern apartment, and her pick of meaningless one-night stands.īut when a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana, the life Abby painstakingly created begins to crack. It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home and scrubbed away all visible evidence of her small-town roots. She lets her emotions and past connection to the town cloud her judgement at times but that makes her human.“ Some of us are out of place even when we are home.” ― Bonfire Surely the fact she’s grown up in Barrens would pose difficulty in her being objective? She’s a feisty character. I found it interesting she returned to investigate the complaints against Optimal.

I loved how the author gradually reveals that something far, far darker is going on. The book starts off innocently enough, with Abby investigating what appears to be a simple case of environmental neglect by a big corporation. The book reminds me a lot of The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates. Barrens reminds me a lot of Derry which features in Stephen King’s work.

I’m a sucker for books set in small towns, towns where secrets are kept, where things slip under the radar and where everyone keeps each other’s secrets. (Hutchinson, 7 November 2016, ebook, copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed)īoy was this a corker of a novel. With tantalizing twists, slow-burning suspense, and a remote, rural town of just five claustrophobic miles, Bonfire is a dark exploration of the question: can you ever outrun your past? But as Abby tries to find out what really happened to Kaycee, she unearths an even more disturbing secret-a ritual called “The Game,” which will threaten the reputations, and lives, of the community and risk exposing a darkness that may consume her. Tasked with investigating Optimal Plastics, the town’s most high-profile company and economic heart, Abby begins to find strange connections to Barrens’ biggest scandal from more than a decade ago involving the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friends-just before Kaycee disappeared for good.Ībby knows the key to solving any case lies in the weak spots, the unanswered questions.

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