I’m a huge fan of Krysten Ritter’s work as an actor in Jessica Jones, and after reading Bonfire, I’m now a major fan of her as a thriller author as well. Please tell me she’ll write more thrillers like this!

Bonfire is a mystery thriller about a Chicago-based environmental lawyer who returns to her hometown to investigate a plastics manufacturing company that employs most of the residents. Abby Williams’ interest in the company isn’t so much about their current environmental impact, however, as it is their potential link to a mysterious illness that befell Kaycee Mitchell, a high school queen bee and former childhood friend, almost a decade ago. Kaycee left town immediately after graduation, and after she and her friends admitted the illness was an elaborate prank, but things never quite added up for Abby, and she’s determined to dig up the truth.

I absolutely loved this book, and devoured it in a single day. It’s tense and atmospheric, and more importantly, it’s just a really good mystery. There are enough twists and turns to keep the reveal a surprise, but I like how Ritter delves into the investigative process, so that while we’re interested in learning the truth, we’re not quite racing towards the reveal so much as enjoying the gradual unearthing of clues along the way. The mystery does take an unexpected turn, but one that fits very well within the rest of the story, even better than the original hypothesis would have.

More than a mystery, Bonfire is also a deeply emotional character study, particularly in the complex relationship between Abby and her father. She left him behind ten years ago to escape his violent temper, and returns to find him in the early stages of dementia. While she struggles against feelings of pity for him, she can’t help but soften and admit that what she feels is more than pity — it’s a kind of love that she can barely begin to face, given everything he’s put her and her mother through. It’s a beautifully crafted piece of the story, one subplot among many yet especially powerful in its restraint.

Abby’s relationships with other characters are fascinating as well, and likely relatable for many readers who’ve returned to their hometowns after a long time away. Meeting the adult versions of her high school classmates forces her to reevaluate and reconsider her memories of how they were. Was Misha, the high school queen bee’s second in command who is now the high school vice principal, really as mean-spirited as Abby remembers, or was she simply going along with Kaycee’s cruelty out of fear? She also encounters Brent, a former high school crush, and Condor, a former high school slacker whom she finds herself attracted to despite her instinct to stay away. There’s a great line where Abby realizes that the difference between Brent and Condor is that with Condor, it’s herself she doesn’t trust, and any casual romance reader can tell where the sizzle truly lies, and that there isn’t much of a love triangle here after all.

Overall, Bonfire is a fantastic mystery thriller about digging up the secrets of the past and confronting the reality of what happens when an entire town becomes dependent on a single company. It’s about corruption, exploitation and violence against women that can take its root as early as high school. I’m very much excited to see Krysten Ritter back on Netflix in season 2 of Jessica Jones, but I’m even more excited to see her continue to write mysteries, and I look forward to her next one!

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.

Bonfire will be released in Canada and the US in November 2017.

I remember liking Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, so when I saw she was coming out with a new novel after seven years, I was eager to give it a go. Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression, then follows the story of a young woman, Anna Kerrigan, as she becomes a diver during World War II. Alongside her story is that of a nightclub owner / gangster Dexter Styles and his possible connection to the disappearance of Anna’s father, a professional bagman. I’ve had a wonderful run of really good historical fiction recently (The Heart’s Invisible Furies and The Address), so I was eager to immerse myself in the world Egan creates.Unfortunately, I just found Manhattan Beach boring and the ending drawn out too long.

There were some parts I really enjoyed, and that kept me reading till the end: Anna’s diving and her struggle to prove herself in a traditionally male profession was particularly strong. I also liked the parts about Anna’s disabled sister Lydia, and her response to visiting the sea was incredibly moving. The side characters as well were compelling — Charlie Voss’ affection for Anna was sweet, Aunt Brienne and Nell were such awesome women, and fellow divers Bascombe and Merle were intriguing. I liked the way Nell’s romance turned out — even though part of me wished she got her happy ending, I like that what happened to her felt realistic, and probably happened to many other women during that era. Finally, I really liked Dexter’s backstory — while at times it felt like mere distractions from the real story, I liked seeing how his father shaped the man he became.

But overall, the book fell flat for me. I didn’t really care about why Anna’s dad walked out on his family, nor did I care about how he became involved with the criminal world, and this was such a huge chunk of the plot and source of Anna’s motivation. Anna’s romance felt icky, mostly because her first encounter with this man was when she was a child and he an adult, so all I kept thinking was that he was old enough to be her father.

I also thought the minor characters were under-utilized, and that they had the potential to do so much more. But I think part of that is that their disappearance and reappearance in the story just felt somewhat random, and they never quite felt fully integrated into the story. Even Anna’s mother, who cared for her and Lydia long after their father disappeared, seemed to have been discarded from the plot about halfway through, and given some pretty major moments in Anna’s life later on, I wondered why she didn’t turn to her mother for help.

Overall, the book isn’t bad. There are some interesting parts and the quality of Egan’s writing carried me through to the end. But it also felt long, and bogged down with details and subplots that weren’t all that interesting.

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Thank you to Simon and Schuster Canada for an advance reading copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

The Dark Lake hits all the notes of good grip lit, but I was never quite fully engaged. The plot follows a popular grip lit trope — a beautiful woman from the heroine’s high school is murdered and scandals from the past come to light. The heroine in this case is DS Gemma Woodstock, who grew up in the town and so is privy to lots of the residents’ secrets. The mystery was solid, and Bailey unveils various mini-reveals as Gemma slowly but surely uncovers the truth behind Rosalind’s murder.

Unfortunately, nothing about it really grabbed me. It felt a fairly standard example of the genre, with nothing quite making it stand out. I didn’t predict the big reveal, but I also didn’t feel invested enough in the story to care much about it.

The pacing felt slow, and the personal dramas around Gemma’s life felt like a bigger part of the story than the actual mystery. Unfortunately, her personal dramas weren’t all that interesting. She has a son with a serious boyfriend whom she doesn’t love but stays with because of the child, and she’s carrying on an illicit romance with her married co-worker. But the stakes never quite feel high enough. She’s worried about her boyfriend finding out, but she also wants to leave him so I don’t quite get what the problem is. She’s also angsty about her co-worker still having a relationship with his wife, but their romance seems more convenient than any great source of passion. There’s also a couple of random scenes involving roses and her son where the mystery infringes on her real life, but these plot threads mostly just meandered to a close. On one particularly dramatic event, the resolution came about so quickly that I actually missed the bit where the resolution actually happened; I just turned the page and saw that subplot had concluded.

The high school flashbacks were interesting but not quite explored enough. Gemma sets Rosalind up as a larger than life gorgeous creature whom all the men swooned over, but we never quite get a real sense of who Rosalind is. Even as an object of desire, Rosalind falls flat, and apart from being high school classmates, I didn’t quite understand why Gemma cared so much about her. There’s a hint of her personality in a flashback scene about an English class in high school, and I wish there had been more of that.

We also learn about Gemma’s high school boyfriend who died as a teen and left behind a younger brother. There’s a connection to the mystery because the younger brother was in a school play that Rosalind directed and that opened the night of the murder. And all of Gemma’s emotionality over her high school boyfriend’s death ties into the larger story as we learn more from flashbacks later on, but for most of the book, it just felt like an annoying detour that kept cropping up.

Overall, Dark Lake is a solid, entertaining thriller that unfortunately doesn’t quite stand out for me.

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Thank you to Hachette Book Group Canada for an advance reading copy in exchange for an honest review.