When Abby returns to her hone town of Barrens to find potential evidence that the local big corporation is polluting the local water supply she doesn't suspect the turmoil that will ensue. She has her own emotional journey to go on and becomes determined to find out what really happened to her childhood friend. Fast paced and well written.

Review to come next week on www.youtube.com/thebooklife. There will be a video review for this book, as well as the book being mentioned in my "wrap up" video.

I apologise but I didn't finish this. It may be my prejudice (is she published because it's a good book or because she's a famous actress?) but I couldn't get past whether or not it was a vanity project and it distracted me and clouded my judgment of the writing. That being said, I just wasn't engaged by the environmental impact plot either. On the plus side, it didn't seem like bad writing.

Firstly, thank you to the NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me a pre release copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The plot, in a nutshell, Abby Williams is a high flying environmental lawyer based in Chicago who returns to her small town home in Indiana to investigate complaints that a local factory is polluting the water supply and is involved in some major corruption. There's also a back story of Abby's one time friend then enemy, Kaycee Mitchell, who alledgedly ran away a decade or so earlier amid a scandal of faking sickness caused by the same local factory in order to get make a claim.

I'm aware that the author is a well known film and TV actress, although I've never seen anything that she's been in. On the whole, the book itself is well written, although for me it seems to drag on. For a thriller it doesn't really flow all that well, and for the first two thirds just rambles on with just a hint that something has either happened in the past that piques your interest, or something is about to happen. Once the pieces start to slot together, it's not that difficult to figure out what happened and who was involved.

Although it's far from a page turner for me, we must remember it's a debut novel. I do think the author has a talent for writing and I think she has a lot of potential for future work - I think she just needs to put a bit more thought into the pace of her books. I'm certainly not put off reading other books by her.

OK I will admit that I requested this book through Netgalley because I loved Krysten Ritter in Jessica Jones and thought why not?! I was very pleasantly surprised and thoroughly enjoyed this book.

Abby Williams, an environmental lawyer from Chicago, takes on a case that returns her to her childhood home of Barrens, a small town where everyone knows everyone else's business. A place she has tried so hard to forget. A place she realises still haunts and torments her after all these years away. She is investigating an accusation of water pollution from the big company in town, Optimal. This is one of those companies that has a fingertip in every pie possible - Orbital have basically bought their way into every part of the lives of the people of Barrens - from school scholarships, to providing heaps of jobs in the town, to extending the high school, to building new playgrounds and community centres and to providing the town with a water supply. It seems everyone loves Optimal, or do they?!

Abby's childhood was not a happy one and very quickly she has to face the ghosts of her past. However, she cannot shake them completely and is convinced that a situation 10 years ago is somehow linked to her current case. She follows many a trail, which do not generally lead anywhere. People just won't talk and if they do know what is going on they certainly won't tell her about it. Only when she receives an anonymous tip does she manage to get on a trail that leads to somewhere!

I really enjoyed all the twists and turns and the different paths Abby had to take to uncover what was going on, which was a bit more than polluting the reservoir! She drives herself to drink and her colleagues think she is going mad - maybe she was a bit with everything going on in Barrens. It was certainly not a healthy place for her to be, but one I think she needed to get through to clear all her worries and nightmares about what happened all those years ago! Although the culprit was an obvious one, the little speech in Abby's house convinced me (for a while at least) that I was wrong!

I am really glad I requested this book and will definitely keep my eye open for more of Krysten Ritter books.

Reviews for this are going one of two ways - either 2/3 stars acknowledging the book's flaws or 5 star reviews going OMG Krysten Ritter!!!! I am the former. This is a passably good book within the thriller genre but it's not mind-blowing. The characters who are at fault are super shady and relatively obvious from the get-go, and it felt like there were too many mysteries to be solved. <spoiler>(Of course they all conveniently come together into one conclusion, so it doesn't really matter.)</spoiler> Add to this the fact that Abby is annoying, naive and should have lost her job many times along the way and you're left with a perplexing book that doesn't really hit the mark. Pretty well written for a celebrity penned book though, even if there was a lot of telling not showing at the start.

I enjoyed this book, it was different and kept you guessing.

Neither great, nor awful. Would have given it 2.5 stars were that possible. Ritter’s tale of small town escapee Abby returning to relive and reinvent her youth whilst investigating as to whether there is a case to be brought against an enormous corporation is a quick, dark read with a reasonably predictable plot and a host of shady characters that haven’t outgrown the misbehaviours of their youth (in some cases these misbehaviours have blossomed into heinous felonies).

Abby’s character is the highlight of the novel, her continuous development is surprisingly slick and warrants a respectful nod of approval.

All in all, okay, plenty of smoke but no fire.

I didn’t know when I requested this book that Bonfire is a debut novel written by Krysten Ritter, an actress from such well-known shows like Netflix original series, Marvel's Jessica Jones, Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 and AMC’s Breaking Bad.

It has been ten years since Abby Williams left home from her small-town roots. Now working as an environmental lawyer in Chicago. When a new case takes her back home to Barrens, Indiana she involved in investigating Optimal Plastics, the town's most high-profile company. Abby begins to find strange connections to Barren’s biggest scandal from more than a decade ago, involving the popular Kaycee Mitchell and her closest friends, just before Kaycee disappeared for good.

Abby begins to unearth very troubling details about the company. She also interviews a crucial witness whose information is very similar to that which destroyed many of her classmate’s reputations during high school. While her assistant Joe wants Abby to concentrate on events occurring in the present, Abby cannot shake her conviction that much of what is happening now is connected to the things that happened in the past. Certain that locating Kaycee Mitchell will provide her with the answers.

With the right amount of twists and turns and it also has an environmental message in this mystery thriller. There is plenty of detective work, and lots of small town weirdness to uncover. This is recommended for mystery lovers. Bonfire is dark, suspenseful, and good read.

Lastly many thanks to Netgalley and Random House UK, for providing me with a copy this book in return for a fair and honest review

A thriller which explores the extension of the school bully and peer group pressure . A few twists right to the end.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book. I have loved Krysten Ritter as an actress since her early days and to be quite honest that was my whole reasoning behind picking up this book. This and a small intrigue after reading the description.
I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised - I found this book very engaging and hard to out down. At the very beginning I found the protagonist a bit frustrating (a feeling which to some point stayed with me throughout the book) but as I read I found myself being pulled into her crazy theories and kept on reading more, wanting to find out what will Ritter reveal next.
All in all this book was very much to my liking - even though similar stories have been told before. I do think Ritter deserves an applause for a great debut novel.

I was very pleasantly surprised by Bonfire! It took me a while to get into but once I’d got past the first fifty pages I was hooked. I raced through this and the shocks kept coming right until the final pages. I genuinely had no idea how the story was going to resolve itself but, boy, what a resolution! Well worth a read, particularly if you’re a fan of thrillers and love trying to get to the bottom of a well-crafted mystery.

Oh wow. I truly loved this book. I have always loved Krysten Ritter in her roles in Jessica Jones and Breaking Bad and so I was eager to pick this up. Luckily, I was able to get a digital copy of it a couple of days before the release date so it was amazing to read this before it hit the shelfs. I read this in the ramp up to Halloween and it definitely provided the vibe I was looking for in this read. I would class this book as a mystery thriller and I was so enthralled by it.
For fans/readers of Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins

Bonfire wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great either. It was an easy read, the characters just felt a little two dimensional and I felt like I guessed most of where the plot was going! Saying that, I did read this all in one evening and didn’t want to put it down.

I personally had never heard of Krysten Ritter before, but I have definitely taken an interest in the name now. This was a very enjoyable, easy read. I personally enjoyed the plot and the writing style. Sure maybe there were one or two plot associations that just didn’t feel real to me (thinking of the collar as an example here), but this didn’t affect my overall enjoyment of the read.

Sadly did not live up to the hype. Was a bit of a damp squib. Disappointing.

This one far exceeded my expectations (and would make a cracking TV show with Krysten Ritter as the lead!) - review to come on my YouTube channel.

This was a solid 3.5 star debut for me - gripping, fast-paced and hugely atmospheric. Driven out of Barrens, Indiana, at the age of 18 by the cruelty of her schoolmates, the negligence of her father and the disappearance of her best-friend-turned-nemesis, Abby Williams swore she'd never return to her hometown. Now an environmental lawyer, Abby's latest case means she needs to return to Barrens to investigate a possible case against Optimal Plastics, the large corporation that appears to have bought the loyalty of the town.

Confronted by ghosts and the resistance of the townspeople, Abby struggles to separate past from present and stay focused on the case. But can the two be separated? And should they be?

This book presents small-town claustrophobia and isolation brilliantly, and Abby initially was a brilliant character - strong but vulnerable, dry, smart and tenacious. In fact at times, I was convinced she was Jessica Jones, minus the super strength. Unfortunately, as the story unravelled, so did Abby - not a problem and at the beginning it made her more real, but her constant despair-drinking started to lose its shock factor and became tiresome, and I struggled to believe that Abby could function at such a high level with all those hangovers.

I wish there had been more development in certain areas - most of the supporting characters were obvious props rather than fleshed-out people, and the end felt rushed and more than a little unbelievable. I had to re-read the last few chapters because I was convinced I'd missed something important, but no, it was just a relatively outlandish and not-wholly-tied-together ending. The villain was obvious from quite early on, which isn't the end of the world, but Abby's blindness didn't make a lot of sense, given her cynical and distrustful nature. One tiny thing as well - as an author, don't point out everything that's "ironic" and instead trust the reader to be smart enough to see the irony themselves. This became noticeable and frustrating as the novel progressed...

Overall, the story is clever, well-crafted and it felt fresh - I enjoyed the environmental lawyer approach (which makes a change from the usual detective case) and the constant doubt about what really happened in Abby's schooldays kept me in suspense throughout the book (how relatable, after all, is a borderline alcoholic narrator with a personal agenda?).

As a debut, Bonfire shows a lot of promise, and I will definitely keep an eye out for the next book by Krysten.

This has a really dark feel to it, questioning memories and trying to escape the past. I quite enjoyed it although I think I may have been expecting more.
Definitely worth a read.

I'm going to be entirely honest, I opted to read this book because it was written by Krysten Ritter, and I LOVE Jessica Jones. As an actress, I'm a massive, massive fan of Krysten and I wanted to see what she was like as an author. My excitement tripled when I saw this book was a really dark thriller and for the most part, I wasn't left disappointed.

Bonfire is about Abby Williams, a lawyer living in Chicago who returns to her hometown to take part in a legal case about a huge corporation in the town. The case ties parts of Abby's memories with current day issues, making the case an emotional one for our main character. The book explored its topics and storylines thoroughly, which in parts seemed laborious. It also had a lot of

If I take into account the ending, the book was as dark as promised and an enjoyable, surprising read. But it was just too much of a slow burner for me. It had a load of dull parts throughout the beginning and the middle that just didn't hook me as much as a thriller should. The only time I felt excited and thrilled by the storyline was towards the ending as the suspense was unravelling. I'm going to assume Krysten wrote the book herself rather than had a ghostwriter and just put her name to the book, and it's safe to say I was impressed with her writing. There were a few phrases that I noticed were used a few too many times (but then again, I did read this book as an ARC copy, so changes may have been made.) But based on the writing style, I would definitely read something from this author again. If you like twisty thrillers and want something new, Bonfire is worth checking out, but it won't be going on my favourites list.