<i>“Twigs pop and crackle under my feet, like I’m walking on a field of brittle bones.”</i> The opening line of the book has such a strong imagery that drew me in. Unfortunately, I still found myself struggling to finish it. The plot is so slow to start. I’m already on the 60% mark when things got interesting. I imagine that other readers might’ve probably DNFed it by then. I quite liked the ending but getting there is too tedious a task.

I don’t mind that Jenny is an unlikable character. My problem is that aside from Jenny, almost all of the broadly drawn characters are weirdly secretive about their past lives. It’s too obvious to me that this was done not to add layers to these supporting characters but only so I am kept in the dark for as long as the plot needs me to be. It’s as if the book didn’t want me to participate in solving the mystery. The result is that yes, the book kept me guessing but no, it wasn’t fun.

I tried to find my footing in this book but nothing was grabbing my attention. In fact, I found that the storyline seemed to be repeating itself a lot. The characters were dull and kind of childish. As if this book really is just geared towards the younger reading audience. Plus, I struggled to read the first seven chapters. After this I walked away from this book for a while. When I finally came back to it, I came at the book with an open mind hoping and waiting for it to pick up speed and get better. Nope, there was no improvements for me. Be the tenth chapter, I was completely done with this book.

Watch You Burn is a psychological thriller mixed with a murder mystery. Jenny has an undiagnosed compulsive tendency to set fires, and she has been exiled by her stepfather to stay with her father so that she doesn’t harm her younger half sister. Here, no one knows her past, really, and she is trying to be better, only the ‘itch’ to be scratched in less harmful ways. However, soon, her actions are about to throw the town into conflict, as her illness entangles with the new friendships she is making.

Jenny’s perspective is troubling, with destructive thoughts circling and guilt from her past actions as well as her inability to contain her urges, swirling into a mixture of paranoia and scheming. She wants to keep her activities on the down low, but also gets a high whenever she sees the destruction her fire sets. When she is close to being suspected, her adversaries are taken of, which is a touch troubling to her. Along with that, escaping from the shrewd eyes of her friend, as well as her dad’s girlfriend has her constantly on the edge, which feeds the urges. Meanwhile, there’s the fact that her father’s business depends on the current job being done successfully, and there is opposition to that which puts her life in danger. The identity of the killer wasn’t really a surprise, because they were blatant clues in the text, so the mystery wasn’t as exciting as the anticipation of how it would all be revealed.

On the relationship side, Jenny has a very superficial connection to people in her new life. Her friend is a little too clingy, but she is also heartened by her support. While she keeps people at a distance, Jenny also wants to know everything about them, which in some cases leads to her butting into things are not her business (particularly when it comes to a recovering addict who has asked for space). She is unlikable in that aspect, always looking for an in, seeking to be close to a person, almost to be point of feeling entitled to their secrets. She is also ruthlessly manipulative when push comes to shove, knows how to use her privilege to her advantage, and yeah, some things can be taken as her just trying to survive but she is not above throwing someone else under the bus. I kept wanting her to wake up and realize she needed real help, but she was so fearful of the criminality of her actions and the mounting strikes against her, as well as disappointing the people in her life (okay, that part is relatable) that she never considers it.

In short, a gripping plot with a sympathetic but also unlikable antihero.

Satisfied my cravings for a good thriller this fall! Thank you to @penguinrandomhouse for sending me an e-book for review. I always always want a thriller to read and this one was perfectttt!!

This was a good idea, in theory, but a bit scattered in practice. The author was trying to make this into a thriller/mystery and it felt a bit predictable and a bit unfocused. I liked the New Mexican setting but I don't think I got into Jenny's head or self, ever. The ending was okay, not great, but not nearly as predictable as it could have been. Hopefully you have better luck with this one.

Watch You Burn came out last month on October 23, 2018, and you can purchase HERE.

Everything out here is a fire starter.

Jenny was sent to live with her estranged father at his in-the-works hotel project located in the middle of nowhere after the incident- it is for the best, they say. She is trying to be be good and not let down her parents, but it is just so hard to ignore the feelings and compulsion that comes on. When she starts to make friends and meets a cute boy she is convinced that she can be a normal girl- that is until things start to unravel around her and the fire must burn.

I had no idea what direction the story was going to go in when I first started reading Watch you Burn. This is a prime example of a YA psychological thriller with some complex damaged characters and some interesting plot twists.

Jenny is what I like to refer to as a hot mess (see what I did there?). She is a very unreliable narrator which adds a nice touch to the book because it keeps the reader guessing and the plot and character are never for sure understood. She is incredibly manipulative and will play to whatever part the person she is interacting with wants, making her a very dangerous character in general. I found her to be interesting, and I could not help but to want to know what she would do next. I didn't like her as a person, but as a character she gets props for piquing my curiosity. I also liked how the author expressed Jenny's emotions, her anxiety and mistrust were palpable, her need to burn and fascination with fire as well as her excuses and reasoning were compelling, and her need to be exposed surprising.

Now that I am thinking about it, don't trust anyone in the story. This book works as a great psychological thriller because all the characters have unseen sides and internalized conflicts and nothing should be taken at face value. As per life, the characters in this book hide so many things from each other as well as the reader so there were multiple times I was caught off guard by a situation or person. This was a very different book from anything I have read before and I appreciate that. Don't expect any sort of hero or redemption arc here though- it is hard to get that when the main character is a villain and has no remorse. I was super surprised by the ending, and felt a little adrift when I reached it with a WTF moment, yet again another surprise the author throws out.

I am voluntarily reviewing a complimentary copy of this book. Come visit me at https://smadasbooksmack.blogspot.com/

I really struggled with this one. I love YA Thrillers and I will admit I was surprised by the ending but all the stuff that happened leading up to the end was disappointing. I felt like this book condones arson and that if you know people they'll cover it up. She was definitely a sociopath who needed her fix. She may not have killed anyone after she felt the power she got from lighting fires but to me it would only be a matter of time. None of the characters were very likable either, especially the MC. I don't mind it when there are unlikable characters but usually they have some redeeming qualities and I just didn't get that with Jenny. She was a pathological arsonist and I don't think that it's ok for young readers to read about such a serious crime where no one gets reprimanded for it. Even Ro didn't get in trouble for full on murder. As a criminal justice major I just couldn't get on board with this one.

I loved this book! The full review will be posted soon at kaitgoodwin.com/books! Thank you very much for this wonderful opportunity to connect books to their readers!

If you are a fan of the antihero, for a narrator that you can’t really trust or a main character that just isn’t really that likeable then this might be a great book for you. It was not a great book for me. I also felt like the story just wasn’t believable for me. The police should have figured out what was going way earlier for example. The book felt surreal to me. That being said, it was really well written, had an interesting mystery element and made me want to get to the end. Unfortunately once I got to the end I was disappointed. The book wrapped up too quickly and didn’t truly feel finished to me. Overall an intriguing book that just wasn’t for me.

This was a really interesting read. There are tons of mysterious circumstances scattered through the plot that constantly made had me trying to piece them together.

We follow a main character who has had a pretty traumatic history surrounding fires which quickly turned into her obsession. And it took me about halfway through the book to figure out what was going on. She's now living with her father, who she hasn't seen in years, which in and of itself is unique. She's literally living in a fantastic, remodeled suite in the middle of a run down motel, which is also in the middle of nowhere.

I felt like going into the story, there was a lot that I had to try and piece together before I had a solid understanding of where everything was going. But I wouldn't say that it's a bad thing. Because this is a mystery thriller novel, and a decent one at that. Once the plot thickened, I could tell that this was going to be a book that would leave tons of questions until the last chapter. And it was.

The characters were all over the place for me. The main character, Jenny, is struggling with her past and the threats that her burning obsession may lead to in the present. Discovering her history with the fires and her burning itch was one of the aspects that kept me reading, trying to understand where she was coming from. She's unpredictable, but she doesn't necessarily want to give in. She meets some friends that bring their own pasts to the table, and there's even a romance snuck in there.

Overall, I gave this book a 3 out of 5 stars. I really enjoyed the tense moments and the plot twists that squeezed in during the second half of the book. Even though there is a lot of stuff we are introduced to in the first half with a slower pace, once I got through that fog, I was able to really enjoy the story itself and rush to the end. This was a really well developed mystery that created a maze of possibilities. I couldn't stop reading it until I figured out how it all pieced together!

A great book if you're looking for a lighter, thriller novel for the Fall season!

Hello people of the internet!!! On today’s ‘Monday Memos’ we have a new book review for y’all! Today’s review is about a Young Adult mystery novel called ‘Watch You Burn’ by Amanda Searcy, which was provided for review by Delacorte Press (a division of Random House Children’s Books), and will be released tomorrow October 23rd, 2018. As always this is a spoiler-free review, however I do want to issue trigger warnings for the following: bullying, death, & drug/alcohol abuse. We definitely have a lot to talk about with this one so let’s get to the post. Ready? Ok, let’s go!!!

‘Watch You Burn’ is about a 17 year old girl named Jenny who is hiding a deep secret, she’s an arsonist. Jenny is forced to move from her hometown in Ohio, to Albuquerque, New Mexico to live with her estranged father while his construction company works on the renovation of a luxury motel. Once she arrives in Albuquerque Jenny gets the same familiar “itch” she’s always had to start fires however, she knows that doing so would reveal other deep secrets she has hidden. When Jenny meets friends who may be hiding even deeper & darker secrets than she is, Jenny must decide how far she’s willing to go in order to keep her new life from going up in flames.

I want to start off by saying that I have a lot of feeling about this book. I don’t normally read mystery books, however I was really intrigued by Jenny’s character description in the synopsis. Based off of how Jenny is described you imagine that she is a complex, interesting character that has many layers you need to uncover as the book continues, and honestly this is exactly what Jenny is. She’s not a perfect character by any means, Jenny has a lot of issues as a person and does some really questionable things throughout the book. I really liked the mystery aspect of the book, and honestly I went back & forth over who our “bad guy” was up until the last page. My only problem with this book is the ending. I’ve said it before, I really don’t mind open ended endings, but I also think that this is one of the hardest things for a writer to properly do. I felt like this book needed one more chapter, or at least an epilogue to achieve a satisfying ending. Honestly the book doesn’t feel like it ends, it just stops. Now we do get a lot of questions answered, but it feels like the story just stops for our characters. Nothing really feels resolved & while this may have been done in order to lay the groundwork for a sequel, the abrupt ending ruins the momentum & excitement that the book built up to this point. I do want to say that I really did like this book, so much in fact that it was a 5 smiley face book for me up until the ending. Unfortunately because of the ending I will have to give this book a 4 smiley face rating. I’m honestly so sad about this because I really liked ‘Watch You Burn’ & I think Amanda Searcy is an extremely talented writer however, a great book deserves a great ending & unfortunately we just didn’t find that great ending here.

By the time I picked up this book, there were already a bunch of low reviews on Goodreads. Still, I did not let that discourage me. I went into this with high hopes and fully willing to love it. And for a moment, I think I almost did. The beginning was interesting, despite the writing style which simply wasn't for me. I was curious to see where the book was going to so. Sadly, it went downhill soon for me.

Jenny is an unreliable narrator, which I love. But, she's full of terrible, illogical decisions, pyromania aside. I really liked the way her mania was described. But her mental process for everything was so incredibly frustrating. She was always either overreacting or underreacting. Also, how was it not known that she was the one setting these fires? How was that conclusion not drawn early on? I feel like there were definitely moments in which that was out in the open.

Then there was the mystery. I don't read much mystery. Yet, when I do, it always manages to surprise me. I don't feel like this book did that. In a way, it reminded me of There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins in that there was build up and with an ultimately unsatisfying reveal. It also reminded me a bit of Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart, where there was so much messed up stuff happening that I ended up being more shocked at it than actually impressed. In the end, I just wasn't all that into it.

Overall, I have to be honest, I just felt disappointed with this book. I didn't feel as though it delivered on what I wanted. I wanted to love the charcters and I ended up not feeling attached to any of them. I wanted to be invested in the plot and I instead found myself constantly checking how much of the novel I had left, eager to be done with it.

I really enjoyed the premise of the story, but the storyline itself got very confusing towards the end and I lost interest.. It may have been a little more middle grade than young adult.

Watch Your Burn took me on a wild ride, and had a lot of moments that I didn’t expect, which I really enjoyed. I thought that the premise was extremely interesting, and the book delivered on what I expected it to be. I love a book with an unreliable narrator, and Jenny is perhaps one of the most unreliable of them all.
Jenny moves in with her dad and away from her hometown after an unknown incident causes some trouble for her. There is a lot of mystery surrounding the details of what happened, but from the information we get, it’s clear that it has something to do with a fire. Ever since this incident, Jenny has been obsessed with fire, and starts setting fires in her new town. She thinks that these fires are okay as long as no one gets hurt, but she doesn’t realize that people are always watching.
Jenny makes some interesting friends in her new town, though some of them definitely don’t start out that way. She’s skeptical of most people, and perhaps rightly so, given the secrets she’s trying to keep hidden. Once she lets people into her life though, she would do anything to protect them and keep them safe.
There were definitely some elements to this book that I found to be convenient without really having a purpose other than to move the plot along, but overall I really enjoyed Watch You Burn. I love when books have gritty, real characters, and I think that Searcy managed to capture these characters really well.

I wish I could say that I loved this book, because the prose sounded good, However, this book was just way too young for me, I found myself rather annoyed with the dialogue, and how immature it came across. I finished it, and I liked the twist, but I did find that to be slightly unrealistic and a bit off putting.

I did like some of the characters, and I appreciated their character development, so I didn't dislike it all.

Watch You Burn by Amanda Searcy is a young adult thriller about a young arsonist. Jenny has moved to be with her father to hopefully start anew and avoid an arson investigation back in Ohio where her mother and stepfather live.

Jenny’s father is in the process of renovating an old roadside motel and turning it into an upscale tourist attraction when finished so when Jenny arrives she gets her own luxurious suite. It doesn’t take long though for that urge for fire to return to Jenny even in her new surroundings.

Sneaking out at night Jenny thinks she is find as long as her hobby doesn’t hurt anyone but she quickly finds that the small town has eyes everywhere. Jenny tries to set her sights on making friends and keeping occupied in the town but then a murder occurs too close to Jenny for comfort.

Watch You Burn started off strong in my opinion, Jenny was one of those unreliable narrators that I thought the author portrayed rather well showing her addiction to fire. However, somewhere along the way the story just became somewhat confusing and dare I say unbelievable. I saw right through the whodunnit rather early and questioned a lot of the happenings but in the end I’d say this was an Ok read, not one that I will find overly memorable but at least it was creative.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I loved the idea for this book!!! Kept me on the edge of my seat. Can’t wait to read more from this author in the future.

WATCH YOU BURN is about Jenny, a teen with a bad history related to fires--as in she has a tendency to start them. Jenny has just been sent to live with her dad, a contractor who is renovating an old motel in New Mexico, because there's an arson investigation back home in Ohio, and things have gotten a bit, er...hot.

Even though she has the best of intentions, Jenny can't fight the "itch" to start fires. One little fire, what could it hurt? Unless someone saw her. And now, that someone is lurking outside her room at night and Jenny is sure it's just a matter of time until she's turned in.

But then the man she's certain witnessed her starting a fire is murdered. And another murder follows, and soon Jenny realizes she's surrounded by people she doesn't really know and everyone is a suspect...including her dad.

WATCH YOU BURN is a deep, dark descent into the world of girl who is deeply troubled and finds herself in a bad situation. There were so many red herrings that, even when I was certain who the "bad guy" was, I kept doubting myself. It was an intriguing book that kept me turning the pages, anxious to find out what would happen next. I can't say I liked Jenny, but I empathized with her enough that I wanted to know what would happen.

Overall, a good read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Delacorte Press for the opportunity to read WATCH YOU BURN

I received an ARC of WATCH YOU BURN in exchange for an honest review of the book

Do you ever just sit and read and enjoy yourself and then one moment you see the downward slope coming and all you can do is sigh?
That was me reading this book. I loved the blurb, loved the cover and title. The low Goodreads rating could not scare me; I thought this was another misunderstood and secretly genius book. I really wanted it to be just that.

I have a thing for anti-heroes, for unlikeable characters, for unreliable narrators that lie to everyone, including themselves. Jenny is one of those characters. And for the first 20% of the book, I was fascinated by her. That was before everything turned messy. The further I read, the wilder it got. The well-constructed story went all over the place and became less realistic by the page. Beware of spoilers, if you still want to read this book. Jenny is a pyromaniac. She moved to her father in order to be a better person and leave her arsonist past behind her. Of course, she kept setting fires. In the end, so many people knew that she was responsible for the fires all over the town, but they all kept their mouths shut for some illogical reason. There was heaps of evidence that should have led the police to Jenny, but they couldn't solve the puzzle for some illogical reason. There was even a cop who basically caught Jenny in the act more than once but still did not suspect her for some illogical reason. In the end, it was all chaos and on top of it came a plot twist that was completely unasked for and did not make sense either.
And also, this is a YA novel, so where are all the queer teens? I demand more queer teens in YA novels.

Overall, I acknowledge the effort but did not like the execution.

I was super excited for this book, but unfortunately I did not love it. I expected a much more fast past. thrilling read, but to me it was very lacking in these areas and very hard to get into and enjoy.
Will be using in a daily challenge in Chapter Chatter Pub. And letting them know about its release.