Wildfire is a bit of a coming of age contemporary. Definitely comparable to The Serpent King which I felt very similar toward. Well, for all the emotion packed into this book, it reads very peculiarly at times as well. I think the pacing and dramatization could have gone better at points (though at others it was magnificent) and at times I wanted to murder the characters. Through the first half, I was going to give it two stars, but I’m glad I did finish it because on an emotional level, it really evolves as the book progresses and if you are reading it and are also annoyed with the first bit of the book, give it a chance and finish.

The characters were all very well developed and they do evolve through the book each coming to understand that their way of thinking isn’t the best. And as an overview, every part of this book is quite amazing. Major plot points logically sequenced, triumph and despair appropriately mixed for the tone of this book, and characters well done. The problem I have is that when down at the sentence and paragraph level, the pacing becomes erratic, and the language loses its balance. There will be sentences of such vivid description followed by paragraphs of simple sentences describing character actions that I feel like I’m back in my very first computer programming class that it seems like those moments of beauty are being forced in for the sake of making the writing sound more sophisticated. It was frustrating seeing such a moving book lose itself in places to such disappointing writing.

Some little things that I appreciated, but was also annoyed at was the relatability of these characters

I finished this book several days ago, and have been struggling with how to rate it, because as a rule, I generally choose to not rate a book at all rather than give it only one star, but I found this story incredibly disturbing and problematic, so I'm going to break my own rule.

First of all, I assumed from the cover and the blurb this would be an adventurous story of survival, and love, and overall a positive, uplifting book. It is NOT. I mean there's adventure, and some survival, but this is much more of a story about loss and so much grief. And that's certainly an important topic, and that type of story can be beautiful, but in this case, a lot of it is caused by horrible decisions, and it could have been avoided, so it's just infuriating, not beautiful.

I did enjoy the writing style. It was well written and the voice was on point. If the story itself had been even okay, to me, I would have rated it much higher, but I just can't.

This story glamorizes reckless behavior and stupid decisions, and while there are dire consequences for them, it still paints it all as something beautiful and poetic. And the MC does NOT learn from her experience, to make better choices in the future, but rather ends the story making the same horrible choice that she made as a kid, that nearly killed her then, and there's nothing preventing it from being just as dangerous now. I worry that someone reading this while in a vulnerable place and on the verge of making a rash decision to just throw themselves into something reckless and dangerous would feel inspired to actually do it by how this story romanticises the events of the story.

SPOILERS BELOW:
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To explain a bit of what I mean...here are a few of the problematic events in the story. To start with, because the MC, Annie, is distraught over her grandmother's death, her best friend, Pete, decides that the two of them should embark on an intense wilderness backpacking trip. They've spent enough time in the great outdoors that they know what sort of dangers they might encounter and the preparations they SHOULD take, but they neglect to make sure they are fully prepared, prioritizing rushing out to hurry on their way instead. And they purposefully choose to put themselves in extra danger. They tell their dads that they are going to be on one specific well known trail, because they know having someone know where they will be is an important safety measure, and then they purposefully choose to use a different, essentially unknown trail. They actually laugh at the idea of "safety and preparedness" claiming that if they really tried to be safe and prepared they would end up not going anywhere. (For the record, I absolutely believe it would be better to not go anywhere than to rush out somewhere dangerous while under-prepared.)
There are also dangerous wildfires at the time of their hike, but they say they would rarely get to hike if they waited for there to not be wildfires. These types of reckless choices are a constant throughout their "adventure" and we see though anecdotes from their past that they've been making similar decisions for years, risking their lives unnecessarily again and again. And have almost died from them before, but never felt that they should begin to make wiser choices.They act like doing those things was fun, and exciting, rather than stupid and dangerous. Again and again the story glorifies children making rash decisions and putting themselves in extreme danger. As the teens begin their hike, that starts in a different spot than they planned, because Pete was driving recklessly and they crashed, and but they decide to go for it from there, rather than making a wiser choice to call for help at that point, get the truck taken care of, and get themselves to where they actually need to be. They also don't have enough bandages, they didn't check their supplies before leaving, so a number of their items are inadequate and/or expired, or not actually charged. They neglected to print out topographical maps of where they were going to actually be. They take detours. They get themselves completely lost. Pete gets injured and they don't have enough bandages or antibiotics to take care of him well enough. And (another spoiler warning in case you've been reading anyway) he frikkin dies. We spend 80% of the book learning what amazing soulmates he and Annie are, and then, despite the fact that the book literally has already been dealing with grief up until this point, because both characters have lost their moms, and as mentioned before, Annie's grandmother just died, apparently the book needs to be even more grief filled. And it would be one thing if it was a horrible, awful lesson to Annie that she absolutely needs to live the rest of her live still having adventures but with CAUTION and WISE PLANNING and choosing safety over recklessness. But she doesn't. The book ends with her planning to HITCHHIKE (which we'd just been told nearly killed her and Pete when the hitchhiked a few years before and were kidnapped) and try to hop on a train to just go live wherever and try to survive on her own. And this is portrayed as beautiful and meaningful and poetic, rather than addressing it as the highly dangerous choice that it actually is. I cannot recommend this book to anyone. At all. For any reason. If you want a tragic book to read, to make you cry, there are plenty of those that don't glorify choosing to put yourself in danger.

(Thanks NetGalley and Random House Children's for the free ebook, all opinions are my own.)

***Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review***
I think the cover is a little misleading. I totally thought this was going to be more of a romance, but it was super angsty and rough and I'm not sure I was in the right mindset when I read this. Overall, though, decent writing.

I have mixed feelings about Wildfire. On the one hand, there’s a feeling of immediacy and on the other there’s a retrospective meandering. This makes for a rambling experience that will be relaxing for some and frustrating for others. I’m one of the latter. It took me most of the book to really embrace the style.

With themes of death, drug use and attempted suicide, Wildfire is an emotional read that is quite heavy at times. It can be a hard book to read, but I am glad I finished it.

While Wildfire isn’t for everyone, it has merit. Carrie Mac is a strong writer who knows how to draw the reader in.

(Link goes live 2/14/20)

I assumed I knew exactly where this book was headed. I mean, here's this grieving girl who's made a mess of her life headed out on a hike. In the standard grief pot she'll get in a tough spot and having her life threatened will force her to come to terms with her grief. That is certainly an element of this book. She's also trying to define her relationship with her best friend. THe hike forces her to confront a lot of things she's been avoiding. It just takes a turn I wasn't expecting, goes to a place novels typically avoid. I feel like in many ways it's more realistic than a typical novel.

I quite enjoyed this book but it was definitely different than what I expected. this is a survivalist story that is more of that than a hard-hitting contemporary although it is both. I didn't realize how much I cared for these characters and their stories until the end and I was CRYING. The central friendship was really strong and I loved how the book explored friendship and family being of equal importance. The only problem I had with this book is that I felt like everything was going wrong. It became sort of predictable in that way that I was annoyed that whatever the characters would try, they would not succeed. This may just be how the author created that high stakes, survivalist atmosphere but it just felt overdone to me and a little too dramatic. This book dealt with some important and dark themes that I did not expect like death of a loved one, grief and suicide. Other than that, this wasn't my perfect book but it was okay and I'd like to see what this author will put out next.

I liked the book and it was well-written. It has a lot of tough topics, but I didn't connect to the characters very well. I definitely thought it would be a lighter read, but it was hard to put down once I got started.

Annie has been numb since her grandmother died. She failed her junior year, gets high all the time, and just sits around watching old movies. She doesn’t even want to go to Fire Camp anymore, something she and her best friend Pete have been planning all year. Pete knows the only way to get her to want to start living again is to go camping, so he surprises her with his plan to hike part of the Pacific Northwest Trail to get to Fire Camp. What he doesn’t tell her though (or anyone else) is that they won’t actually be on the trail. They will be a few miles south, hiking their own trail. This is only the beginning of their issues. From forest fires to bears, Pete and Annie must truly fight to survive.

There were a few things I really liked about this book. I liked the author’s use of foreshadowing and other literary devices throughout the book. I also really liked that this wasn’t exactly told in chronological order. This offers a unique perspective into Pete and Annie’s individual pasts, as well as the development of their friendship. While Wildfire is a survival story, it also has so much more going on, showing that teenagers aren’t going through just one thing at a time. Finally, I am always a sucker for any survival stories, but I especially loved the hiking focus of this story and the reminders of the importance of smart hiking.

The only thing that held me back from giving this five stars was the romance element. Annie is in love with Pete, and this is continually brought up. I just didn’t really like this. While I can see why Mac included it, allowing another angle for Annie’s character growth, I think I would have liked the story just as much if not more if they were just really good friends. I think that is something that not a lot of literature touches on and could have been a great opportunity to showcase that yes, a boy and a girl can truly just be friends. Friends who always look out for each other and want the best for one another.

So … the title of this book, the mention in the synopsis (which I edited out above) that Annie and Pete are friends but she wants more, and the slightly romance-y, hand-holding cover threw me off a little from what this story actually turned out to be.

Wildfire is NOT a romance. It’s also not really much about wildfires, though they are a small part of the plot. This is a story about friendship and love, about the fragility of life and the brutality of nature. It’s a page turner. It’s intense.

Annie and Pete have been close friends since childhood. They are extremely comfortable together and both have a spirit of adventure. They decide to do a backpacking trip. Both experienced hikers and have a plan. But that plan gets derailed by wildfires and by some decisions they make and they’re soon facing a life-or-death situation.

Interspersed with that are flashbacks – to Annie’s relationship with her mother and grandmother, to the history of Annie and Pete’s friendship. As soon as I adjusted to the fact that no, this wasn’t a friends-to-lovers romance set agains the backdrop of wildfires, I found the book extremely gripping. The comparison to Into the Wild is apt — as Annie deals with the challenges she’s facing on the trail, she reflects on other aspects of her life.

I think if you enjoy books with outdoors elements and books with set at an intense emotional pitch, you might enjoy Wildfire. I though it was beautifully written and very moving!

Thank you so much to Netgalley for this ARC! I have a huge soft spot for the untamed bits of the world, and always have. I feel more at home in the woods than anywhere else, but despite this longing to be away from the city and the people in it, I don't really do much hiking or camping or anything of the like. I'd like to say it's because I don't have opportunities to, but mostly it is out of sheer laziness and lack of training than anything else. So, I love to immerse myself in stories like these, especially ones with such an emotional through-line. This story gives you the breath of the wild but also a constant ache throughout of grief and hurt, and finding your way through the wilderness that is YOU.

We meet Annie and Pete as the novel kicks off; two best friends who have formed a bond through shared trauma. The two are the sole members of the Dead Moms Club, and have also started a notebook full of times when they have almost died together. These things have stitched them together and solidified their roles as soulmates to the other, but anything besides a platonic relationship has mostly been left unexplored. When tragedy erupts once more for Annie, Pete makes plans for them both to hike to Fire Camp: an educational summer program dedicated to fighting wildfires, which are raging in spades in this timeline. He hopes this will get her mind off of her grief and remind her how to live. Things go well, at first, until a seemingly small wound causes irrevocable damage to Pete. Thus Annie is forced to make incredibly hard decisions, and confronts all of the feelings she has been pushing down all of her life. Feelings about her family, about Pete, and about herself.

There is a lot of heart to this novel, and it really speaks to the profound ache of loss that never really goes away. Pete and Annie are both broken in their own way, but they bring out the best in each other and keep the other standing upright at their most vulnerable. What the book ends up teaching you though, is that the strength to persevere is inside of you, and though having a support system is incredibly important, sometimes the only way to find your way out of the darkness that has encompassed your mind is by wading through it on your own. Everyone deals with sorrow in their own way, and I think Carrie does a lovely job of exploring that through all of these characters, and not just Pete and Annie. We see their fathers coping with the loss of their wives, a grandmother coming to terms with her own mortality, a girlfriend saying goodbye the only way she knows how, and other tertiary characters wading through life as best they can.

I thoroughly enjoyed this tale of survival, and the message it clings to: don't give up. Bad things happen to good people every day with no rhyme or reason, and I know that I myself struggle with wanting to fix things in others. We want our loved ones to be happy, but sometimes all we can do is just stand strong with them as they make their own journey through the woods. I think Pete is a wonderful example of that, and Annie is the epitome of inner power. Perhaps the wildfire is our own misery; sometimes we can feel it closing in, hot on our trail, and with smoke so thick we can't breathe. There is a way out, though, and you're strong enough to find it. Reading a novel like this will remind you of that fact, so if you need a little boost, I recommend picking this one up.

This book was written beautifully and was hard to put down but was very depressing. I would t recommend it if you are in any way depressed or sad.

DNFed at 40%
I think it's a well written story but I couldn't connect to the characters and the story failed to keep my attention.
I think there's something missing and I couldn't care about the characters.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Wildfire and I had a very tumultuous relationship. I fell in love, deeply and quickly. And when the love ended, it, like its name suggests, crashed and burned. My problems may not be a problem for you though, and there are things to love about this one, which leaves me incredibly conflicted. I’ll do my best to sort it out.

The First Half

First and foremost, I am a sucker for a survival story, so when we open lost in the forest in the middle of an actual wildfire needing to escape, I was hooked. Annie had been through so much, which we learn almost immediately. She’d lost her mom awhile back, and her beloved grandmother had just passed away from a pretty brutal bout of cancer. As I had just lost my own beloved grandmother (who actually had a ton in common with Annie’s, personality-wise) this hit extra hard and Annie won me over.

Add to it that she and Pete are besties, but she’s secretly holding a torch for him, and hello, so relatable! Regardless of whether their relationship ever progressed beyond friendship, I loved their bond. They shared so much together- stories, secrets, memories, love. And his presence was exactly what Annie needed to get her through this difficult time.

The story alternates between action/adventure scenes and flashbacks from moments they shared together, and I found it was the perfect balance between character development and plot. I was pretty sure this was going to be a five-star read for me, tbh.

The Second Half (Fine, the last 20%)

Okay. Remember how we had that discussion about whether an ending of a book/series can ruin the whole thing? Turns out yes, it totally can. The worst part is, I can’t even explain why without ruining the whole book! So. Look at your own risk, though I know that most of you can’t help yourselves 😂 View Spoiler »

Bottom Line: After such an incredible start, I am extra sad to be so let down by the last 20% or so. But maybe you will appreciate the things I didn’t, and it was great until then, so.

I received a free digital copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book was just okay for me. I enjoyed it for the most part but there is definitely something missing from it. For me, it lacked depth of the characters. I felt we only really got to know them at surface value. I would have liked more to them than just this story.

Thank you kindly to the author, the publisher, and netgalley for this review copy.

⭐️⭐️ 2 disappointing stars
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Thank you NetGally, Random House Children’s and Alfred A. Knopf Books for sending me an arc for an honest review. Release date: Jan 28, 2020.
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Let me start off by saying that hard hitting contemporary is not my go to genre. I can see why a lot of people would adore this story, but it was not for me.
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Ending 2019 with a 2 star book... makes sense.
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This book had a lot going for it. It has an adventure/survival plot, complicated relationship between friends, unrequited love (which one YA, is unheard of), and raw - hard hitting topics discussed... But, none of that matters if I don’t care about the characters. 🤷🏽‍♀️
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Character development was slow or nonexistent. Maybe I just didn’t jive with the writing style or their voices. If it weren’t for the fact that this is an ARC that I requested from a publisher - I would have DNFed this book.
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If serious contemporary novels are your jam, then you should definitely try picking this one up. Wildfire isn’t a love story, but an exploration of love and its many forms, and I am disappointed that I didn’t like it.

I had trouble diving into this book. The characters aren't easy to connect with, and it was hard for me to enjoy reading this story.

Two stars

I struggled - valiantly - to finish this one.

The premise seemed super intriguing: two friends, maybe a burgeoning romance, and a lot of outdoor adventures. What's not to like about all of this? Well...

Overall, I had a very difficult time connecting with the characters, the constant talk of death/injury/irresponsible choices, and the final - as I see it - bizarre outcome. The relationship between the characters read as an authentic friendship, but I did not see much more (despite the insinuations). Often, I felt like there was a stylistic attempt at a pseudo-High Modern Woolf or Joyce borderline stream-of-consciousness return to the past. These reflections often felt disjointed and inexplicable. Unlike Woolf and Joyce, I didn't catch any kind of actual introspection and/or deeper connection to the characters happening in these moments: just confusion over this choice. Also, there is SO MUCH DEATH. It almost feels like the m.c. is yelling at readers, "Hey! I've seen death! I'll recognize it if I see it again! You can trust me!" I just could not handle the constant references to death and the regular scenario in which a character dies, but then there seems to be no reason for it (aside from the culminating situation and its connection to the hypothetical quotation I included). Also, these characters make terrible choices throughout the work. The log of near-death and incredibly dangerous experiences they have - ESPECIALLY THE CAR ACCIDENT!!!!!!!!! - and then the way these are handled (Aw, shucks. I guess that was a close one. Good job on escaping unscathed again!) was really tough to read. I don't think YA requires positive messaging to its audience in every case, but there are moments here that feel straight up irresponsible.

I really wanted and expected to connect with these characters, the outdoor elements, and the long-time friendship billed here, but this work made very little sense to me.

I did not see this book coming. Warning: It gets darker than you think.

Dealing with major losses in their lives, best friends Annie and Pete set off on a hiking trip. It is the ultimate test of their survival skills - something the pair is used to - they have a journal documenting all of their near-death experiences. But somehow they always survive. But this time, mistakes are made and Annie worries this is one adventure that might end their lucky streak.

This book is intense. Much more intense than I expected. The first chapter drops you in the midst of Annie and Pete's disastrous hike before jumping back to the beginning, and I was completely hooked. I was desperate to know how they got to that point, and where they would possibly go from there.

I think its important to know that Wildfire is much more about friendship, survival, and grief than it is unrequited love. The synopsis gave the impression that this would be an intense romance of best friends realizing their feelings for each other - and while Annie does wonder if she and Pete could be more than friends, it is hardly the focus of the plot and is more of a side note.

I loved Pete and Annie's friendship - they always knew exactly what the other needed. I really felt for Annie, who is dealing with the loss of her grandmother. Both Annie and Pete had more than their fair share of loss in their lives, and as a reader, I could really feel the bond between the two.

I think there will be a lot of mixed feelings about how this book ends. It's absolutely heartbreaking. Personally, I liked the end (I was gutted, don't get me wrong) but it did leave me unsure of where Annie's story would go. I would have liked to see a bit more of a concrete resolution for her.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the chance to read this Advanced Readers Copy in exchange for an honest review!

This book caught my eye on the cover, I thought it was a teenage love story, but it wasn't, it's a little heartbreaking and a little sad book, in some parts it made me laugh and broke my little heart, I liked the characters and I really hateed the mom of Annie, I think very few will like that character.
I also liked how there were flashbacks in the story to understand the plot, and they're also touching.
I also really liked Annie and Gigi's friendship, it reminded me of my best friend from high school.
This book will please you if you like drama, friendship and a little heartbreaking situations, it's like a roller coaster of emotions.

I’m not sure why but this one just wasn’t clicking the vibe between these two was romantic to me it was just friendship. Like I can’t picture them in my mind as friends to lovers type of trope.