I was interested to see what Laura Bates' foray into young adult fiction would look like and I cannot say that I was surprised. The weaving of the historical sections with the modern day storyline was adequately done, but at times the main storyline felt torture porn adjacent and I found myself considerably underwhelmed by the ending of the book.

A good ole mystery, wrapped with teenage angst, and maybe some slight witchiness. This is The Burning. It kept me entertained, which is the whole point, of course. The story was decent, and I was looking forward to reading it every night (until done - obviously). The main character and her story seemed very true to today's social media society, and how you're not someone until you're online. And even then, your presence is everything.

The Burning comes out 4.7.2020.

4/5 Stars

The Burning is a great story to help young adults learn that a simple picture taken and sent to someone they trust can turn into something that will haunt them for years to come. It is also a great lesson on bullying and how to treat people. How to stand up to bullies and how to remember that any one of us can be hurting for any number of reasons and not to believe everything people say about someone.

This book has a somewhat slow start. The first 30% of this book, I feel like absolutely nothing happens, except that Anna continually alludes to a distressing and regrettable past, but doesn’t enlighten us on what that could be. It got slightly annoying, before things finally started happening in the book. That being said, it wasn’t too hard to get through. The author’s voice is easy and fluid to read. By the end, I really enjoyed this book.

However, I feel like the depth of the situation is a little bit unrealistic. There is a lot of cyber bullying, as well as verbal bullying in person. I just do not feel like the gravity of this situation would have been expected in real life. I think these type of things would blow over faster and not be as lingering, or detrimental, from place to place. Kids just don’t care that much about things to linger on them for weeks at a time, and I don’t think ALL kids would be so horribly mean, like in this book. I’m sure situations of this gravity, have and do exist, but I just don’t see it following her from one country to another. It does show well, though, how easy it is for social media to blow things out of proportion, and how others may not see it happening; a serious situation that needs to be considered for kids in our world nowadays.

I especially enjoyed the historic plot line throughout the novel. The Salem Witch Trials had always been a period of interest for me, and being able to see, at least a slight view of this in the UK was very interesting! I like how it was bit uniquely interwoven through a contemporary story.

This was a powerful and compelling story of one girl's struggle to reclaim her own body under the pressure of systemic misogyny. When Anna begins a new school and a new life in Scotland, she is hoping to leave the torments of her past life behind; but rumours are like fire and they spread.

The Positives: I thought the dual stories of Anna in present day and Maggie in 1650 worked really well in tandem to highlight that women have always been subject to the power of men. The message in the story is very powerful and is repeated frequently, which often made some of the book hard to read, as the situation was rage inducing, to say the least. I felt an overwhelming sense of injustice for both of the women in this story and found myself becoming increasingly angry at the hypocrisy on show. I really loved the friendship between Anna, Kat and Alisha and how their closeness demonstrated the power to be found in women supporting each other, rather than tearing each other down.

The Negatives: I felt that all of the adults, with the exception of Glen, were pretty ineffectual in the story, which rang a little bit false to me. I also thought that some of the response seemed overly extreme, particularly given that Anna had moved away from the original source.

Overall, this was a really compelling and important novel and I would recommend it to any and all women.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This book tackles very important issues that teens deal with all of the time, and I think that it is a good book for young teens, but it does read a little like an over the top cliche teen movie. Which is sometimes exactly what people want to read - something different but not too far off from their lives.

The issue I had was that I often found myself saying, "do teenagers REALLY act like this?!" I know some of them can act genuinely horrible like this story, but school-wide abuse seems a little far fetched. Maybe if this story were set in an earlier time, it would have made more sense, even though part of it is about social media. The story the main character researches and has flashbacks of felt very believable and almost more relevant.

Now, I still think it was a good book with some excellent points. I enjoyed the friendships and how the character deals with their own issues. I loved the historical plotline. I loved the mom talking to the school.

I think this one will be perfect for students who like realistic fiction and lots of drama. Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read this one!

Anna and her mother are starting over in a small village in Scotland: new name, new school, new friends, new life. Just when things start to feel "normal", her past sneaks up on her and everything crumbles all over again.

This modern story of a teen girl being publicly shamed for an "incident" that's out of her control is interwoven with the story of Maggie - a teen living in the same village in the mid 1600s [embrace the magical realism]. Even with hundreds of years separating their lives, their stories have eerie similarities and sadly show that things haven't changed as much as we'd like to think.

A powerful read for girls/women and the boys/men in their lives!

***This is a YA title, so let me start out by saying my more critical adult self would probably give this book 3 stars, for reasons explained below, but my sixteen year old self would have loved it and probably given it 5 stars. So I’m going with 4 stars.

The Burning by Laura Bates centers on a teenage girl, Anna, who has been a victim of online bullying. Photos and hateful rumors were posted online and circulated around her school, so she and her mother moved from England to Scotland for a fresh start, a new beginning.

At her new school, she tentatively begins to put down roots and make friends, until somehow, someone finds out about her past and resurrects the damaging photos, creating a new online profile posing as Anna herself. The harassment and the bullying quickly spiral out of control. The damage it wrecks is shocking and awful.

Interwoven with the primary plot is a second story--the story of a young woman in the 1600s, an unwed mother accused of witchcraft. Anna begins researching the woman’s story for an assignment for school, but then she begins to experience visions of Maggie’s life and, eventually, her death. This sub-plot was fascinating, but it also pulled me out of the primary narrative and the supernatural elements felt a little out of place.

About the witch hunt narrative: I recently read Tidelands, by Philippa Gregory, which had a similar storyline, set in the coastal tidelands of England. The history nut in me loved how Bates made the historical realities of the witch hunt and the hysteria surrounding it accessible to a YA audience. In my limited historical understanding, everything that happened seemed historically plausible. While it didn’t seem to jive completely with the modern narrative, I liked how it illustrated that women have historically been subjugated and oppressed. It is not a modern phenomenon--women not being taken at their word. Rumors flew then and now, with devastating consequences.

The bullying plot was relatable and timely. I was bullied in school, but fortunately it was before social media was a “thing.” I can't imagine how toxic and damaging it must be now to never be able to escape the harassment. At least for me, when I went home, I was safe from the ugliness. For Anna, it follows her everywhere, keeps her awake at night; it never lets up.

I think the message of the book is important and relevant and necessary. The Burning highlights gender inequality and the damaging effects of misogyny, in the past and the present. It shines a light on how dangerous and damaging a rumor can be. It is, ultimately, empowering and a testament to the power of true friendship.

Teens will eat this book up.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks for an e-ARC, in exchange for my honest review.

This was an interesting book that tried merging two concepts of female persecution together.

On the one hand, you have Anna, a high school girl who's starting over in a new school after enduring terrible harassment at her old one. Then Anna does research on a supposed witch from her area--a woman who was cast out for having sex with an important man and bearing his child. You can see the obvious parallels between Anna and the woman she's researching, particularly in the idea of women being hated and almost hunted for their sexuality.

Throughout the novel, girls and women are judged for their decisions--whether it's for hooking up or sleeping with, or sending nude photos to guys--yet the people (mostly boys) harassing them get away with their awful behaviour. We see the isolation of these girls as they're called awful names, and their former friends turn on them. It's a reality for a lot of teenage girls.

That said, I'm tired of reading victim stories. If I wanted that, I'd read the news. I want stories of teenage girls with teeth, who triumph and aren't afraid of their sexuality. I think so much more could have been done with this story to show girls that they are not alone--and that they shouldn't be alone against misogynistic men trying to own their bodies. It'd be a much different story, but I think it's one girls need to read more and more now. This novel resolves the issues so easily when the reality of the internet is so much more vile.

I so wish there had been more to this.

This book paints a stark portrait of what the world does to girls through dual timelines of slut shaming in the forms of cyberbullying now and the witch hunting trials of history. This book is brutally honest, but as the author notes, all of the things that happen to our main character come from the experiences of real girls. I think there will be adults who say the content is too mature or adult for teen YA readers, but that would be missing the point of this book entirely. Adults who dismiss these events as too intense for teens are silencing victims' voices and turning a blind eye to the problems girls face today. We need to listen to what teens are telling adults about what they endure and take their side to fight to change it. This is an important book that I think will make for excellent discussion both among teens and their peers, but also to open a dialogue with the adults in their lives. Adults should learn the warnings signs this book shows and learn to have discussions with their teens who might be too embarrassed or overwhelmed to come to them. I can't say this is an enjoyable book to read but it is so very important and a necessary lifeline for young people and the adults who need to fight for them.

This was powerful and compelling. I could not put this book down. It accurately depicts the struggles young people have today with social media. At the age of fourteen and feeling vulnerable after her father’s death, Anna makes some bad choices. These choices result in her mother moving them to Scotland, where Anna uses her mother’s maiden name. She hopes no one will ever find out what made them move. But of course, someone does find out. The story from then is non stop action and full of emotion. I loved it! A great read for parents of teens.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This was a difficult read mostly cause of the clunky writing and cause you have to deal with the protagonist going through every single mundane moment of the day. It just wasn't compelling and it took forever to get to the plot. I really wanted to love this book but sadly it was a miss for me.

"We are the granddaughters of the witches you could not burn. And we're not putting up with it anymore."

Anna and her mother make a new home in Scotland hundreds of miles and a new country away from the home she grew up in. Told from the perspective of Anna Clark as her and her mother navigate a new life together without her father, who has passed away, trying to put her past of online sexual harassment and abuse by her friends and school mates behind her. They hope by erasing all of Anna's social media, and moving, the problem will go away on it's own.
They move into an old cottage by the sea, which Anna finds once belonged to a woman accused of witchcraft, and their stories begin weaving together from there, with Anna having troubling, vivid flashbacks of the woman's life.
While I am not the target audience for this book, as a woman, I connected to it in more than one way. The readers are taken down the paths of two women, while hundreds of years apart, find themselves in similar situations, discovering just how powerful, and detrimental a rumor can be. This book would be beneficial for any woman to read, with a powerful story that is relevant to our day and age, and deals with the many faces of abuses young women have to deal with, Online bullying & Harassment, Slut-shaming, rape, victim blaming, just to name a few. These topics are dealt with in the present day of Anna's life, and the life of the accused witch that lived hundreds of years ago.
found the way Bates weaved the women's stories together quite lovely, and the "visions" not only fit within the book at perfect times, they fit the story so well that both of the narratives had my heart breaking for these girls at the same time.
This book is a slow burn, taking quite some time for the reader to discover just exactly what Anna was running from in her previous life, and while I enjoyed this book, I found it incredibly tedious waiting for the author to unravel the details. I was expecting more of a climax, an AH-HA moment that felt like it never came to fruition, and the story just fizzled out. All in all it was an ok debut that dealt with important subject matter relevant to girls in our day and age, however I felt that it fell flat for me in more ways than one.


**Thank you Netgalley and publishers for my advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review**

I haven’t read young adult in a while and this book reminded me of what I love about it. The heart wrenching torture of being a teen is the absolute worst. And this novel explains it all and I just felt so much for the main character.

Reading this novel was a traumatic experience; one doesn't have to have suffered in these particular venues to hurt in sympathy with the protagonist. Any woman, girl, child, and any man with a Sensitive heart will surely find Anna's tribulations extraordinary (and those of the historical villager Maggie as well). Strongly written, compelling, horrifying, THE BURNING powerfully delineates societal double standards, both now and in the 16th century.

Oh, I really wanted to enjoy this one more than I did. It had a lot of the elements I liked--rumors, school, gossip, social media, twists, and turns--in a light, fast-paced book but it didn't really connect for me. It seemed like a first draft with zero editing, not a book nearly ready to be on shelves. The prose was very clunky. It read like it was for elementary school level readers but the material wouldn't have been appropriate for them.

In this YA novel, a young woman who has had her nude photos shared throughout a student body relocates with her mother to a small. Town, hoping to start fresh. But of course her past catches up with her, and she has to deal with new harassment. This takes up the bulk of the book, which is too bad, because if the act of resistance the protagonist does at the very end of the book had come earlier, the author could have focused on strategies for pushing back against such bullying. The protagonist and her mother—who is an incredibly naive and inattentive parent—need a lot of therapy, and while the author provides links to anti bullying resources at the end of the novel, none of those actually appear in the book, which is a terrible missed opportunity. A structure and approach that focused more on combating the problem, instead of reveling in the kinds of messages harassers send and what they do, would have resulted in stronger characters and a stronger book overall. A side plot about a historical figure in the protagonist’s new town is okay but not really compelling.

This book had me crying in my bed at 2am.
I went into this book with little to no expectations especially since I had only a bare idea of what this book was about but I came to love this story and the important message it holds.
While reading I was totally consumed in the story and in Anna's life. I felt frustrated for her and with her.
I really appreciated the similarities and the contrast of storylines between Anna researching the story of Maggie, a woman who was trialled as a witch, and her dealing with being persecuted and called a slut. It really made me think which is something I always love from a good book. It made me realise that we haven't evolved all that much and the cries of calling woman "witches" has simply changed to calling them "sluts" or "whores".
This book was uncomfortable to read at times due to the onslaught of abuse hurled at Anna and how real that was.
My only nitpick really about this book is that this book is set in Scotland and the main character is from England and yet there's a lot of American words and I know it's a stupid thing to point out but for the first 20% of the book it's all I saw.

3 stars

My impression of this book can be summed up as follows: everything and the kitchen sink...and then a few other ideas. There are some very important and worthwhile topics covered here, but they get lost a bit in the sheer profusion.

What's to like? There's in-depth coverage of slut-shaming, bullying, and DeepFakes, which are not being discussed enough in literature in general, let alone in YA, where many of the real-life victims of this exist. Readers get first-hand impressions of how these issues impact the main character, and these parts of the novel are powerful and likely incredibly helpful for readers with similar experiences and for those who need to build empathy around them.

Areas of concern: The adults - though well meaning in some cases - are gross. There's a lot of disbelief, lacking support, blaming victims, and general instruction that pulling a geographic is the best way to "win" over one's problems (though, fortunately, this is proven false in an obvious way). There are two side plots that drove me bananas the whole time: (1) the father's death and (2) everything witch related. The dad's death is not really explored except to say that it happened, and in one scene only, time helps to heal this wound. Either take it out, or do more with it. The witch piece...ugh. I see the connection, which is also overt in the title, and the idea is great, but it never comes together. There are lengthy, italicized passages providing insight into the experience of MM, and a potentially interesting relationship that arises between the m.c. and a local historian, but neither of these aspects is well integrated into the novel overall.

I feel like I'm having an conversation with a student here after a brainstorming session or a first draft of an essay, but my honest read is this: so many ideas...focus and unite!

The writing style of this book felt pretty average for me but I enjoyed the mystery and layers of plot behind the characters. An overall enjoyable read.