Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power is an incredible work. I loved the main character and the writing style takes your breath away.

[Transcript of my video review; excluding my intro + a life update]

Before we get into my spoiler free review, I will be listing off trigger warnings that
apply to this book. Please keep them in mind for your own mental health and if you see other people thinking
about reading this book feel free to share this list with them because it is important, no matter how much you want to read a book, to take into account your own mental health and how it will affect you more than how much you might want to read a book, however you much you think you might like it.

The trigger warnings are for: fire, emotional abuse, murder and attempted murder, there's
some, uh, vague body horror relating to the eyes specifically , teen pregnancy, illness,
and some gore.
If you want specifics on the scenes that have the trigger warnings please DM on twitter.

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power is an upcoming release set to come out July 7th, 2020.
A young woman, she is 17, named Margot, she tries to figure out her family history and
why her mother has kept it from her. Her mother is distant and emotionally abusive and has not really shared anything about her past with Margot.

Margot ends up figuring out the name of the home town that her mother grew up in and she
travels to that town and meets and grandmother. However there is a mystery surrounding the farm-the family farm- and she tries to get to the bottom of it.

If I had to categorize this book as a genre I would say that it is a speculative mystery. I do not quite think that it is a thriller. There are moments where it is definitely thrilling but it doesn't have the tension that is consistent
that I associate with thrillers.

Now the- a few of the trigger warnings I listed do not apply to this review itself.
However I am going to be speaking in-depth about emotional abuse in this video so if
you do not want to hear about this just click away and I would frankly recommend not picking
up the book in general.

I gave this book five stars. I sobbed for the entire last chapter a lot. And there are four points I want to discuss and I would also like to talk about the ending without giving away any specifics, hopefully.

The first thing I want to talk about is how realistic the main characters are.

Our main character first Margot is a teenager. She is written like a teenager.
She is not perfect. But the ways she is flawed are very realistic. If we- If we remove the more speculative elements from the story Margot is a character that you could see in the real world. You wouldn't have to change her character whatsoever.

And I felt very seen by her character in the ways she is portrayed and also the ways she handles her trauma. And things related to that. This is a character that is angry and desperate to be loved in not a romantic sense but in any sense of the word. And she is a character that is strong. And it just felt incredibly realistic. I would say more realistic than teens in a lot of contemporary books I have read.

Now the next character I am going to talk about is Josephine. This is Margot's mother. We do not see much of Josephine but when we do see is a more realistic depiction of an abusive parent than I have seen in any other type of media. Power took the time to show us the complicated, uh, nature of abusers and abuse. Power takes the time to show that her actions are not out of any malicious, they are not planned, and they are not- um, I don't want to say not purposeful but they are not- she did not set out to be an abusive mother, she did not set out to- she doesn't hate Margot at all.

I just found that the more realistic portrayal of Josephine lead to a more realistic portrayal of abuse and the effects that it can have on the characters and I enjoyed that a lot. Now there are- Not all of the characters are as well-developed as Margot and Josephine. I would say that out least developed character is probably Eli. He is a side character that is in maybe 3 scenes. So I don't think there is much of an expectation for him to be developed. The story is focused mainly on the three women, the- is it Nielson?-the Nielson women and
there are a number of side characters.

One character that is given more page time and more development than Eli is Tess. She is Eli's best friend and she is Margot's grandmothers neighbor and she befriends Margot as soon as Margot gets to town. Tess, more so than Eli, we get a very clear depiction of who she is, not quite what her motivations are but I don't think that really matters in the story. But we get a very very clear image of who she is as a character in the limited amount of page time she gets. And I adore that quite a bit.

There is also Vera who is, um, Margot's grandmother. I do not have much to say about Vera that I haven't already said about Josephine. And what I do have to say about her is going to be touched on later on so I am going to save that for now.

Next is a very minor point but there are two different small towns that are portrayed in, um, Burn Our Bodies Down. The first is the town of Calhoun which is where Margot grew up. And- And then there is Phalene which is where we spend most of the story. The, um- Something that I have noticed is that when reading a lot of contemporary fiction lately is that small towns rarely feel like small towns. I am sure that small towns felt the way they do in a lot of YA contemporary books, um,. I am sure they did feel that way when the authors were teens themselves.

However, I think, the nature of small town has evolved a bit- evolved, changed, shifted. And I think that Power did a really good job at portraying what it is like to be in a small town. It shows that not everyone is going to know everyone in a small town but it also shows touches on the almost suffocating nature of small towns especially when you are in high school because while there- While you are not going to know everyone in your graduating class, you are going to be familiar with a lot of them and that can really limit your possibilities in regards to regards, not really possibilities. [giggle]

My next point focuses on the portrayal of the effects of trauma and the trauma of abuse in particular. I mentioned this in the character section but I just want to say that this book made me feel incredibly seen in a way no other books has before. I would say that the only book that has made be feel this seen, even remotely as close as this books, was, uh, the Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. While books like We Are the Ants have made me feel seen in regards to my mental health and When We Were Magic to the coming of age struggles of a Gen Z teenager, nothing has quite made me feel seen in the way Burn Our Bodies Down has and that is largely thanks to the portrayal of emotional abuse in this story.

I grew up in an emotional abusive household. I currently still live there and things have gotten better but I still carry the trauma
of my childhood and teen years. And I will carry that for the rest of my life. Burn Our Bodies Down shows the ways that Margot doubts herself and doubts the reality that she lives in because of the ways her mother has conditioned her to. It shows the ways- the ways that, while not always down maliciously, that someone who is emotionally abusive can change their story and try to essentially gaslight you. It shows the ways it makes you doubt just about everything and everyone in your life. It also shows the ways that it is harder to trust people. It is- you are always looking for the ways someone is flawed. You are always looking for what might set them off and make them angry with you. And that is a coping mechanism that you develop because your need it. You need it. You need to always be on edge and this book confronts the reality of that.

It confronts the ways that certain characters do thing that remind Margot of her mother and they- they basically do behave in ways that are similar to her mother. It- She is always looking for the signs that someone is going to treat her the way her mother treated her. And it just showed the anxiety that is not always suffocating but is always there in the back of your mind when you grow up in a situation like this.

The next thing I want to talk about is the story's allegory. Allegory isn't technically the right word because I don't believe in authorial intent but so I am technically talking about applicability but I'm saying allegory and you can't stop me. This book is an allegory for emotional abuse and the cyclical nature of it. I do not have a finished copy so I cannot include any quotes but there is discussion of the fact that Josephine is treating Margot the same way Vera treated Josephine and Josephine's twin sister.

And as with the last subpoint I made it shows the ways that these behaviors are taught, the ways that children who grow up in abusive households internalize these behaviors, and they ways they can later replicate them if they are not cautious and aware of these behaviors. This is, I would say, a story about the need to confront your trauma, the need to let things go, and the need to move on. That is, at least for me, what this story is about. And that is a large part of the reason I love it so much. Because this is a story that resonates with me, it is a story that makes me feel seen, and it is a story that gives me hope.

The last thing I am going to talk about is the ending. I am not going to talk about specifics but, to me, the ending is incredibly hopeful. I know that a critique that a lot of people had for Wilder Girls was the inconclusive ending and the ending of this was pretty inconclusive too. It does not show us where Margot ends up in life. It doesn't really- It doesn't answer a lot of things.

I think in comparison to Wilder Girls specifically it is a lot more hopeful. It ends on a very hopeful note. I'm sure some people won't see it that way but I'm sure some people won't see it as a hopeful ending because I would say it is hopeful in a very subtle way. It doesn't promise that things are going to get better for Margot. It doesn't promise that she is going to be a great person. It doesn't promise that she is going to have a happily ever after. But it promises that all of that is possible. It promises that one day she might have those things and that resonates with me a lot.

So if you want- I realize I didn't talk a lot about the technical aspects of this book because to me the technical aspects do not matter much. But briefly I will talk about the writing. The writing style is pretty similar to that of Wilder Girls. It is not the most lyrical prose. It is- It is poetic in a way that is not really poetic if that makes sense. It is raw to the bone and gets its point across in a way that is emotional without relying on a lot of metaphors and flowery language. I would say that if the writing styles of Wilder Girls turned you off the writing style
for Burn Our Bodies Down is not going to be your cup of tea either.

I don't exactly have a conclusion planned out. So what I want to say is that if you liked Wilder Girls I think you are going to like this book. I think that if you are looking for a character and story that is going to resonate like Adam Parrish did for so many children that grew up in abusive households, pick this book up. It is at its core a story about trauma, about emotional abuse, about moving on, and about letting it go.

And I think that that is a story that will help a lot of people but I also think that its a story that not a- that the vast majority of people will not enjoy. This does not have wide appeal. It appeals to people who like weird hard-hitting contemporaries. That is the audience for this book. And I am not going to pretend that this is a book that is going to be massively popular on booktube and that everyone is going to love. I am not going to pretend that.

This is still a book that is going to be important to a lot of people and I want to make sure that the people who need this book, the people that this book is going to mean the world to, get their hands on it.

So if you think you might be one of those people, please check this book out and I will have a preorder link down below. It is an affiliate link so I will get a commission if you buy via that link.

That is all for today. I will see you in the next video. Bye!

SPOILER FREE REVIEW!
I Loved it! All the twists and turns with a bit of strangeness. You seem to think you know where the book is going them BAM! Exactly the type of book you'd expect from the author of Wilder Girls!

Margot's mother has always kept any information about their family history from her. They live shut up in a small apartment, alone together in the world. But Margot stumbles across her grandmother's phone number and decides to call her up and visit her ancestral hometown, only to find that her family's history is much longer and darker than she could ever have imagined.

BURN OUR BODIES DOWN moves quickly and powerfully, a story of a matriarchy twisted into something horrible. The whole book has an atmosphere of something off kilter, of a storm in the distance. And when the pieces begin to fall into place, I could not turn the pages fast enough.

It's also a knife-sharp illustration of emotional abuse and the lasting, even generational effects gaslighting can have on those who experience it and turn it on their children.

Additionally, I just want to note the small joy of a book that features a queer character - one who explicitly names herself as such on the page - and that it has no bearing on the plot at all. There's no romantic thread to this book and it's not even a coming out story. She simply is a lesbian, that's all.

Content warnings: emotional abuse, death, body horror.

Ok....ok....OK.

I started this book - thinking it was going to be in the vein of White Oleander - you know, troubled mom and daughter relationship. And then....and then there was a fire. A body. Bottled water. Pink corn. Apricots. The same face, over and over and over.

This straddles the line of fiction/YA fiction/ science fiction/thriller/whatever the hell because OH MY GOD.

OH MY GOD.

Y’all......I just can’t. This book was all over place and the build up of the story was so high that you actually get frustrated that it takes you 29 chapters to find out the twist and then boom it’s the end. It was painfully slow and all over the place. The characters lost a lot of appeal and they remained dull.

Burn our Bodies Down has amazingly beautiful writing. However, The story just didn’t really do it for me. I felt as though some of the characters relationships were just filler as they were never fully developed. I also didn’t feel any connection to the characters, I mostly pushed through the book to find out the end and see if I was right about what happened to the farm/family. I also feel if it had picked up pace faster and spent more time on the mystery and dark aspect of it, the story would’ve been much better . While it wasn’t for me , the writing was still tremendous and that alone makes it worth reading .

Once I started reading Burn Our Bodies down, I couldn't put it down until I learned all the secrets the Neilsons were hiding as Margot tries to understand her family and where she came from.

"From the author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a new twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery - until she decides to return to her mother's hometown... where history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Ever since Margot was born, it's been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot's questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along.

But that's not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it's not what she bargained for.

Margot's mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what's still there?

The only thing Margot knows for sure is there's poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she's there, she might never escape."

Oh, family secrets and hometown pilgrimages!

Thanks for the ARC!

This was my first Rory Power since I have not had the chance to read Wilder Girls by her but this book was well weird. It had a great start but the ending was weird and somewhat disturbing, it left me feeling like I didn't understand the hidden message because with a plot twist like that I needed a hidden and deeper meaning.to make sense of it all.

Margot was a great character though, I liked how well rounded and how much she aged in such a small amount of time, but it was all natural. She really was able to discover what she needed. But this book only really had development for that one character, none of the other characters developed that much and that was kind of a disappointment for me.

But the ending, the ending is what really threw me off. I thought it was really weird and added like a creepy magical aspect I did not expect nor did I want because the direction of the book led me to believe there would be no weird magical stuff, but lo and behold there was.

It was enjoyable for the most part though, so three stars.

So deeply strange! I didn't hate it but it sure was peculiar, almost like Gillian Flynn. I haven't read Wilder Girls and I'll be honest, I don't think I will after this. The prose is lovely though.

Margot has a strange and dysfunctional relationship with her mother. She has never heard anything about her family and her mother has always refused to answer her anything.
One day she finds something written in his mother's bible and manages to contact his grandmother. Margot decides to travel to meet her but realizes that her grandmother has many more secrets than her mother and decides once and for all to discover the truth and the secrets her family hides.
Burn Our Bodies Down is a great YA thriller that will keep you turning pages. Everything in this book will have you questioning things you thought you knew until the end.
4 stars for me
thanks to NetGalley and Random Children's books for providing me with an arc in exchange for an honest review

Rory Power is officially my go-to author for eerie reads that make your skin crawl. Burn Our Bodies Down is a perfect read for an endless hot summer day that will keep you turning pages. The plot is slowly revealed and just when you think you know what's going on, the author reveals something new. This book will have you questioning things you thought you knew for sure.

Not as strong of a narrative as Wilder Girls but an interesting take on modern day horror nonetheless. The last 80% of the book was fantastic!

I think the magic of this book is that the horror comes as a sneak attack. Everything seems as fine as it’s able for Margot. Her mother is distant, emotionally abuse, and she raises herself. But she wants a family, she wants to know where she came from. Then as she finds the freedom she’s longed for, in the bosom of her grandmother, the mystery unfolds. Things take a turn and the fantastical elements that we were expecting seep to the surface.

Margot is an abused teen. The mind games her mother plays are just unbelievable. And Margot, in typical abused kid fashion, has learned how to navigate the minefield of her mother’s psychological warfare. But it’s not enough for Margot, who knows there is a life out there waiting for her. Perhaps a family that has always wanted her, a place she can truly call home. Then you start to get a bad feeling, but it’s only slight, so you put that in the back of your mind, and continue reading, hopeful that your gut feeling is wrong...

The thing is, Margot is experiencing signs from her grandmother: the grip on the shoulders, the anger, and she just brushes them off. Why? Because for 17 years she’s lived abuse, and the power of family is stronger for her right now.

“But it’s not love, to give your wounds to someone else.”

The characters played their roles perfectly. Even Margot’s impossible mother Jo was a good, wretched woman. This was a fun read from start to finish. I loved the farm setting, which made it perfectly creepy even if there wasn’t horror lurking around the corner. The creep factor made this book stand out for me. I was expecting it, but then bam, I wasn’t expecting *that*. A well-written and unnerving read. So much fun! Thank you, Random House Children’s/Delacorte Press, for sending this along.

Thank you to Delacorte Press and Netgalley for the complimentary advance readers’ edition of BURN OUR BODIES DOWN by Rory Power for an honest review.

I really enjoyed Rory Power’s WILDER GIRLS earlier this year, so I was thrilled to receive an e-galley of her newest book! BURN OUR BODIES DOWN follows Margot, a young woman who has only ever had her mother in her life. Her mother isn’t exactly what one might call “normal” and she refuses to answer any questions about Margot’s other family. The chief lesson that Margot’s mom passes on to her is that there is safety in the flames.

When looking through some of her mother’s belongings, Margot finds an old picture which includes a woman who must be her grandmother. On back there is a phone number and Margot reaches out. Her mother is irate, but Margot is determined to find out what her mother was running from when she left her old life behind. Soon Margot is in the town of Phalene, but it isn’t all that she had hoped for. There is darkness in the town and in her family and secrets are being kept by everyone.

I really went into this book pretty blind and it took a while to really figure out what to expect from the story. I wasn’t clear (and really still have some questions) about how much Margot’s mother was dealing with mental illness and how much there was something more supernatural in nature going on as there was in WILDER GIRLS. This book seems to take the two and really do a good job of keeping the reader guessing.

When Margot reaches Phalene there are again a mixture of things at play. It isn’t always clear what is going on in the environment and what is going on in peoples’ minds. I think that this successfully keeps up a very ominous tone over the book. The author does a fantastic job of building up a very atmospheric town and home for Margot’s family. Without getting into details, there is a bit of gore in this one, not unlike WILDER GIRLS.

The chief complaint I saw for WILDER GIRLS had to do with the somewhat ambiguous ending. With this book, I do feel like it comes to a more decisive conclusion, though I would say there were still some questions not entirely answered. It definitely is a book that would spark some excellent conversations.

This was a fascinating read and it kept my attention hooked! Look for BURN OUR BODIES DOWN when it is out on 7/7/2020!

Mothers don't always tell their daughters anything, but Margot Nielsen just really wants to connect with the family she had never known. Some secrets lead to a rabbit hole and the truth puts Margot and her new friends in danger.

Much like her debut, Wilder Girls, Power has such a knack for writing feral, unlikable main female characters. Margot is determined to survive and not afraid to put up a fight. The stream of conscious writing is excellent because it allows room for these asides that show just how pissed off Margot is at, well, everyone around her. In addition, even though it has no real bearing on the plot, Margot is a queer girl who loves girls and it's on the page.

The book is steeped in this creeping dread as the reader explores the notes and diaries left behind by Margot's mom. Gram is also sweetly unsettling, and to say anything more would absolutely be spoilers territory. There's definitely a sense of history in the farmhouse and the ruined cornfields, and the layers keep going and going.

A delightful Midwest horror in which family secrets are kept tucked away for good reason.

I loved this so much and I don’t even know how to put it into words. It was so strange in the best way. I don’t know what I was expecting, but i liked it so much.

Thank you for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book. I really enjoyed it! My review is below and a link to my blog review is included. The blog review will be posted July 23rd, two weeks prior to publication. I will also post to IG and goodreads the same day. I will post to amazon July 7th. Thanks again!

This book was so much more than I expected. I went into it thinking ya thriller, but what I got was horror, sci-fi, and mystery all rolled into one.
I couldn't help feeling for the main character Margo. She's like so many patients I see in my therapy practice; severely wounded by childhood trauma and as a result, viewing the world around them a bit differently. Trigger warnings in this book include emotional abuse such as gaslighting-manipulation, and depictions of bodily violence/death.
Margo has managed an insecure attachment with her mother for seventeen years. Learning to navigate her mother's emotional reactivity includes never again asking about family, about her mother's childhood, or about where she came from. Margo's mother made it clear, questions such as those would not be tolerated.
Eventually, Margo finds a clue that sets her on a path to answers but they may not be exactly what she's hoping to find. Margo is looking for what she's never been given; warmth, acceptance, love. Margo finds a grandmother who looks a lot like her mother, a lot like herself, and even more unanswered questions.
The town of Phalene, where her grandmother lives, has seen better days. Power paints a picture of a dusty, hot landscape, with weird crops of corn and something unnatural in the land. Margo quickly makes a friend in a neighbor, Tess, who seems ready to help at all costs but as Margo and Tess set out to find answers, will the cost be too much to bear?
I enjoyed reading this story. I thought Margo was very much a result of growing up with an abusive parent. I applauded Margo's tenacity as she was able to find the courage to take steps beyond her mother's manipulation to find the answers she needed and set out for herself. Margo does make some interesting choices but I thought Power did a good job of explaining Margo's rationalizations and ultimately they led to exciting events.
Overall, this was a quick and exciting read! I liked the pacing and felt the story becoming progressively weirder as it went, which made the book fly by. I haven't picked up Wilder Girls but now I'm thinking I will.

Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with the ARC of this book for an honest review.

DNF! Unfortunately I was unable to get interested enough to be able to finish. I usually give books 100 pages and if it has not got me by then I put it down. Since the other reviews I read I will try again to read and if I have a different result I will edit my review.