I read C.J Tudor’s The Chalk Man and didn’t enjoy it as much as it was hyped, so when I got approved for this one, I went in blindly and I am happy to say I loved it! It gave me Blair witch vibes, with a little bit of Mr. Jones style. Jack is very easy to follow along with, what a life she has lived for sure. The characters were well written and you either hated them or loved them.

“The Burning Girls”...what a great title for a murder mystery/horror story/supernatural tale. This was my first experience with the writing of C.J. Tudor and I am grateful to NetGalley for the opportunity and to give this book a “good reading.” The story follows a female vicar relocated to a country chapel that has both current as well as hidden historical mysteries. The historical mystery includes eight Protestant martyrs burned at the stake; further, in more recent history two young girls disappeared; in even more recent history the vicar of th aforementioned church had killed himself. On top of these plot lines are mysteries surrounding the vicars own secret past.
Tudor sure can pack in multiple plot lines to keep one driving quickly to the end of the book. For all the fantastic reviews I have read about “The Burning Girls” I believe I am not the intended target market for this book. With yet another subplot concerning her teenage daughter I believe this book is targeted more towards the YA market. For them the book will be a great read. For me I did not connect with the story as Tudor likely intended me to. So please enjoy but I shall move along testing new authors in my library.

I'm still grappling about my rating for this one. There were definitely elements of the story that I enjoyed but the ending kind of spoiled that for me. I'm a big fan of shocking twists in my thrillers, and I found this one fairly lackluster in comparison.

After reading only one other book by Tudor, The Other People, I was expecting a heavy supernatural element. But it's actually kind of a wispy supernatural element. Reverend Jack Brooks is a female vicar who is moved to a small parish where the previous vicar hung himself, or so it seems. Along for the ride is Jack's teenage daughter who is into photography. This book got really dark. Not just the history of the Sussex Martyrs, people burned alive for being Protestants, including 2 little girls. There are multiple mysteries that unfold throughout the book and I guessed one of them when Jack went to visit the retired cop/detective. It was a pretty obvious hint. But I like the way the stories unfolded and intertwined. I was very surprised at the appalling bullying that happened, in the name of Satan. That made me a bit squiggy, I don't care for Satanic rituals as a plot point. But overall, I really liked this book.

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC of this book in exchange for my honest opinion!

I'm in the minority again. I have read many books about witches lately and although it's a good read, I have to say it came in last for me right now. It wasn't the story, and I appreciate small chapters, maybe it was just too predictable for me or the way it was written. Having read some books that have literally blown me away, I cannot give this more than 3.5 stars that is normally round up to a 4, but I'm keeping it at a solid 3.5. Sorry maybe I'm just not in the mood to review.

If you want to know what the story is about its about two girls who disappeared a long time ago, that were deemed witches and tortured and burned at the sta ke. Now the new vicar, a woman in a small town, and her daughter, who has a hobby for photography, are seeing visions of these "burning girls" and the legend goes, if you see them, something bad will befall upon you. The past vicar was seeing this as well and tried to burn down the church. He didn't succeed, so not soon after hung himself from the rafters of the church, or did he? Was he murdered? How come nobody told the woman vicar this and who is leaving her creepy passags, exorcism kits with old dried up blood on some of the items, and what Of the stick figures being left in honor of the burning girls?

Altogether, not bad at all. Just didn't blow me away.

**4.5-stars rounded up**

After a scandal at her church, unconventional vicar, Jack Brooks, and her teenage daughter, Flo, are relocated to the village of Chapel Croft. This is quite a shift from their life in Nottingham, but they are both determined to make the best of it. The location is peaceful and remote. It feels a million miles from their old life. Upon arrival, they are a little surprised by the untidy condition of the old chapel and their new residence, but still determined to make it work.

They also discover that Chapel Croft, like many small towns, has a dark past that lies not far from the surface. Five hundred years ago, eight Protestants, including two young girls, were burned at the stake for their beliefs. This incident has shaped the town in many ways and the descendants of these original martyrs are still held in high regard. They also have a slightly disturbing tradition of making little stick dolls in memory of The Burning Girls; a few of which Jack and Flo stumble upon shortly after arriving in town.

More recently, the village has been plague by other unfortunate events, like the disappearance of two teen girls thirty-years earlier. In fact, just two months ago, the previous vicar took his own life. A fact Jack was unaware of when she accepted the position.

The people of the village have been through a lot. Secrets and suspicions abound amongst the residents, and when outsiders move in, it tends to cause quite the stir.

Flo unfortunately runs into the local bullies fairly soon after arriving in town and they latch on to her as their newest target. She also makes a friend, Lucas Wrigley, who because of a neurological disorder, finds himself bullied as well.

For her part, Jack is doing her best to learn what she can about her new congregation and ingratiate herself to its people. Jack knows establishing strong personal relationships is key. She needs these people to trust her, if this placement is going to last. However, some folks are easier to appease than others and Jack happens to be hiding a few secrets of her own, including the circumstances surrounding her departure from her former church.

The Burning Girls was such a fun read. It's a slow burn, but once Jack and Flo are settled in their new home, disturbing occurrences begin happening with more regularity. From there, the pace continues to increase through the jaw-dropping finale.

There's some interesting subplots, where I wondered how it was all going to connect. Once the puzzle pieces fell into place, I was absolutely chilled. I loved how Tudor brought this all together and honestly, didn't see it coming!

Additionally, I loved the overall atmosphere. Chapel Croft came to life within these pages. It felt ominous; that feeling where you know something is not right, but you can't quite put your finger on it. There was a tremendous cast of characters. It felt like Jack and Flo against the world, which really increased the intensity. I just wanted them to pack their bags and move!

Thank you so much to the publisher, Ballantine Books, for providing me with a copy of this to read and review. I had an absolute blast with it and can't wait to pick up more of Tudor's work!

Following the suicide of the vicar of Chapel Croft, Reverend Jack Brooks is assigned to the post of interim vicar. The town doesn’t have much going for it except a creepy tradition involving the burning girls, young martyrs whose ghostly appearances are supposed to act as a warning. Jack and her 15 year old daughter Flo soon begin to see the burning girls around the town. There are two other troubling threads in this book. Thirty years ago two other 15 year olds, Merry and Joy, went missing, followed by Merry’s entire family. None have been seen since. In addition, a violent ex-con is stalking someone, for unknown reasons. Flo has trouble getting accustomed to her new home. She is bullied by a really nasty pair of cousins and her only friend is Wrigley, who is also bullied because of physical condition. However, Wrigley does manage to get Flo out of some difficult situations.

The author did a great job of sprinkling in clues and new revelations. Most were so subtle that if you blinked you would miss them. <spoiler>(Pay attention to a movie reference.) </spoiler> However, the number of old and more recent corpses kept multiplying. So did the things that the residents of Chapel Croft were trying to hide. By the end of the book I wished that I had a chart to keep track of who killed which corpse, who hid the body and why. Eventually there were so many dead bodies and so many potential killers that I had to read the last few chapters twice to sort it all out. I hadn’t figured out a single thing. 4.5 stars

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

This is my second book from C J Tudor and wow! The twists and turns really blew me away.

Reverend Jack and her teenage daughter Flo move to a very small village where she becomes the priest of their small church. 500 years ago, two young girls were burned alive by Queen Mary. Every year, the villagers remember the two young martyrs by burning twigs fashioned into dolls.

The story switches between POVs of Reverend Jack and Flo, and occasionally throws in a brief POV of a young girl who had gone missing from the village 30 years before.

This story was creepy, horrifying, thrilling, and twisty, and I couldn't get enough. I'm still reeling from that last big reveal! Can't wait to see what Tudor does next! I'm in!

*Thank you so much to Ballantine Books and NetGalley for the advance copy!*

RUN AND GET YOUR COPY NOW!!!!

(I’ll update with a further review once I get my actual copy but thank you NetGalley for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review!)

This book was amazing! An absolute thrill ride from page one. I found myself rooting for multiple characters and the twist at the end was something I didn't see coming at all. I read a lot of thrillers and horror novels and I can usually figure out the ending about halfway through but that was not the case with this story. So good! Highly recommend!

Wooow! This book was twisty, suspenseful, chilling, and basically everything I was hoping it would be! I was hooked right from the prologue and I never lost interest. And who doesn’t love a story with the setting of an old church with a bad history? Everything unfolded slowly and in a way that every few chapters the author gives you a “hmmm”, which was perfect for this story. I was always thinking and guessing and I just love when a book keeps me engaged like that. Thriller and suspense lovers, I really don’t think this book will disappoint you! This was my third C. J. Tudor book and my favorite so far!

Jacqueline (Jack) is both a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a vicar. When she is asked to take charge of Chapel Croft, she finds herself moving to a remote village and devoting herself to a chapel with a dark history.

Centuries ago, protestant martyrs were burned at the stake there. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared. And a few weeks ago, the vicar of the parish hanged himself.

When Jack’s daughter begins to see specters of girls ablaze, it becomes apparent there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.

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CJ Tudor is an auto-buy author for me because her books are fast-paced and full of surprises. She writes horror-tinged psychological suspense that includes a twisty-turny mystery and dabbles in dark supernatural underpinnings. It’s a fun blend that I’ve come to love!

This book seems to layer in a snappy, pop feel, in part because of cheekiness in the dialogue between mother and daughter, in part because of the fair number of 80s and 90s pop culture references, which lends a postmodern flair. This helps to balance out and soften some of the darkness in the story.

The burning of effigies (aka, the burning girls) -- is based upon the actual history of Mary I (Bloody Mary) burning protestants alive at the stake in the 1500’s, which has led to real-life traditions in present-day villages of having monuments and burnings to commemorate those victims.

The relationship between Jack and her feisty daughter feels real, alternately tense and loving, as they struggle to shoe-horn their big-city lives into a remote countryside and deal with some of the strange and possibly dangerous townsfolk. I also appreciated Jack grappling a bit, even as a vicar, with her own faith, as she attempts to bring a more modern outlook as a “wo-man of the cloth.”

The thing that blew me away about this book is that there are a ton of characters and a large number of mysterious subplots, some of them taking place in the present day, some of them stretching back to the past, yet somehow Tudor does a brilliant job helping you -- the reader -- keep it all straight. She is just so adept at sneaking in reminders, dropping down breadcrumbs, crafting twists and doling out reveals.

And everything else is there, too. Strong, bold characters. Great, snappy dialogue. All of the descriptive elements that keep you feeling chills while you read.

As a trigger warning, this does include issues around bullying and child abuse.

Thank you Ballantine Books for the ARC!

The Burning Girls follows a vicar and her daughter to a remote village that is infamous as the location of the torture and burning of Protestant martyrs who refused to denounce their religion. It reminded me a little of the Salem Witch Trials, if only for the reverence towards the victims in both instances. The Burning Girls are memorialized each year by the villagers making twig dolls and burning them. The vicar, Jack, has been sent to be an interim head of a small church in this village. While there, both she and her daughter encounter specters that they are told, only show themselves to people in danger.

CJ Tudor has crafted a thrilling and sometimes scary story filled with religious symbolism. There is even mention of an exorcism. There were a few big twists, one of which, completely caught me off guard. The story wraps itself up within the last four chapters of the book, and unlike some thrillers, this one captivated me until the end.

THE BURNING GIRLS was unlike anything i’ve ever read before—it follows a single-mom and vicar that’s transferred to a new, rumorered-to-be-haunted church. boy was this SPOOKY!!! it sure gave me the creeps 🥲 it obviously touched a lot on religion and i loved some of the quotes i pulled. i’m a big fan of CJ Tudor but i liked THE OTHER PEOPLE a bit more than THE BURNING GIRLS. next up—THE CHALK MAN!

for me, THE BURNING GIRLS had a few too many characters to keep it all straight and realllly enjoy it but i loved the second, main twist at the end and did NOT see it coming. lately i’m finding that thrillers need to have two plot twists to keep me guessing and this one delivered 🤓

in addition to the main characters, with the dual POVs i really dislike when the chapters aren’t noted as such. if they just add the name, it’ll be so much easier to follow!! 😅 i also felt like it could have been 60 pages shorter and it was almost tooooo slow of a burn. all in all, this was a unique, spooky thriller but it will be a bit forgettable for me.

thank you to Ballantine Books for my gifted copy 🖤

This was very boring, I am surprised I did not DNF it.

I wanted to read this because it was pitched as a “dark remote village haunted by death and disappearances.” Needless to say, nothing was thrilling about it.

Everything that happened I guessed. I kept going with this book hoping something would happen. The beginning was slow.

However, there was a lot of twist in this book!

I feel like the characters were dumb and just walk into dumb decisions. This book was just super boring. Also, I think it is set in the UK which I do not like books set in the UK which I forgot about so that also is apart of the rating.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an early copy!

4 stars

I went into this thinking it was a horror/thriller but it ended up more of a mystery. A spooky mystery sure but not exactly a horror. Maybe it’s a new blend of all three? Mystery, horror, or thriller or what this novel blended successful elements from each and it worked. I didn’t see the twists coming and there def were some pretty great thrills and horror type moments.

I held back a star since for me the ending felt too perfectly wrapped up and felt too easy.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a review copy!

I was so excited about this book. I had seen so many people talking about it, and the description was something I knew I would love. The idea of a vicar/priest being haunted by ghosts hit quite a few interests. I thought the idea of a psychological thriller was to thrill, but that doesn't seem to be a priority here. The first half of the book is the hardest thing to get through. I hit 60% read before it really started to get any exciting. I pushed through because I had an even slower read waiting and procrastinated that one more than this. If you're looking for something quick and a deep dive, this might not be it. I have not read the author's other books, so I'm not sure if that's her writing style. I can't really say that it gets better, but there's definitely a faster pace in the last half.

Thanks to #NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC of #TheBurningGirls in exchange for an honest review.

The queen of spooky thrillers is at it again. This time, she serves up a delightfully wicked tale of vicars and martyrs and missing girls.

Rev. Jack Brooks and her daughter, Flo, have been relocated to Chapel Croft, a small village that’s anything but sleepy. Its sordid history goes back as far as 500 years, when a group of protestants were burned at the stake for refusing to turn their backs on their faith. In more recent memory, the town has seen runaways, mysterious disappearances, and strange deaths. But Jack is determined to settle in as the new vicar, especially after what happened in her previous church.

C.J. Tudor is a master at blending mystery with the paranormal in a narrative that has you hooked from the first. From the very beginning, the tension puts your teeth on edge, and there are so many questions you’re desperate to get the answers to that it can get hard to keep track, but that’s part of the fun. Tudor spins seemingly unrelated threads into an astounding story, and it’s always so satisfying to see how she fits them together.

Themes that Tudor has covered before also ring true for The Burning Girls, such as dealing with a traumatic past, untangling the intricacies of close personal relationships, and the human capacity for good and evil. But she has definitely taken things to a new level in this story. I mean, the main character is a priest, for goodness sake.

At the end of the day, Tudor makes her readers continually question who can be trusted, who will be a force for good, and whose malice might surprise you. She’ll leave you with questions that need to be answered until the very final pages, leading you on with breadcrumb clues (not to mention a piping hot scary storyline).

Perhaps my favorite part of The Burning Girls is how imbued the story is with a rich historical context. By giving Chapel Croft a long-standing story, the book is drenched top to bottom is a spook factor that sets it apart from her other novels. If you’ve liked Tudor’s previous books, you’re going to love this one. And if you haven’t read any of her work before, now is the perfect time to start.

“Why do we hate our girls so much that history echoes with their screams and the earth is pitted with their unmarked graves?”

When I found out C.J. Tudor’s new novel would focus on a chapel and religion, I was elated. There’s something about religion in a horror genre, or even with just a sprinkle of horror, that I love and Tudor executed this perfectly. The Burning Girls had murder and legend all accompanied with subtle creepiness in every page.

I loved getting inside Jack’s head and finding out what religion meant for them and their efforts to make it more welcoming to all in the chapels they worked in. Jack isn’t a conventional vicar, making following them all the more fun.

There’s a few different mysteries at play here. However, they never become overwhelming. Tudor neatly wrapped up two of the main plot lines while letting readers make a guess as to the other with all the breadcrumbs that lead to the end. It’s one of those subtle reveals where it doesn’t have to be said after all that has happened and revealed through other actions. Aka, a perfect way to end a story IMO.

I loved this book so much. I still haven’t decided but I think it’s one of my favorites

C. J. Tudor’s new novel, The Burning Girls, was giving me eeries vibes from the very beginning. Reverand Jack Brooks moves to the small town of Chapel Croft for a new job at their chapel. This town has a somewhat violent history as two little girls were burned at the stake. Now the town honors them by creating little stick figures of the girls and later burning them. It is clear that this town has more than a few secrets.

This book has quite a few nice twists and turns. Days later, some of the clues were still coming together for me randomly, and that made it all the more enjoyable. I would highly recommend this book to fans of thrillers, with maybe a dash of eerie horror.