Gosh. I so wanted to like this one, and while I'm thankful to the publisher, author, and Netgalley, this one wasn't for me.

I failed to connect with any of the characters. None of them seemed to be stable or even established well enough to care about what happened to them. I also failed to fully grasp the plot. It felt like it needed an editor to add a lot of questions in the margins. And, while I am not a person who wants my stories all tied up in little bows at the end, I do want them to make sense. All the "huh?" should be answered. Those are called twists, but they should all be understood by the end. Perhaps it was because the author was trying very hard to include specific issues like racism in policing, unconscious bias, and mental health issues and focused on their inclusion over making all the pieces fit smoothly together? This felt like a good start but I could have used a bit more.

arc review

Wow, I tore through this book! Sara Koffi's writing style and tone clicked with me immediately, and I will absolutely be seeking out more from her in the future.

While We Were Burning is a tense tale about Elizabeth and Brianna. After the death of a friend, Elizabeth's husband suggests she hires an assistant to help keep it together. Brianna is hired, and the two become quick friends. From Brianna's perspective, however, there is much more to the story.

This could be a great fit if you enjoy:
- complex characters & relationships
- social commentary
- domestic/suburban suspense

This book was fast-paced, emotional, and complicated. While the sharp writing style is what I consider fun, nothing about this book is easy. The characters are consumed with hurt and grief as some relationships are cut short while others are past their expiration dates. Their decisions are made based on emotion rather than logic, and we all know how that goes.

I ate this book up! The ending felt a bit rushed, and I was left with a question or two, but my overall reading experience was very enjoyable.

Rating: I reeeeally liked it! (4.5 rounded to a 5)

This book is about two different women, both of whom have vengeance as their agenda. Brianna is avenging the death of her son while Elizabeth believes that her friend's death is murder. Elizabeth has a hard time coping mentally after her friend's death is labeled as suicide. Brianna is hired to be Elizabeth's assistant/companian. I have mixed feelings about this book. At times it was so engrossing. Through-out the book I could not figure out what the end outcome would be for both these women. The book became very intense and by the last 15 minutes I still had not figured it out. Talk about being hung on tenterhooks! I did not like the ending and thus my rating dropped from 4 stars to 3 stars. I am really eager to read other reviews about this book. I received a complimentary copy of the digital ARC from NetGalley and GP Putnam & Sons. This review is my own words.

Holyyyyyyyyy. While We Were Burning was an rollercoaster. If you are like me and enjoy reading stories about awful people, pick this one up. it was impossible to put down with its short chapters, alternating POVs and constant twists. A tale of lies, revenge, racism, and expert manipulation.

Although I wouldn’t say any of the characters *developed* throughout the story, they were fleshed out extremely well. It was very easy to become invested in their story and hooked into needing to know what would happen next. 3.5!

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House, G. P. Putnam’s Sons for an advanced digital copy of this book!

The description of While We Were Burning being a twist between Such a Fun Age and Parasite is definitely on the nose in such a great way! I couldn’t put this book down and absolutely devoured it. I literally flew through it to get to the ending in anticipation. The FMC, Elibeth's life begins to spiral out of control after her best friend's death. She hires an assistant, Brianna, who helps her, and Brianna has dilemmas of her own and questions she wants answered. The two blur the lines between co-workers and friends.

The only thing I would have like to have seen was a bit more of Elizabeth's background because there are situations that make me wonder what happened to her (trauma?).

I absolutely recommend this book for the twists and turns that keep coming.

⭐️: 2/5

Needing help after the mysterious death of her friend, Elizabeth Smith hires an assistant to help her with her day to day tasks. Brianna is exactly who Elizabeth needs, and the two quickly surpass their working relationship and become friends. Soon, Brianna is helping Elizabeth look into her friends death, because Brianna needs answers too: answers to what really happened the day the police killed her son.

This book was a mess. I was excited to read this one after reading the synopsis, hoping for a thriller that provided a cutting commentary on race, class, and gentrification, but instead, this was just a heap of one-dimensional, unrealistic, and uninteresting characters with no cohesive plot, direction, or even genre. The dialogue is deeply unrealistic, using buzzwords that I, a liberal human with liberal friends, very rarely hear dropped into casual conversation, especially conversations with someone I just met. The entire plot is really just, for lack of a better word, ridiculous. The characters do things that don’t make sense, have reactions that swing from one end of the emotional totem pole to the other rapidly, in ways that, again, don’t make sense, and the whole book just reads as a deeply disconnected story that is trying to join the conversation about race and police brutality, but absolutely misses the mark on saying anything even close to revelatory, or even making any point at all really. It kind of felt like a bait and switch honestly, promising all these things and not really delivering. It’s a good thing this one was such a short and quick read, or I would have DNF-ed.

Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinrandomhouse for this free eARC!

I liked the concept & the setup a lot, but I felt like the story fell flat for me. I was hoping for a dark revenge story, but it ended up feeling a little... soft?

I think I get the message the author is trying to send (it's hard to hate others up close / we're more similar to each other than we think) but I was going in expecting something with a darker/thriller edge and was left feeling a little disappointed in the direction the story goes.

Thank you to the publisher for granting me access to an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions remain my own.

A thought provoking page turner!

I was hooked from the first page. With a compelling premise and a strong voice, this was a very easy read. I liked Brianna immediately, understanding her motives and the trauma driving her. I couldn’t help but feel frustrated for her, caught in between a domestic nightmare. I cared the most about her character and was rooting for her till the end. It was interesting to be inside Elizabeth’s headspace, and I can appreciate how the author was exploring the themes of “unlikeable” women, so it’s understandable why she made this woman so annoying. She was the typical privileged white woman who can’t get her shit together, and it’s a theme I enjoy in domestic suspense. The book is definitely plot driven and I found the pace steady, an easy beach read to pick up during the upcoming summer months. I enjoyed exploring the complex relationships between the women, and the darker aspects of their natures.

I would have liked a little more depth added to the supporting characters and bigger twists around the reveals. As enjoyable as it was, I wasn’t surprised by any of the character’s behavior, except Brianna’s. Her romantic choice in the end definitely added some shock value.

3.5/5⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
For readers who enjoy an easy popcorn thriller, female friendships, and dark themes.

Thank you to Putnam's Son Publisher and NetGalley for this ARC.
An intimate look into how racism, overt or internal, impacts everyone involved. Sara Koffi weaves a devastating portrait on how racism can end the life of an innocent child and the aftershocks of such violence. Koffi plays her characters off each other while setting up for a grand reveal that left me reeling. The opening quote has lived in my mind ever since I first read it. In our current cultural climate stories of racial violence, class divide, and gendered roles are more important than ever.

This book was just okay. I wanted so much more from this book and it all fell flat. Pacing was the main issue for me and the climax was not as "high stakes" as it seemed to be.

Slow, slow burn. It took me longer than it should’ve to get through. Just did not hold my interest, unfortunately.

When Elizabeth’s friend is found dead, she is desperate to get answers. She enlists the help of her new assistant, Brianna, but Brianna is busy searching for answers to a different crime.

I loved the concept and the set up here. The first few chapters were great and then it just kind of plateaued. I didn’t necessarily dislike it, but I think there were some pretty big problems that needed addressed.

The dialogue felt incredibly forced. The story jumped all over the place and I never really felt like I had my bearings. The characters were very unlikable and needed a lot more development.

I think my biggest issue though was Brianna. She’s supposed to be doing all of these incredibly vengeful things, but her inner dialogue doesn’t seem like she has any interest in revenge at all. It just really didn’t match the storyline.

I think there was a lot of promise, but it just didn’t get there for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for the ARC!

While We Were Burning by Sara Koffi suffers the problem of wanting to be and to say too much. It's a revenge story. It's a race story. It's an equality story.

The summary is as follows: After her best friend's mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a personal assistant to keep her on track. Composed and elegant, Brianna is exactly who she needs—she slides so neatly into Elizabeth’s life it's almost like she belonged there from the start, and proves herself indispensable. Soon, the assistant Elizabeth hired to distract her from her obsession with her friend's death is the same person working with her to uncover the truth behind it.

Because Brianna has questions, too."

So the setup is interesting. Two women work together to find out the truth, however one (Brianna) wants the truth of a different mystery/death. Both women, Elizabeth and Brianna were....deranged. Elizabeth in her obsession with the murder, of her husband, tries to keep all her secrets secret. However, she willingly turned over passwords and information to her new assistant.
Brianna, the assistant, is a smart...conniving woman who is powered by her grief.

Where it fails is in getting me to care about either person and either mystery. While Brianna's story is most up-to-date with today's society - it felt like a pithy plotline to make this story a hot-button issue. There's other ways to tell that story.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This book has two dynamic women who both have secrets they want to hide. Poor Elizabeth may not have loved her best friend, but she knows that she didn’t kill herself. Now if only everyone else would believe her. Brianna has a past that she knows somehow is tied to the neighborhood that Elizabeth lives in so when Elizabeth is looking for an assistant, Brianna jumps at the chance to get an inside view. Two lives entangled due to one moment. A moment that changed both of their lives forever.
Overall, this book has some highs and lows. For a thriller it is a slow burn, and at the end I am not quite sure that burn is fully worth the wait. I do feel like the end is probably more realistic than most thrillers, yet still you kind of leave wishing for more. I guess I am not sure if this will be the first book I recommend when I think of this genre.
Thank you so much to Penguin Group Putnam, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, and Netgalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this title.

woooooweee this one was intense. It is very well described as Parasite meets Such a Fun Age and was a truly wild messy ride throughout. I flew through it in two days and think everyone will be reading this by the pool.

Like a lot of domestic thrillers (for me, anyway), this one was entertaining while I was reading it but best if you don't look too closely. The premise is solid and I like the theme of race and privilege Koffi is trying to interrogate. But the story is melodramatic and riddled with plot holes, the characters are wooden, and the dialogue is stiff.

Still, I wanted to know what was going to happen. I think this would be a solid vacation read.

Thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

Thank you NetGalley and PENGUIN GROUP Putnam, G.P. Putnam's Sons for the copy of While We Were Burning by Sara Koffi. I love great debuts. I loved how the story unfolded slowly, allowing me to learn more about the characters. Elizabeth was a strange and unlikable character, and I never got a handle on her, but she got more and more annoying. Brianna was interesting and complex, and I was rooting for her finding the answers she needed. And those answers! While partly predictable, one thing was WOW! This book was multifaceted and intriguing, and I look forward to more books by Koffi.

While We Were Burning is a dark, emotional thriller that explores racism and classism in the midst of a suspenseful tale of revenge.

Elizabeth's life is turning into an obsession over finding out who murdered her friend, and her husband suggests she hire an assistant to help her keep everything on track. Brianna, her assistant, has accepted the job with her own mission to figure out who in Elizabeth's neighborhood called the cops on her Black son, which ended in his death a year before. The two women's stories intersect in multiple dark ways and end in an fiery mess.

I loved how Koffi worked large, difficult themes into the plot of this well paced domestic suspense. While trying to figure out who instigated the events that brought Brianna's son to his death, Koffi challenges the reader to consider what true justice looks like, and who gets to call themselves a victim. And of course, I love any thriller with a satisfying revenge arc, and you get that with While We Were Burning too!

This is how it's billed: "After her best friend's [Patricia's] mysterious death, Elizabeth Smith’s picture-perfect life in the Memphis suburbs has spiraled out of control—so much so that she hires a personal assistant ]at her husband's urging] to keep her on track... Brianna is exactly who she needs... [and shortly] proves herself indispensable.... Brianna has questions, too. She wants to know why the police killed her young Black son. Why someone in Elizabeth’s neighborhood called the cops on him that day.... As the two women hurtle towards an electrifying final showdown, and the lines between employer and friend blur, it becomes clear that neither of them is what they first appear." [OY--AND THERE WERE MANY OY MOMENTS!!]

Well, yes, but...it's so much more and so MUCH LESS [IMHO}!! Transparent-- should have been more suspenseful but wasn't.

Revenge, cheating, lies, toxicity, pettiness.

A soap opera. Melodramatic. And often, just seemed silly.

Who is likeable? No one.

I wonder was it necessary to write that the front doorbell was ringing--are there many side and back doorbells--maybe, but why not just doorbell? Petty, but just another thing that annoyed me.

I went back to the beginning to verify what I thought {no spoiler from me], Elizabeth and Patricia were NOT best friends--a premise the book sets out--and sort of retracts. And a big disconnect for me was some of David's voice--I do not believe men talk/think like he was presented--at least for the most part. Add in other characters--primarily Jack, Patricia's husband, and Janice, Elizabeth's boss and there are two more unlikeable people. And Nathan--he adds some sideplot, but not that much.

Many of the scenes between Lizzie [David's affectionate term for her] and her husband, David--tiresome, repetitve banter. And her mother--OMG! The David and Brianna moments--UGH. And did Elizabeth really consider Brianna her friend [epilogue]--I guess--more than just an employee, but...

Sorry to be so negative but this JUST DID NOT DO IT FOR ME.

A debut novel; I think she [and her editor/s] have a way to go. Sorry to pan it, but... 1.5, but will give it a 2 as I did finish it and it was a quick read--I could have walked away AT ANY TIME as it became clear early on, this was not my jam.