"What We'll Burn Last" by Heather Chavez is a gripping and suspenseful thriller that will keep readers on the edge of their seats. The story follows a mother's desperate search for her missing daughter, leading to shocking revelations and unexpected twists along the way. Chavez's writing is taut and atmospheric, drawing readers into a dark and tense world where nothing is as it seems. Fans of psychological thrillers and complex family dramas will find this novel to be a compelling and riveting read.

What We’ll Burn Last had potential but just didn’t follow through. Heather Chavez is a great writer but her latest novel fell short in character development and while there were plenty of twists and turns in the plot, they suffered from the overall lack of narrative depth. For example, we get a sense of what motivates Olivia but almost nothing to explain the motivations of Rocky, Richard and Meredith. At minimum, we should have a better sense of Meredith’s motivation and while Olivia’s motivation is the most fully developed, it remains fairly surface level. Leyna’s motivation is clear but the novel largely deals with the continuing impact of past trauma that occurred when Leyna was twelve. Failing to develop both of the antagonist mothers and the family members makes for an okay enough airplane or beach read but nothing to put on your shelf to keep.

Overall, I found that to be disappointing because the use of the wildfire as a thematic character could have made this a brilliant novel. Chavez’s description of the wildfire was well wrought and compelling. Her writing style is descriptive and evocative with sensory content that ignites (no pun intended) the reader’s imagination. In personifying the wildfire and describing its effects, she seems like truly capture the experience of a wildfire from beginning to end and that is a significant talent.

Based on all my criteria, if you are a fan of Chavez, definitely read. If you’ve never read one of her books, I wouldn’t start here. However, if you’re intrigued by the description, it’s a good read. Unless you’re really into fires, I’d probably recommend buying it on sale or checking it out from the library. Remember that you can always download a sample on an ebook platform and decide if you want to read more. Happy reading!

[Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an advanced review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.]

Many small things combine to cause unfathomable pain and loss.

In a small community in Plumas County in Northern California one night, two teenagers disappeared, Grace Clarke and her boyfriend Adam Duran. The families left behind don’t know where there loved ones are, why they left, or even if they are still alive….but they have their theories. Leyna, Grace’s younger sister, has reason to believe that Adam was controlling and abusive towards Grace, and that he killed her and went on the run. Meredith, Leyna and Grace’s mother, a divorcee who earns a living painting high end replicas of famous paintings (not illegal, exactly, but teetering on the edge of sketchy), insists that the two were in love and ran off together. Olivia, Adam’s mother, is convinced that her son was sweet and gentle, that Grace is the cause of whatever happened….and that Meredith knows more than she’s saying. Sixteen years later, both families still live in the same houses, but the animosity between the Durans and the Clarkes is strong….awkward to say the least, in a community where there are only five houses. Leyna who moved to Reno ten years ago and has never stopped looking for her sister, supports herself waiting tables at a restaurant. One day sixteen year old Ellie Byrd walks into the restaurant, looking almost exactly like Grace….Leyna is convinced that her presence is no accident, and gets a little aggressive with Ellie as she asks questions. When Ellie goes missing soon thereafter, having been seen back in Plumas County asking questions about Leyna, Grace, Adam, and Adam’s brother Dominic, things start getting weird. Dominic (with whom Leyna had had a relationship that collapsed after the disappearance of their siblings) convinces Leyna to come back and help him look into Ellie’s disappearance. Estranged from Meredith and knowing that Olivia Duran will want nothing to do with her, its the last place she wants to be…but her need to find answers about the past compels her to go anyway. As the secrets and lies from that night long ago are uncovered, a raging wildfire is bearing down on the community as well. Devastation is sure to follow….but will it be from the fire, the search for Ellie and the truth of the earlier disappearances, or a perfect storm of them all?
In this novel from author Heather Chavez, the slow build of a wildfire which ends up as a conflagration that will whip through forests, fields and homes is an apt metaphor for the pain and grief experienced by families who have lost a loved one under mysterious circumstances without knowing what happened to them. Is it better to have hope that Grace and/or Adam are still alive in the world but have chosen to leave them behind, or to have proof that either or both are dead? The families were once close but now are the embodiment of one another’s pain, yet neither moves away from the suffocatingly close community….why? There is plenty of dysfunction to go around, guilt about things said or left unsaid, blame directed outward and resentments that build over time. As details are unveiled about what was happening amongst these people all those years ago, the characters become more defined even as the mystery remains. Possible suspects and theories of the disappearances new and old are woven throughout the story, and I found myself arriving at and discarding my own theories along the way. This is a thriller that, like a wildfire, catches the reader’s attention early and builds the tension slowly. A wonderful sense of place, and compelling scenes within the fire….this is a story that readers of Peter Swanson, K. T. Nguyen, and Liane Moriarty might well enjoy. Many thanks to NetGalley and Mulholland Books for allowing me access to a copy of What We’ll Burn Last, an engrossing thriller that I thoroughly enjoyed.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Little Brown & Company Mulholland Books for gifting me a digital ARC of the new thriller by Heather Chavez. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 4 stars!

Leyna Clarke watched her older sister, Grace, walk away from their home with her boyfriend, Adam, never to be seen again. Sixteen years later, a stranger who looks like Grace shows up at the restaurant where Leyna works, and then disappears as well. Leyna is desperate to find the missing girl, Ellie, with hopes that it will lead her to answers about Grace. She returns home to the house where her mother still lives, and Adam's family just a couple doors down. And a wildfire is looming.

This was a slow burn but I liked how the story was told in the voices of three women - Leyna, her mother, Meredith, and Adam's mother, Olivia, in both past and present timelines. In between, The Fire slowly grows, adding yet another intensity to the story. I liked the atmospheric feel, from the impending wildfire, to the all but deserted housing development. Everyone is keeping secrets and no one is trustworthy or very likable. I was glued to the pages to figure out what happened to Grace and Ellie.

Thank you to NetGalley and Mulholland books for the eARC.

Multi POV - every single time this is my favorite. I really loved that there were three POVs that we got to learn the story from and get their perspectives. Unfortunately this book was too slow of a slow burn for me. I needed a faster pace to fully enjoy.

I have mixed feelings about What We’ll Burn Last by Heather Chavez (out today). I liked the multiple points of view, the complicated family dynamics, the missing girl mystery, and the approaching wildfire that added tension and complication to what was happening in the story.

What I did not like was that this book was very slow. Truthfully, I am not a fan of slow burns. I like action, or at least little crumbs dropped as the story develops, but I felt like this story did not fulfill what I wanted in a thriller. Also, most of the characters were so unlikeable that I did not care for any of them.

Despite not totally enjoying this one, I would still recommend Chavez if you haven’t read her books, especially Before She Finds Me, which is my favorite.

Heather Chavez quickly cemented herself as an auto-read author for me after Before She Finds Me! I immediately ordered her backlist and anticipated any new work from her! When What We’ll Burn Last was announced I had to have it, and Novel suspects so graciously provided me a physical ARC! 🤩 Her writing and characters draw you in and make you feel like a part of the story. I love how we got to see inside all three of the women’s minds and know exactly what they’re thinking as we follow them through the day of the fire, hour by hour. It all builds up with so much tension as the fire closes in and the biggest question is answered, what happened to Grace and Adam all those years ago?

Overall, this one was just too slow for me. The story is told from 3 different POV's - Meredith, Olivia and Leyna. It was difficult to tell these 3 women apart since their 'voices' tended to blend together. I kept having to look at the chapter headings to know whose POV I was reading, which slowed down the story. It was also really bogged down by the chapters about the fire - they were unnecessary IMO and too distracting. There is a bit of suspense as we discover what exactly happened to Leyna's sister Grace and her boyfriend Adam 16 years ago. Although the reveal at the end wasn't jaw dropping or twisty, it was very expected. I felt like this was more of a domestic drama rather than a thriller or suspense. I had higher expectation based on the last book by Chavez which I absolutely loved.

The premise was so intriguing, and I was hoping I would love it as much as I did Before She Finds Me, but unfortunately, it was just a complete miss for me.

This slow-burn thriller centers around Leyna, who is still looking for her older sister, Grace, who vanished into thin air more than ten years ago. When a girl with a striking resemblance to Grace goes missing as well, Leyna goes home to get answers from the mother who is keeping secrets from her and the family whose son she thinks had a hand in her sister's disappearance. All this is set against the deadly California wildfires, raging and threatening to spread to Leyna's home.


What We’ll Burn Last is told from three perspectives- Leyna, Leyna's cold mother; Meredith, and Olivia, whose son Adam also went missing at the same time as Grace, who happened to be his girlfriend. The story also bounces back and forth between the present and the past. Overall, Meredith and Olivia's narratives are unnecessarily angry- instead of trying to work together to find their children, they spew insults and blame each other- and I found the shifts and storytelling very choppy. Leyna's whole life for the past sixteen years has revolved around finding her sister. Suppose the fires are a metaphor for the mystery burning underneath her childhood home. In that case, the unfinished housing development Meredith and Olivia still live in seems to be a fitting metaphor for Leyna's stunted life and Meredith and Olivia's inability to move forward in many ways.

Not much happens for two-thirds of the novel, and the last third is almost overly action-packed to make up for it. While the pacing and lack of likeable characters made it hard for me to get invested, my mind wandered, and I found myself swiping the pages; the mystery of what happened to Grace and the new missing girl kept me turning the pages. The final reveal of what happened was a total letdown. Not only was it needlessly complex and convoluted, but once I sat back to absorb it, it just didn't make any sense. The ending kept me trying to figure out how the pieces fit together—they just didn't. 😞

I want to thank Mulholland Books and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own

When I say I want a fast paced read, this is the kind of complicated thriller I'm talking about!

Sixteen years ago, teenagers Adam Duran and Grace Clarke disappeared without a trace one evening, leaving their families to grieve the loss as time passed and they weren't discovered.

Leyna, Grace's younger sister, has never given up hope that she could find her sister one day, and when a girl who looks like Grace stops by the restaurant she works at, her feelings about Grace reappear. When the girl goes missing days later, Grace is drawn back to her hometown by Adam's brother and her childhood crush Dominic.

Meredith, Leyna and Grace's mother, has always maintained that the two ran away together, and that she'd heard them talking about it for weeks leading up to their disappearance.

Olivia, Adam and Dominic's mother, has blamed the Clarkes for her son's disappearance for the last sixteen years, and Leyna's return to their neighborhood stokes all of her anger back to life.

Told in Leyna's, Meredith's and Olivia's perspective, the separate stories they all hold about Adam and Grace are slowly revealed as a wildfire threatens to burn through their neighborhood of secrets.

This thriller had me hooked from the very first chapters! The complexities of the relationships between the three POV characters had me so intrigued as to whose story was most accurate, and the tension of two families blaming each other for the loss of their children ratcheted up the suspense from the get go. Chavez's uniquely cinematic writing style is as present in this story as it was with her others, and the fiery climactic ending had me *burning* (pun intended) through the final pages.

What We'll Burn Last blends family drama, missing persons, and external conflict into a literary punch. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the main character Leyna's older sister Grace, and her boyfriend Adam, is intriguing and the atmosphere is so tense with the looming wildfire. I felt Leyna's angst, pain, and obsession throughout the story, and the drama and dislike between Grace and Adam's families was also intense. With all the internal conflict coming between the families, the secrets, the twists, and the external conflict of the fire, this story grabbed my attention until the end.

A little slow paced but I enjoyed the different perspectives and the tension of the wildfire. A good summer read.

Great fast paced thriller with several mysteries all going in. It was a race against time for Leyna to see if she could finally uncover the truth after 16 years before a wild fire threatened to burn everything she knew from her childhood. An asbolute page turner that I thoroughly enjoyed!

How well do you really know your neighbors, especially ones you hold a grudge against?

For Olivia, she knows her neighbor Meredith is hiding something specifically where her son Adam is and if they (Adam and Meredith’s daughter Grace) really disappeared together like she said. Meredith has secrets like everyone else but her secrets are for the greater good because that’s what she tells herself. Lenya has spent sixteen years wondering what happened to her sister and looks for her in every strawberry blonde women she comes across so when one day a young woman who looks exactly like her sister did when she last saw her shows up at her work, Leyna does the one thing she swore she would never do; she returned home. With Adam’s older brother and her one time boyfriend, Dominic, Leyna must be an encroaching wildfire to find the answers to secrets hidden long ago.

I love books with multiple POVs especially if it’s a book riddled with secrets the main characters wish would stay hidden. Each of the women had secrets to hide as well as answers they wanted and they each would stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

Thank you @mulhollandbooks @netgalley and @iamhrchavez for this gifted copy in exchange for my honest feedback.

Leyna is obsessed with finding out what happened to her older sister Grace, who presumably ran away with her boyfriend Adam some years ago. She works in dead end jobs and fills her walls with evidence she's tracked down online. When a customer comes to the restaurant where she's working, Leyna is startled to see she looks just like Grace. Later, the girl is reported missing - just like Grace.

The story is told from four points of view: Leyna's, her mother Meredith's, Adam's mother Olivia's, and ... a fire. The fire is sparked in the Sierras some distance from the half-built development where Leyna grew up. As she returns home to finally discover what happened to Grace, and whether her disappearance is connected to the girl who looks like her, the fire is growing from a spark to a consuming monster.

The mystery is very much based on the complicated characters who tell it, and what each of them thinks happened between Grace and Adam, leading to their choices years later. I found the character development of Meredith especially interesting. She's not a nice person, but she's complicated in a way that intrigued me. I wasn't as convinced by Leyna's obsessiveness, and the pictures of Grace and Adam keep changing in ways that were at times a little hard to follow, but intriguing. Olivia seemed like a normal suburban mom - until we got to know her better.

Overall, I find I remember the setting and the feel of the half-finished subdivision nestled in woods that were about to burst into flames more than the plot details. Overall, an interesting read if sometimes not entirely emotionally coherent.

I'm a big fan of Heather Chavez’s books and was so excited to get my hands on What We’ll Burn Last. Since I LOVED No Bad Deed, I had high expectations for this book. I liked it! I read it quickly, anxious to see how everything would wrap up.

Three women.

When she was twelve, Leyna Clarke watched her older sister, Grace, walk away from their Sierra Nevada foothills home with her boyfriend, Adam Duran. Neither was ever seen again. Sixteen years later, a stranger who looks like Grace shows up at the restaurant where Leyna works — and vanishes soon after. When it comes out that Leyna was one of the last people to have talked with the young woman, Leyna’s childhood crush Dominic, who is also Adam’s brother, pleads with her to do the last thing she wants to do: come home.

Three secrets.

But Leyna isn’t the only one who hasn’t been able to leave that fateful night behind. Her mother, Meredith, still lives in the family’s old home — even if she claims to believe the police’s theory that Grace and Adam were willing runaways. Down the street, Adam and Dominic’s mother Olivia has also stayed, determined to be there when her son finally returns. . . and to prove that Meredith and Leyna have been hiding something all these years. But the past isn’t the only threat to the two families, or the missing girl. As a wildfire sparks, tempers flare and intentions turn deadly. Because someone in the neighborhood knows what really happened that night — and just how good the forest is at keeping its secrets.

Who will you trust?

Thank you NetGalley, Heather Chavez, and Mulholland Books for granting me access to this book in exchange for an honest review.

After reading Before She Finds Me and having it top my favorites list for last year, I eagerly anticipated the author's next book. While I did enjoy the new release, Before She Finds Me will always remain my favorite. This is a slow burn, domestic suspense thriller that kept me flipping the pages so fast to find out the truth behind the mystery. Once the story took off, you need to hold on tight because the secrets, lies, and twists keep coming, leaving you gripping the edge of your seat. Towards the end, I had to pause to digest what I had just read, and the complicated ending left me with questions and confusion. Like, what? It didn't really make sense as to why for me. Overall, it is an entertaining read that I do recommend. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ridgepoint Ranch was supposed to be a luxurious woodland dream for the avid golfer, but various funding problems caused the project to fizzle out - and then there were the two teenagers who went missing…

Sixteen years ago Leyna’s sister Grace disappeared with the boy down the street, Adam. The girls’ mother, Meredith, has a tense neighbor relationship with Adam’s family since no one could bear to leave the homes their children might come back to - plus there’s a lot of unanswered questions. When a young woman who looks strikingly similar to Grace shows up at Leyna’s place of work (& is then reported missing), a domino effect is triggered as a wildfire rages & answers may finally come to light…

I enjoyed all the true crime messaging board aspects of this story & the threatening Instagram account, the story made good use of the unique way the internet has influenced the way missing persons cases are discussed. I loved the little interludes about the wildfire creeping ever closer to characters in this story! This is my first time reading a book from this author, I definitely need to track down her backlist.

Thank you to NetGalley & Mulholland Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Sixteen years ago, Leyna Clarke's older sister, Grace, along with Grace's boyfriend Adam, disappeared into thin air. Now, another girl has gone missing, after a haunting encounter with Leyna, and all those old feelings are brought directly to the surface. With a wildfire racing toward her hometown, Leyna is in a race against time to try and find answers. But the fire is not the only destructive force in the old neighborhood, and some secrets will do worse than burn.

This is an entertaining blend of disaster fiction blended with thriller and it mostly worked for me. I enjoyed unwrapping the mystery, but felt more exposition might have cleared a few murky places. Thank you to Netgalley and Mulholland Books for the review copy.

The premise of this book was so intriguing and I was hoping that I would absolutely love it, but unfortunately it was just a complete miss for me.

This slow (so slow) burn thriller centers around Leyna, who is still looking for her older sister, Grace, who vanished into thin air more than ten years ago. When a girl with a striking resemblance to Grace goes missing as well, Leyna goes home to get answers from the mother who is keeping secrets from her and the family whose son she thinks had a hand in her sister's disappearance. All this is set against the backdrop of the deadly California wildfires, raging and threatening to spread to Leyna's home.

The story is told from three perspectives- Leyna, Leyna's cold mother Meredith, and Olivia, whose son Adam also went missing at the same time as Grace, who happened to be his girlfriend. The story also bounces back and forth between the present and the past. Overall, Meredith and Olivia's narratives are unnecessarily angry- instead of trying to work together to find their children they just spew insults and blame each other- and I found the shifts and storytelling very choppy. Leyna's whole life for the past sixteen years has revolved around finding her sister, and if the fires are a metaphor for the mystery burning underneath her childhood home, then the unfinished housing development Meredith and Olivia still live in seems to be fitting metaphor for Leyna's stunted life and Meredith and Olivia's inability to move forward in many ways.

Not much happens for a good two-thirds of the novel and then the last third is almost overly action-packed to make up for it. While the pacing and lack of likeable characters made it hard for me to get invested, the mystery of what happened to Grace and the new missing girl is what kept me turning the pages. I won't give any spoilers except to say that the final reveal of what actually happened was a total letdown. Not only was it needlessly complex and convoluted, once I sat back to absorb it, it just didn't make any sense. The ending literally kept me up at night trying to figure out how the pieces all fit together, and simply put, they just didn't.

With so many great thriller options this summer, this is a hard pass from me. Thank you NetGalley and Mulholland Books for an advanced earc in exchange for my honest review.