You Can Go Home Again… But You Probably Shouldn’t

Bonfire, by Kristen Ritter

So, this is a great little thriller/mystery. It’s also a quick read, I think it took me three days or so.

Abby Williams is an environmental lawyer. It is in this professional capacity that she returns to her hometown of Barren, IL even though she has had no desire to in the ten years since she left. The water in town is bad and her group is trying to find out if the local, town supporting factory is responsible. While trying to figure out the situation, Abby ends up confronting a lot of past demons from growing up as an outsider in a small town.

I really enjoyed this book. It isn’t anything super complicated, but it’s a fun ride. Abby is a really well drawn person, and even though there are a few times where I found myself wanting to say to her, “what are you doing?? That person is obviously not very trustworthy!” I totally did understand why she was doing it, because sometimes we are blinded by desperately wanting something to be a certain way and from the inside it’s hard to see when you are warping reality to suit yourself.

I also really liked how the relationship with her father is portrayed, Ritter doesn’t shy away from making people human, major flaws and all, and also showing how all those flaws doesn’t always play out the way we think they will.

I don’t have a whole lot else to really say, and I don’t want to give away any more of the plot than necessary so this review is going to be short and sweet.

I’m probably going to have a lot more shorter ones this year, since I started to realize during the last Cannonball that I was putting off reviewing books if I didn’t feel like I had a ton to say about them, some of them I never bothered to add in at all, so I’m hereby giving myself permission to keep it simple if that’s all I’ve got.