ARC Review: The Burning by Laura Bates

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

The Burning by Laura Bates
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on April 7, 2020
Genres: YA Contemporary
Pages: 352
Source: the publisher
Format: ARC
My Rating:
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A rumour is like a fire. You might think you’ve extinguished it but one creeping, red tendril, one single wisp of smoke is enough to let it leap back into life again. Especially if someone is watching, waiting to fan the flames …

New school.
Tick.
New town.
Tick.
New surname.
Tick.
Social media profiles?
Erased.

There’s nothing to trace Anna back to her old life. Nothing to link her to the ‘incident’.

At least that’s what she thinks … until the whispers start up again. As time begins to run out on her secrets, Anna finds herself irresistibly drawn to the tale of Maggie, a local girl accused of witchcraft centuries earlier. A girl whose story has terrifying parallels to Anna’s own…

My Review:

This book was another that I could not put down. While I might have been a teensy bit irritated at the beginning that we didn’t know what happened to her exactly, that’s all due to my own impatient personality. The way the author left us the breadcrumbs so that we got a look into it slowly was the perfect way to do it and kept me as a reader on the edge of my seat, turning pages as fast as I could to see what went down. But then there was the point were not only did we find out about Anna’s past and her reason for moving, but she also lost her new friends, which at first was not understandable. Then, when we were let in on that extra bit of bullying that Anna had to deal with, well it made sense. And that was about halfway through, and suddenly I was in tears. Streaming down my face tears, but still I couldn’t put the book down because I had to get to some ray of hope, there had to be something. And there was. It was small, but it was enough to keep Anna going, as well as me as a reader being able to slow the tears for a bit.

And while this is a contemporary, it has some historical fiction in it as well. It touches on a woman who was accused of witchcraft in the past, all because of something done to her. The way that historical part of the story tied in so perfectly to the witch hunt, or as we call it these days, slut shaming, is something that so many people need to read or somehow they need to understand it! There are people in my life who I know are good people, but still think those things that because a woman dressed a certain way, or went to a certain place, she didn’t “deserve it” they say, but she should have expected it. And the part at the end, in the cafeteria, where Anna says what she does, that part was perfection.

On a less serious note, I loved the setting of the book. Anna had lived in England and had moved to Scotland. That was neat to read about because my sister recently moved to Scotland, from America not England, but still. This is another book I will be purchasing for my school library next fall, and another book I’ll be keeping a copy of for myself, and my sister who wants to read it as well!