ARC Review: Burn Down, Rise Up by Vincent Tirado

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.

Burn Down, Rise Up by Vincent Tirado
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on May 3, 2022
Genres: YA Horror
Pages: 352
Source: the publisher
Format: ARC
My Rating:
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Synopsis:

Stranger Things meets Get Out in this Sapphic Horror debut from nonbinary, Afro-Latine author Vincent Tirado.

Mysterious disappearances. 
An urban legend rumored to be responsible. 
And one group of teens determined to save their city at any cost. 

For over a year, the Bronx has been plagued by sudden disappearances that no one can explain. Sixteen-year-old Raquel does her best to ignore it. After all, the police only look for the white kids. But when her crush Charlize’s cousin goes missing, Raquel starts to pay attention—especially when her own mom comes down with a mysterious illness that seems linked to the disappearances.

Raquel and Charlize team up to investigate, but they soon discover that everything is tied to a terrifying urban legend called the Echo Game. The game is rumored to trap people in a sinister world underneath the city, and the rules are based on a particularly dark chapter in New York’s past. And if the friends want to save their home and everyone they love, they will have to play the game and destroy the evil at its heart—or die trying.

My Review

This one definitely started out with a bang, in a grab your attention way. Exactly how a horror movie might start out. And while my rating is lower, only 3.5 stars, it really did kind of follow how horror movies are these days. A lot of things happen and characters make decisions that as the audience who watches these types of movies it is something we know they will decide, but really they haven’t found any evidence or reasoning in the actual plot for why they make their decisions. And like I saw other reviews say, we don’t necessarily get the answers to exactly why this is happening.

But, I liked the idea behind the story, the whole having to play a game and follow the rules, as it relates to things that have been showing up online or in other tv shows and movies. So that was fun. The creatures and the world that the characters disappeared into were perfectly creepy and written in a way that I could see them almost always as the author described them. A very vivid picture painted for this story. There were some realistic ways that the high schoolers actived in reaction to rumors or what might be going on around them, which I liked. The book had representation with the two main characters in several ways, and with the supporting characters as well.

A fun read, one I will get for my school library for my students to enjoy as well.