Oh my... Bonfire by Krysten Ritter was not a book for me.

I don't enjoy pushing through books that I'm not enjoying, but for some reason I pushed through here. I knew right away that the writing style was going to drive me crazy, and it only got worse.

Prepare yourselves, this review is quite negative...

My thoughts:
The only three things I liked about this book were the dust jacket design, the synopsis, and a couple of passages.


Beware, the negatives:
I picked this one up solely because I thought the synopsis sounded incredible. After finishing the book, I still think the synopsis sounds great, but the book certainly didn't live up to it.

Going into the book, I had no idea who Krysten Ritter was. It was only when I saw the author blurb when I finished the book that I made the connection that she was an actress that I knew from the Jessica Jones series.

The first note I wrote down while reading was:
Oh my… this writing style does not work for me. It’s so jumpy! I’m on page 9 and I’ve already had to re-read multiple paragraphs because I reached the end and realized I had no idea what I had just read.

I should have bailed there.

How often things are recapped throughout the book was incredibly annoying. Equally annoying was how often the author was so sure of herself just to be proved wrong immediately; “As soon as I think it, I know it must be true.” This was also the case as soon as she spoke things out loud... and my goodness, how many times do we have to mention the fact that Brent kissed her?!

Overall, this book felt extremely repetitive. I didn’t mark down specifics, but I found myself thinking “Haven’t I read that same phrase already?” too many times to count.

The author also uses a lot of short sentences like: “I turn off the ignition. Sit in silence.” Contrasting that, there are run on sentences that could have been broken up, and many sentences that scream for better punctuation.

All of the description got a bit tiresome. It seemed that most descriptions had a “like a” and then random details that didn't really make sense. For example:
Flora waves her arms overhead like an aircraft marshal trying to get me to wheel-in-right.
The east side is where the skeleton of Optimal gradually rose up, like a shipwreck in reverse.
Condor’s living room is like a weather-beaten dock, and I am washed-up wreckage.

And last, we have the dreaded use of "holding a breath without realizing it"... Once in a book is irritating enough. But three times?
Page 16: I let out of breath I didn’t know I was holding…
Page 29: I exhale before realizing I had been holding my breath.
Page 103: ... only after I’m standing on the porch, gulping air, do I realize I was holding my breath.

In my opinion, this book easily could have been edited down to half the length just by removing the unnecessary recaps and repetition. But even then, I'm not sure I would have enjoyed reading it.

My favorite passages:
The sky is in that in-between phase, day and night throwing up a confused riot of blues and pinks and oranges to a soundtrack of crickets.

Memories are like fire, and need only a little oxygen to grow.

My final thoughts:
So here we have it. It's very rare that I give a book a one-star rating, which means that this is a book that I wish I hadn't finished and would absolutely not recommend...