A Slow Fire Burning

The plot revolves around the death of a young man, Daniel, who is found with his throat slit on a houseboat. But the deeper story is about pain, trauma, grief, and how each character deals with or doesn't deal with the past. This was a well-done novel.

Slow burn murder mystery.

This is the first thriller/mystery I have LOVED in a long while. I truly enjoyed all of the characters and all the little misdirections thrown in there!

I am sad to say I was disappointed with this book. I LOVED The Girl on the Train and really enjoyed Into The Water, but this one fell short of her previous work. The alternating points of view are starting to become tedious and not enjoyable for me, it seems like half the "best" books of 2021 have fallen into this writing style and I'm finding it tiresome. I also have discovered I like linear story lines, so the jumpy, back-and-forth, trend is also less enjoyable for me. This book started at the end, which seems counter-intuitive, but I'm not the bestselling author, I'm just a poor sap who likes to read.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 “Innocent or guilty, everyone is damaged. Some are damaged enough to kill.” Meet a cast of characters that are damaged and unlikeable. Then expose a few past secrets and something is apt to burn. I enjoyed this slow-burn, character-driven whodunnit. The story is worth it just to meet Irene who, at 80, was the star of the nov in my eyes. I definitely recommend this one. Thank you to #NetGalley for the ARC.

Enjoyable book. If you liked "The Girl on The Train" or similar novels, then you will like this book. Nice twists and turns as the story unfolds. If you need a beach read or weekend read, this might be a good option.

Overall a decent read. However I felt like it was a very predictable ending. Also I felt like Miriam’s story and Theo’s book were pretty irrelevant. But I guess it kept it interesting.

Full Review: https://oftenofftopic.wordpress.com/2... As much as I like to try and broaden my horizons when it comes to the genres of books I read, sometimes I just have to go back to my comfort zone to the mystery/thrillers that I love so much. I really enjoyed The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins so her new release for 2021, A Slow Fire Burning was automatically on my radar to read. In A Slow Fire Burning, the body of a young man is found on a canal boat by a nosy neighbour. There are three main suspects, and the book takes us through the events both leading up to the murder, and the event immediately after. What I loved most about The Girl on the Train was Paula Hawkins' talent for describing the British setting, and that was definitely the strongest element of this book, too. I live just a couple of roads away from a canal with multiple canal boats often moored there and it was so easy to picture this story happening right where I live. Unfortunately, the setting was the only thing I really loved about this book. My biggest struggle with starting a new read is getting to know the characters. I probably read the first 10-20% of a book at about half the speed that I read the rest, because I'm trying to remember the characters' names and where exactly they fit in to the story. Once I'm there, I'm absolutely fine, but I struggled with at least the entire first half of A Slow Fire Burning. Maybe that's on me, but there aren't even that many characters here and every night when I picked up my kindle I was finding myself having to skip back several pages to try and jog my memory of what happened last. Eventually I gave up and went with the flow, and that helped in the end. By the time I found myself well acquainted with everyone involved in this murder mystery, I'd lost the interest of finding out who did it and why. The second half was much faster paced and more thrilling, but by that point it was all a case of too little, too late for me. I also found a lot of the characters really unlikeable. The guy who got murdered wasn't a nice guy. The three suspects also weren't very nice people, so what are the stakes here? The only character I liked, and actually I really loved her, was the elderly neighbour who had more sense and charisma than everyone else put together. So I guess this is my first read of the year that I really didn't like! Which is rare for me, I tend to enjoy almost everything that I read. But you can't win them all, can you? I'm still looking forward to Paula Hawkins' upcoming novel Blind Spot, due for release in 2022. It hasn't put me off at all.

Unlike the cover and title suggest, this book doesn't have an awful lot to do with fire. It's more an extended metaphor, evident in the pace and themes in the book. This is written by the author of "The girl on the train", and like that novel made me read it fast like riding a train, this was slow, like a burning flame that started off small but picked up the pace and became truly heated nearer the end of the book. I'm not sure if it's better than "The girl on the train", I may need to read it again. However, I did enjoy it, and for now, it's probably on the same level.

Irene is the best part of this book.

** spoiler alert ** Wow—best book I’ve read in a while!! I didn’t feel like this was a slow burn at all… another title might’ve better captured the vibe. This story felt more like a web, and it was amazing how Hawkins interconnects and weaves together the stories of all the different characters in fascinating, unexpected ways. That was the best part… figuring out how all the stories overlapped and played into each other. However, I was left with several unanswered questions, like: What was the true nature of Carla and Daniel’s relationship? Was it inappropriate or was it just Daniel? Also, I was really thinking Hawkins would weave Jeremy back in somehow. Like maybe he was Daniel’s long-lost father, which would explain why he was the way he was?! I was thinking the characters would reveal some past connections more than they did. Still, overall a great thriller that I ripped though because I couldn’t stop thinking about it and wondering what would happen next!

It was a little tough to get into and even harder to stay in… There was no real climax here, just a steady rumblings of turns that were pretty expected. I feel like loose ends were pretty hastily tied in the last 25 pages.

a slooooooow fire burning is right

I wasn't going to read this, because I was really disappointed with Into the Water but I read a few reviews that sounded like with this book she went back to the style I loved from The Girl on the Train. The plot is very twisty, and 6 degrees of separation style like The Girl on the Train. I enjoyed that it showed the events from the entire casts perspective. No real main character in the book. Just a bunch of lives and how they intertwine with each other. This book is very tragic, it has a somber ending and dives deep into family troubles. If you're looking for warnings, there's abduction, child death, adultery, murder, attacks, and animal murder. The mystery aspects were kind of duh so the final reveal wasn't really that dazzling. Not that it made it a bad read, I just expected more I guess. Overall it's an emotional read, that connects a lot of dots along the way. The narrator of the audiobook was A+, added a great level of emotion to each characters voice. If you like books that have a few different puzzles happening all at once, you'll love this one.

This was a really fun suspense/thriller read! While there are a lot of characters, I found all of them pretty easy to distinguish. I liked the multiple POVs between the chapters, and excerpts of a book within this book. I've read Hawkins' other works, but this one is by far my favorite! A well-written story, developed and complex characters, with an ending I didn't see coming, but kept me guessing.

I only give this book a 3/5 because it’s not my most favorite genre - but I’m trying to step out of my comfort zone. Someone who likes this style may give it a 4/5. It’s a crime, mystery, “who’s the killer” type book where you are strung a large web of interconnected characters and try to figure out who-done-it. I will say I changed my mind a time or two about who the guilty party was, but was not at all surprised by the ending. The real meat of this book is when you are a little over half way through and you are truly deep into the characters and feel for them. I felt like I understood their flaws more and more with each passing chapter, and felt forgiveness for mistakes they had made. Like I said - not my go-to genre, and I wasn’t dying to keep reading it, however once I would pick it up I found myself unable to stop. The mystery isn’t what dragged me in, but understanding the demons within each character kept me hooked.

2 1/2⭐️ There were too many characters to keep track of and unnecessary side stories that did nothing for the story/book. Otherwise an alright read.

4.25

This book left me feeling quite conflicted. While the story itself is very good and gets you hooked, Hawkins writing style detracts a bit from the story. The writing style is the same as her other stories with each chapter jumping from character to character and even to different timeliness at times. I found her writing style led to some confusion and lack of connectivity in the story. If you read "The girl on the train" and enjoyed it you will likely enjoy this book. CONTENT WARNINGS: Murder, physical trauma, family trauma, suicidal ideation, alcoholism.

Slow Fire Burning is a tricky book for me to view, because I don’t want to give that much away, but also it took me awhile to really dig into the story, in spite of a murder right up front. Between the POV shifts, the references to a novel within a novel, there was a lot going on. Still, one it got about fifty or so pages in, I could not wait to finish it, and desperately had to read on to find out what happened. A slow burn indeed.

Full review: https://thereadermoon.wordpress.com/2...

While reading, I kept thinking that Hawkins' characters get more twisted with every book she writes (don't know if I would still say that). Actually, there are a lot of things I don't know; this is a book I'm going to have to reread at least once to truly grasp the plot, the characters, the style. Although the reveal of the murderer did not surprise me, I sat open-mouthed quite a few times - Hawkins has a way of portraying the human mind; the dark corners, the abysses, but also the light, the good. Her style is amazing, as always. Writing about a book that jumps between perspectives and in the timeline while having the characters in the story complain a book that does the exact same thing? Genius.