*This review will contain spoilers!*
'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a burn for a burn. A life for a life. That's how all this got started. And that's how it's going to end.'
If you haven't read my review for the first book in the trilogy, 'Burn For Burn', you should go and check that out now!
I absolutely loved the first book in this series, and my love has just grown with this second installment. Set just a few days after Reeve's accident at homecoming, we pick up where we left off and are quickly thrown back into the lives of Lillia, Kat and Mary. You'd think that drugging the boy and making him break his leg would be big enough revenge for Mary, but after a confrontation with Reeve ends badly she is desperate to hurt him as much as he hurt her, if not more. The girls come up with a plan; they know Reeve has barely veiled feelings for Lillia, so they task her with the job of faking a romance with him to break his heart.
However, not all goes well. Lillia finds real feelings for Reeve developing quickly, and she struggles with her loyalty to her friends fighting against her emotions. Mary has difficulties with the situation too - she still thinks that she's in love with Reeve, so many years after what he did to her in their childhood - so seeing them together is bittersweet.
In a similar vein to the first book, this installment is fast-paced and no holds barred, zipping from character to character so that there isn't a single opportunity to get bored. We don't get all of the time reported, with subtle jumps pushing the novel on quickly from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year, but it doesn't feel like we miss anything which is a big plus of this book. Lillia is still the focal point, with the majority of the book following her and her burgeoning relationship with Reeve, but we get to see more depth to the other two: Kat has moved on from her revenge plan on Rennie and is focused upon her college applications, while Mary attempts to hone and develop the supernatural skill set she discovered at prom.
For a while there I genuinely thought that Mary could have been endowed with telekinetic abilities, but as more and more spooky and unexplained events happen throughout the novel, it shouldn't have taken me as long as it did to realise that she actually died when she was thirteen. Her realisation and the reveal was written so well, leaving me on the edge of my seat as my deepest suspicions were confirmed. The clues had been placed so subtly over the last two books, meaning that when you get to the climax you really do audibly hear the puzzle pieces clicking into place.
I can't imagine what is going to happen in the third novel. With Lillia and Reeve finally going public with their relationship, Kat still unsure if she's going to get into college and Mary going all vengeance spirit, it's going to be the perfect mix of high school contemporary and paranormal mystery, and that's something I can't wait for. I wish I hadn't waited as long to pick up this book, because this is quickly becoming one of my favourite trilogies of all time.
No comments:
Post a Comment