Title: Nothing Left To BurnAuthor: Heather Ezell
Publisher: Razorbill, Penguin
Published Date: March 13th, 2018
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery, YA
Page Count: 329
Format: Kindle
My Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Goodreads Summary:
The autumn morning after sixteen-year-old Audrey Harper loses her virginity, she wakes to a loud, persistent knocking at her front door. Waiting for her are two firemen, there to let her know that the moment she's been dreading has arrived: the enormous wildfire sweeping through Orange County, California, is now dangerously close to her idyllic gated community of Coto de Caza, and it's time to evacuate.
Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, as Audrey wrestles with the possibility of losing her family home, she also recalls her early, easy summer days with Brooks, the charming, passionate, but troubled volunteer firefighter who enchants Audrey--and who is just as enthralled by her. But as secrets from Brooks's dark past come to light, Audrey can't help but wonder if there's danger in the pull she feels--both toward this boy, and toward the fire burning in the distance.
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My Review:
Thank you to firsttoread for an e-arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.
"We hunt one another. But don’t let the media fool you. We’re no worse than anywhere else. Like everywhere, like everyone, we simply want to be happy. This is our truth. We hunt for hope. Don’t you?"
As I started reading Nothing Left to Burn I immediately started loving it and new it was going to be nothing like a sweet little contemporary book that has a girl escaping from a fire like the cover leads you to believe.
This book is so much more than that. Audrey is a sixteen-year-old young woman who is an ex-ballerina in a relationship with an older boy (Brooks), and has a young sister who has beat lymphoma twice!
"My dancing was the levity. I was the healthy daughter, the strength. It was essential that I succeed. If Maya couldn’t dance, I would dance for her."
The sister is now the one doing ballet and is following in Audrey's footsteps before she stopped dancing. Dancing is kind of what held them all together all these years and is now a bit of a tension in the family for Audrey.
That's not what this book is about though, this book is about Audrey and Brooks and fire.
Brook while being older is also very mysterious in a darkish way. Despite these two being together for a few months, they don't really know a lot about each other's past. Which is kind of a good thing, and a bad thing as we find out things with Audrey.
This book jumps around from the past few months and present time and what Audrey is doing when it comes to getting away from the fire.
Overall I really did love this book. At times it was a little hard to read because of the things happening and how Audrey was feeling about them. Which is something I love about this book because we do see what Audrey's feeling and she admit's to not liking things and feel uncomfortable doing certain things. This was so nice to see mentioned in a YA book especially one that deals with relationships and figuring out who you are and what you want to do with the rest of your life. I love Audrey's friends and how supportive of her they were and how they didn't let a certain someone stop them from hanging out still.
I just really loved this book and I don't want to say too much and take away from you enjoying it and loving it.
"Guilt like that. It takes you places."
That ending though. WOW. Have you read it yet? Because if you have please message me, because I need to talk about it.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS
This is just me guessing because of how Audrey talked about things but I think she could be Asexual maybe? This is the quote that makes me wonder that.
"Because, most days, okay, all days, sex doesn’t even interest me—it feels entirely abstracted from kissing, rarely a plausible action in my life. Maybe my head and heart are broken. Maybe I simply haven’t fully matured, or whatever. Maybe I need a new body that doesn’t feel so foreign and strange. Maybe this is entirely normal, and I simply haven’t found others who feel the same. Maybe the others are all remaining silent like me. Maybe I’m simply not there yet. Is that not enough of an answer?"
I do know that her best friend Grace is bisexual and is in a relationship with Quinn.
I do want to say something about Brooks because I didn't want to say much about him in my main review. I didn't like him, he always seemed a little suspicious to me and as the book went on my suspicions became true. I felt a little uncomfortable because of how right I was and that Audrey was in that type of relationship and no one else in her family seemed to sense that. Her friends were a little suspicious of him and didn't really care for him, but they were also always there for her which is something I really liked.
