Fire With Fire by Siobhan Vivian and Jenny Han
| Fire With Fire by Siobhan Vivian and Jenny Han | |
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| Category: Teens | |
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Reviewer: Robert James
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| Summary: A promising series seems to have lost its way through this overly long installment. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Maybe |
| Pages: 528 | Date: August 2013 |
| Publisher: Simon & Schuster Childrens Books | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1471116902 | |
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Warning: Spoilers for Burn for Burn below, read on at your own risk!
With Reeve hospitalised after the terrible events at the end of Burn for Burn, Lillia, Kat and Mary must face the fallout. Mary is desperate for revenge despite the other two starting to have cold feet, but they agree to go through with their plan in order to give her the satisfaction of seeing his heart broken. As Lillia pretends to fall for the boy, though, she sees another side to Reeve and starts to wonder if he's as bad as Mary says he is. Can their friendship hold up under the strain of all the secrets and lies?
This seemed to take me forever to read. That's not to say that it's bad, necessarily, but it's somewhat repetitive and feels like it could have been significantly shorter. On the plus side, it's got a good mix of characters - in particular Reeve and Lillia's friend/enemy Rennie are far better developed than most popular students in books like this. Mary's voice is clear and distinctive, although I didn't feel Kat and Lillia were particularly strong narrators. Indeed, sometimes I found myself forgetting whose section I was on, despite them being very different characters. This is a shame as the narration was a real plus for most of book one after taking a bit of time for the voices to develop, but seems to have slipped back slightly here.
As a plot, it's pretty good stuff, even if parts of it feel like they could have been cut without too many problems. On the other hand, there's a huge twist at the end which took me by surprise, and which doesn't seem to make all that much sense on rereading some sections. To be fair, as it's only the second book of the trilogy, there's always the chance this be made more clear in the third book, though.
Having said that the initial book perhaps worked better as a series starter than a book in its own right, I was really looking forward to this one but the weird ending and my issues with Kat and Lillia mean I may call it a day with this series here.
Possibly worth a look if you really enjoyed book 1, I suppose.
For another trio of girls out for revenge, don't miss the wonderful The Anti-Prom by Abby McDonald.
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