Rating: WORTHY!
This novel, which is outside of my normal range of choices in reading, is a story set in a small town in a fire-risk area where a brush fire has started which has the potential to threaten the whole town. It has a claustrophobic feel to it, with the town seemingly isolated, the fire bearing down on it, and an ongoing quest to find out how the fire started under way even as the fire is fought with increasing numbers of people and growing amounts of equipment. The two main characters are Elizabeth, a woman who, despite her youth, has a long experience of dealing with brush fires in a professional capacity, and Mindy, a slightly older woman. Mindy has suggested using the funds her group collects annually for the local ice hockey team, for the fire-victims instead, since the hockey team doesn't need it. In particular, she wants to help an old guy named John whose house has burned down completely, but before long, John becomes a suspected arsonist.
I'm sorry to say that we get the trope routine of having the main character describing themselves by looking into a mirror. In this case it's Elizabeth who is a green-eyed redhead. She speaks in first person PoV, which is actually quite palatable for once, but this is interspersed with a third person perspective from the PoV of Mindy, and later, from the PoV of another character. The writing was technically very good (especially since this was an advance review copy), with very few appreciable errors or issues,
Presumably the few that were apparent will disappear in the actual published edition. For example, I read, "...who'd read To Kill a Mockingbird one too many times..." wherein both the title of the book and the first word after the title were italicized, which made for an odd read! Another was "...with a whole in her heart" which should have read "...with a hole in her heart." A third was "He gently removed my shirt from my finger gently...." Note that this may sound weird here out of context (it sounds fine in context), but the issue is that 'gently' appears twice. It was evidently an editorial change where the original 'gently', whichever it is, failed to be erased. I do that often!
Another example was "...I'd of thought you knew that by now." I know people say this instead of saying it correctly, or at least they sound like they're saying this, but I don't think that gives a writer free reign to write it like that when it ought to be "...I'd have thought you would've known that by now." One more was " Aren't nothing you can do about it." Presumably that should be " Ain't nothing you can do about it." One last example was where the phrase, "The Daily’s offices" was used. The 'l' and the 'y' were unaccountably italicized whereas the rest of the word was not!
One problem I had was the extent of Elizabeth's involvement in the investigation. Yes, she knew her stuff when it came down to interpreting the beginning of the fire, but she was neither a professional (no longer) nor a police officer, so even though she worked for the local DA, it seemed odd that she was so involved int eh minutiae of the investigation. But that's no big deal.
On the positive side, the really nice way in which the first person PoV is done, as well as the integration of this with a third person perspective, works well and tempts me to bring this to the attention of other publishers and writers and tell them in no uncertain terms: "See? It can be done! Follow this example." In general I liked the way this story unfolded. Some might find it a little slow, at odds with the urgency of the spreading fire, but for me, it wasn't rushed and it didn't drag. It felt normal and natural and that's a really pleasant thing to encounter in a novel, especially one with drama and self-recrimination laced through it.
Elizabeth and Mindy knew each other at one point, but are no longer speaking. It takes a while for the story behind that to unfold. Mindy starts out feeling a bit unappealing and slightly useless. Elizabeth starts out in the beginning of a divorce from her husband of ten years. How much of their feelings are real and how much is smoke? That's what this novel explores, and the extent to which people's lives are tangled and twisted around one another is what's really at the heart of the story, adding to the claustrophobia and the feeling of being trapped in something you don't even understand, let alone know how to get out of. The feeling exists at so many levels in this novel it's a wonder the author managed to keep hold of all the threads! But she did.
I have to say that I didn't like the ending (one character who needed a come-uppance gets none), but it was appropriate to the way the rest of the novel was written, so even though I rather disliked it, it was what the novel demanded. I recommend this novel, It's not your usual drama. I can see it becoming a movie or a TV mini-series. Hopefully it will be a movie, because while TV can do subtlety better than a movie, it rarely gets this kind of story right!
