• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2020 May #1
  *Starred Review* Margot Nielsen has grown up with no family but her mother, and that has not made for an easy childhood. Margot has had to learn to navigate her mother's strange quirks (Keep a fire burning; a fire is what saves you) and quicksilver temper changes, and she understands the signs of a good day and a bad one. She knows nothing at all about her mother's past. When a chance discovery leads her to a town called Phalene and a grandmother she never knew existed, Margot seizes the opportunity, returning to her mother's hometown just as a fire—not, the locals say, the first—tears across her grandmother's land. As she tries to get to know Gram, who is as much an enigma as Margot's mother, Margot's confusion and suspicions about her family history grow. There's something strange and troubled about Nielsen women—they hide things from the world and from each other—and Margot is determined to uncover the darkest of family secrets, no matter the cost. Power follows her hit debut Wilder Girls (2019) with a thriller that digs into generational wounds. A late sf twist folds seamlessly into the character-driven story, and Margot's narration, laced with the anxieties she learned during childhood, is a raw nerve. Gritty and strange, this sophomore novel is utterly compelling. Grades 9-12. Copyright 2020 Booklist Reviews.

Rory Power grew up in Boston, received her undergraduate degree at Middlebury College, and went on to earn an MA in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia. She lives in Massachusetts. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Wilder Girls and Burn Our Bodies Down. To learn more about Rory, go to itsrorypower.com and follow @itsrorypower on Twitter and Instagram.