Burn For Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian Review

Burn For Burn by Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian (Burn for Burn #1)

Published Simon and Schuster 2012

Genre: Young Adult Contemporary

Format: Paperback

Buy this book: Amazon – Barnes & Noble

Postcard-perfect Jar Island is the kind of place where nobody locks their doors at night, where parents can sleep easy, knowing their daughters are tucked away safe and sound in their beds.

But bad things can happen, even to good girls . . . and sometimes, the only way to make things right is to do something wrong.

Lillia used to trust boys, but not anymore. Not after what happened this summer. And she’ll do whatever it takes to protect her little sister from the same fate.

Kat is over the rumors, the insults, the cruel jokes made at her expense. It all goes back to one person–her ex-best friend. Someone needs to teach her a lesson, and, with Lillia and Mary behind her, Kat feels up to the task.

Four years ago, Mary left Jar Island because of a boy. But she’s not the same girl anymore. Now that she’s got friends who have her back, he’s going to be in big trouble.

Three very different girls who come together to make things right. Will they go too far?

I liked this book, but then again there were some things that I really didn’t like.

The book is told from three points of view from all three girls. I’m really interested to know how the two authors split the task of writing the book because it’s typically done with two POVs from each author, but that wouldn’t really work in this case. I really liked Lillia’s chapters and she was my favorite of the girls. She had the best reasons for doing this revenge and her relationship with her sister was so cute. However, I found her intentions a little weird because she never really had a good reasoning for joining in the first place. It just seemed like she was there as Kat’s ‘in’ to the popular group, who was the main group attacked. Kat was so annoying and I really hated her character. She was really ungrateful to Lillia and Mary, even though they would risk everything to do the revenge. She also pushed it way too far on multiple occasions. Her chapters were the worst because I really just didn’t like her character. Mary was nice and all her backstory was just so sad…I feel like she has the best reason for revenge of the group. However, I didn’t really like the paranormal aspect she brought to the story. It felt random and thrown in there, totally out of place in this genre and book. (Did she remind anyone else of Carrie?)

The revenge plot was really interesting and it was my favorite thing about the book. It reminded me of a high school version of the television show Revenge! The girls are not nice about anything they do and it sometimes gives them disastrous results. It’s not fun to watch them destroy their classmates, but it is intriguing how they pull everything off. I really liked the friendship the girls form through doing everything, especially as Lillia struggles with acting innocently around her friends.

This book also contains some heavy topics such as drug use, bullying, suicide, and date rape. These topics aren’t the main point of the book and are just covered in flashbacks, but drive most of the action that occurs. It gives a good background as to what is happening without getting into too many details to take away the revenge topic. All of the girls have some personal problems that drive them to start along this path of revenge. While I have seen it done better, it delivers.

Overall, this book was okay. Two of the three characters were hard for me to like and connect with. The plot drove most of the book for me and the revenge concept was well executed. I’m looking forward to continuing on with the series.

 

I read this book as part of the Booktube A Thon! If you don’t know what that is and want to join us, click here!