I picked up the latest C.J Tudor against my better judgment. I read The Chalk Man in 2018 and I left a scathing review for it on Goodreads. I read the synopsis of The Other People and The Hiding Place and decided to skip them.
In short, I was hesitant to pick up another novel by C.J. Tudor.
Along came The Burning Girls which will be released in 2021. I have to be honest here and I was rueing my decision to request it from the publisher who kindly provided a copy to me. I was armed with apprehension and reasons why I wouldn't like it started to stack up as the novel picked up.
The novel is about Jack Brooks, a single parent and unconventional vicar who moves to a small town in the English countryside with teenage daughter Flo. Jack is escaping life in Nottingham where a whole lot has happened that we will uncover throughout the novel.
However, this isn't some sleepy town either. Jack unwittingly moves into a community where two girls have gone missing 30 years ago, and where protestant martyrs were burned five hundred years ago. The more Jack and Flo get acquainted with the town and its history, the deeper they are drawn into its mysteries.
Tana French wrote a really slow-burning novel about a small town in the Irish countryside this year called The Searcher. The Burning Girls is nothing like that. No pun intended but it burns with a passion.
C.J. Tudor tries to cram a lot of subjects into this 300 page novel. I tried to keep track but I might have missed a few: exorcism as misogyny, mental illness, addiction, child abuse, the church and its inner workings, nature vs nurture, racism, homosexuality. That's not it, because the plot also contains a lot of different mysteries and every character has a backstory which contains some kind of death.
I thought I was in this novel to dislike it. Imagine my surprise when I crossed the 75% mark and found myself enthralled by the plot while the mysteries were slowly unravelling. It turns out, the story isn't such a stretch after all and C.J. Tudor has weaved it all nicely together.
I ended up enjoying the overall experience, which goes to show that you should really give authors another try even if you disliked one of their novels. They might surprise you after all.
This novel isn't really for the faint of heart, but those who like fast-paced mysteries with a few unexpected reveals might enjoy this read.
Many thanks to the publisher Penguin Michael Joseph UK and Netgalley for providing me with a review copy!
3.5 stars
Statistics:
Date read: December 7, 2020
Date published: January 21, 2021
Publisher: Penguin Michael Joseph UK
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
Genre: Mystery/Thriller/Horror
My Number of Books Read by this Author: 2
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