Sometimes the fire doesn’t cleanse at all.

43. The Burning Girls – C.J. Tudor

There’s a new vicar in Chapel Croft, tiny village of doomed young girls. Whether they’re burned as martyrs or murdered or just trying to get to know the new place they were forced to move to, young ladies don’t necessarily have solid ground to stand on here. Not unlike the new vicar, whose name is Jack but is also a lady, much to the chagrin of some people.

It was nice to see a normal mother-daughter relationship with humor and arguments and care in this book, it grounded the story while they reacted to the mysteries and terrible past and present of Chapel Croft at the same time as the reader. The pitfalls of moving somewhere and taking a job that really isn’t great as someone who is stuck, regardless of ghosts or collapsing floors or exorcist kits in the basement, because of their own past mistakes and horrors were also well represented. There were definitely some very creepy parts and more reinforcement for me not liking the vast majority of teenagers, Flo being a good exception, but it’s also a quick mystery that comes together well in the end.

 

Sometimes it’s hard living in a small community and being so cool. Hen Wen knows this first hand.