Review: Nothing Left to Burn by Patty Blount

Review: Nothing Left to Burn by Patty Blount Nothing Left to Burn by Patty Blount
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on August 4th 2015
Pages: 336

Reece’s father hasn’t spoken to him since the car wreck that killed Reece’s brother. Desperate for forgiveness, Reece joins the Junior Cadet program at his dad’s firehouse. But the program is grueling, and Reece isn’t sure he can make it through. Then he meets Amanda.

Amanda understands wanting to belong. As a foster kid, the firehouse is the only place that feels like home. She agrees to help Reece, but falling for him wasn’t part of the deal. And when a string of arsons suddenly point to Amanda, their relationship could go up in flames.

 

reviews2

What do you even say about a book when half the stuff was pretty awesome and the other half made you want to throw your Kindle out the window? And I don’t mean half the book as in “I liked the first half but the second half went to shit”. I mean there were things that I absolutely adored, and things that filled me with an unquenchable rage (did you enjoy my dramatic flare there?).

The Good:

  • Huge focus on family and the importance of family throughout the book. Reece’s family is in shambles since his brother’s death, and also Reece’s dad is basically the biggest piece of shit ever. He is horrible to Reece, horrible to Reece’s mom, and has pretty much cut Reece out of his life completely. So he isn’t exactly winning “Father of the Year” anytime soon. tumblr_mkpy6aYxjM1r8ml2do6_250And then there’s Amanda’s non-family. She lives with a foster family who seems decent enough but has a litany of ridiculous and nonsensical rules. But, they’re the best family she’s been with in years, and she adores her foster brother, so she wants to stay there. Her mother is another giant bag of awful, basically ditching Amanda for some creepy dude who ends up landing her in jail. So both of these kids are just craving something from family members who pretty much can’t or won’t give it.
  • The firefighting stuff is pretty unique and interesting. There’s a bunch of teenage dudes…. and Amanda. Which seems unlikely, because I imagine in the entirety of Long Island there is more than one female who wants to be a firefighter, but I digress. They are like a makeshift family, which is really cool because they all have each other’s backs, both in the fire hall and outside of it.
  • I really felt for Reece, because he was trying so hard to do so much: to prove himself to his father, to help out his mother, to grieve the death of his brother, to make friends, all while under an enormous amount of stress. He was a broken and likable character, and I loved how he pushed himself to be better in so many ways.

The Not-so-Good:

  • The romance was… unromantic. I mean, I didn’t feel a single spark, and this was set in a place that deals with fire so… yeah. There just wasn’t any chemistry for me. Plus, Amanda had a crush on Reece’s dead brother, so that added in a creep factor. And it was kind of insta-lovey. She hated Reece one minute, but the literal next moment was checking him out? No no.
  • I still do not understand why these people blamed Reece so fiercely for Matt’s death. I just can’t imagine people being so mean to a young guy who has just lost his brother. Especially since accidents do happen, it just behooved me. And it wasn’t like people quietly blamed him, they were ready to burn him at the stake or something.
  • Some of the execution just fell short for me. The conversations often seemed a bit forced and unnatural, and the characters, especially Amanda, could have been a little more fleshed out. The characters’ reactions were also often inconsistent with their personalities and/or past reactions. I don’t mean that in a character growth way either, just more of a confusing way. There was also a mystery element to the story, which I figured out pretty much immediately.
  • This last one kind of filled me with rage more than anything. It is also basically something that happens near the end of the book and I don’t want to spoil anything, but I DO feel like it needs to be mentioned, so I am going to try to do this with the biggest spoiler warning ever. DO NOT look at the spoiler tag unless you are prepared for like, half the story to be spoiled, got it? Good.
    View Spoiler »new girl nope

Bottom Line: This book has some really unique elements that could have really made it a powerful read, but it did end up falling a bit short for me, especially with that last piece.

2h

Posted July 13, 2015 by Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight in Review , / 21 Comments

Divider

21 responses to “Review: Nothing Left to Burn by Patty Blount

  1. So I was kind of half looking forward to eventually reading this one. The thing is, I read this author’s book Send, which is about bullying and suicide and all that lovely stuff, honestly it’s sound very similar to this one with just a slightly different storyline. Having read your review(and spoiler! What? you can’t dangle a spoiler before me I almost always look at it unless it’s something I’m really looking forward to. I have no self-control!) I see a lot of similarities. Send had an awesome premise but it fell short on some of the follow through. The romance was not romantic at all. And there were some big reveals, and big problems, that didn’t live up to what they could’ve been.

    Anyway, great review, Shannon! I’ll probably end up picking this one up one day just because I love reading about this kind of stuff and I love the complicated sounding family dynamics. =)

    • Bwhah I love that you read the spoiler. From scrolling through the comments, you appear to not be the only one 😉 And YES- it sounds EXACTLY the same from what you’ve said. A meh romance, meh reveals… yep, sounds about the same! Hope you have more luck with it, it DOES have some good points!

  2. HAHA, YES To THE MCGONAGALL GIF XD I read the spoiler tag because I am a horrible horrible person unless it comes to a book I’m super looking forward to, and I seriously get you. You don’t romanticize depression. You don’t get over it in like a day. Finding out that he wanted to kiss some pretty girl isn’t going to make everything okay.

    On the other hand? The importance of family sounds nice. YAY TO FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIP PROBLEMS.

    • Bwhahha it seems like you are NOT the only one who caved to the spoiler tag 😉 And yeah, it made me MAD. Because not only does it make it seem that finding a significant other will make things ALL better, but what does it say for people who DON’T have a SO?! Are they just doomed? I was mad about that. So mad. And I agree with you- the family and friend stuff was amazing- so this book had SO MUCH potential, but then totally destroyed itself!

  3. Aww man. I hadn’t heard of this book but it looked good. It’s sad when one doesn’t like a book. Your comment made me laugh, the one were you said there was no spark and it’s a firefighter story haha Great review, Shannon!

  4. It’s really hard to review books that you both love and hate so props to you for this review 🙂 I’m not this author’s biggest fan but I do like books that have a strong theme of familial relationships. Having said that, I don’t know if I could get through the book if I absolutely detested Reece’s father. I also don’t like the sound of an insta-lovey romance… Great review though!

    • Aw thanks! Yeah, it’s a hard one- some of the topics are really great! And I could have probably even gotten past some of the insta-love stuff. But the spoilery thing? It was SO much no. Like, I seriously almost gave it like, 1 star because I was so infuriated. Luckily I waited a few days for the rage to die down 😉

  5. I liked the look of this novel at first, but then that massive spoiler? Nope, not for me. So so sorry this was such a conflicting novel and that you didn’t like it more, that sucks a lot. Great review though, strong points for the good and bad, and that’s going to help a lot of people decide if the book is for them or not.

    • I love that everyone read the spoiler bwhahah. I totally agree with you- I LOVED the idea of this one, and even some of the aspects were fabulous, even if the execution wasn’t. But the spoiler part- UGH, so much rage. SO MUCH. I really didn’t even know how to rate it, because a BIG part of me wanted to give it one star just because of the “thing”, but I tried to be fair. And thank you so much, I really hope iit does help people decide!! 😀

  6. Oh boy, plenty of issues. Kudos on the honest review. Sometimes it’s almost easier when the whole first three-quarters is okay but then *bam* the ending ruins it all. But like this… when it’s so uneven with good and bad (and rage-inducers) all throughout, that’s hard. Sorry that this one fell so short for you.

  7. Okay, hearing your thoughts made me feel a lot better about skipping out on this one. When I saw it on NetGalley, I considered it but then decided I didn’t want to request books I was only so-so about. Trying to cut back on ARC requests when I can. Ha. The issues you had with the book sounds like ones I would have as well. Sorry you didn’t enjoy this one!

    • That is a good call! I was NOT going to request it, but since I apparently love to give myself more shit to do, I went ahead and did so. UGH. I mean, I guess I am kind of glad I read it, because I would have been curious? I don’t know. Good for you for having self control, at least! 😀

  8. Man, I was so excited for this one since I loved Some Boys. I have it for review but I’m not to excited about reading it now since I’ve been seeing a ton of not so great reviews 🙁

Leave a Reply