What Fire Brings by bestselling author Rachel Howzell Hall is a twisty thriller set amongst the wildfires of Southern California. 

Bailey Meadows has just accepted a job as writer-in-residence at the Topanga Canyon home of bestselling thriller author Jack Beckham. Her role is to support Jack in writing his next big hit. But little does he know she’s not there to write―she’s there to find Sam Morris, a community leader who has dedicated her life to finding missing people, who disappeared and was last seen at the remote Beckham estate. 

Each day, Bailey finds the canyons more and more terrifying, and the more she learns about the history of the Beckham family, the more she wonders how much her boss really knows about the women who have gone missing in the area. To avoid becoming the next missing woman, she must piece together what is true and debunk what is fiction. 

Although I found this book compulsively readable and could not put it down, I was lost for a good chunk of it because the plot was incredibly confusing. The second half especially had me scratching my head and wondering what I had missed. Reading through some other ARC reviews, it seems I am not alone in being lost—the general audience being unable to follow the plot doesn’t bode well for the book’s success. Bailey is not an unreliable narrator as much as a narrator you just cannot figure out from one chapter to the next. 

Having said that, what I appreciate most about the book is how good Hall is at building a slow burn suspense. At multiple moments in the book, I was getting queasy while waiting for the next thing to happen. The atmosphere was eerie and unsettling, which is something I really enjoy in the books I read. I needed to know where this story was going, something Hall accomplished even if she lost me along the way. 

Overall, if you enjoy thrillers with messy rich people and natural disasters, and you can handle significant amounts of gray area in plot, I think you should give this a try! It has a fair amount of intrigue that’ll keep you guessing and if you can suspend disbelief and just ride the rollercoaster, I think you will find this an enjoyable read perfect for summertime. If you prefer something fairly easy to follow, however, this isn’t the book for you. 

Content warning: As you deliberate on picking up this title, please be advised that there is a scene depicting sexual assault about 3/4ths of the way through the book. Though it is brief and not overly graphic, it did make me need to skim that paragraph.

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What Fire Brings releases on June 11th, 2024. Thank you to Grace at Spark Point Studio for sending me an Advanced Reader Copy of this title in exchange for an honest review. All opinions reflected here are my own.