Girls on Fire

There are some passages in this book that contain some evocative prose. Aside from those rare bright spots, this book fails to deliver on pretty much all fronts. The characters are shallow, unconvincing -- they are 16-year-olds in bodies and minds of mid-20-somethings. Reading this book is like watching a filmed version where the teens are played by over-the-hill, way-passed-teenage actors that not only do not look the part, but no care was given to make them sound the part.

One of the girls in the book was given an annoying obsession with Kurt Cobain (Nirvana). Every other sentence she utters has some reference to Kurt. You start to wonder what relevance that has to these proceedings in the book.

The plot involves two misfit teenage girls banding together to get back at the popular queen bee of the school, who also happens to be a total irredeemable bitch. Oh, and there is a suicide of the said queen bitch's boyfriend, which starts the book off, that ties together with the main thread. There's constant flashbacks to pick up the pieces of the whole story.

All that may sound intriguing, but the way this book is structured kills any momentum it should rightly have. It's meandering, uninteresting, unconvincing, and the overall effect is it rings completely false. By the time the story reaches its climax, I thought to myself the journey was not worth the payoff. All that meandering b.s. for this? At 350 pages this book is about 300 pages too long.

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman is a disturbing exploration of the darker side of teenage girls’ friendships.

Hannah Dexter is an ordinary and wholly unremarkable teenager who is essentially friendless until befriended by newcomer Lacey Champlain in the aftermath of popular classmate Craig Ellison’s inexplicable suicide. Lacey is the quintessential bad girl who easily transforms good girl Hannah into rebellious Dex. Throw in resident mean girl (and Craig’s girlfriend) Nikki Drummond into the mix and it is just a matter of time before the story takes a very sinister turn.

After suffering an extremely humiliating experience made much worse by Nikki’s involvement, Hannah is bewildered but thrilled when Lacey takes her under her wing. The two girls are soon inseparable and Hannah, who Lacey renames “Dex”, eagerly follows wherever her new friend leads. Dex is an enthusiastic participant as Lacey introduces her to underage drinking, encourages her to experiment with drugs and prompts her to explore her dormant sexuality. Engaging in increasingly risky behavior, events at a party quickly spiral out of control and Dex finds comfort from a very unlikely source.

Worshipping at the altar of Kurt Cobain and his angst-ridden lyrics, Lacey takes the small town of Battle Creek, PA by storm. Ignored by her alcoholic mother and scornful of her pious stepfather, Lacey challenges authority and takes teenage defiance to a whole new level. Lacey is manipulative and seductive and underneath her rebellious exterior dwells a very troubled young woman.

Nikki is popular but bored and no one wants to get on her bad side since she is also cruel and calculating. Surprisingly, she is type of girl whose meanness is not easily recognized and her reputation is never damaged by her bullying. But beneath her sickly sweet persona lurks plenty of dark and menacing secrets that Nikki will go to great lengths to keep hidden.

While the premise of Girls on Fire is certainly interesting, the story quickly becomes bogged down in superfluous details and rambling, repetitive inner monologues. The overall pacing is a little sluggish and although the brief glimpses of an illicit relationship are intriguing, the slow trickle of details is frustrating and tedious. The time period, the small town setting and references to the news of the day are absolutely spot on and provide an interesting and perfect backdrop for some aspects of the storyline.

Dark, violent and sexually charged, Girls on Fire is a gritty and sometimes overly dramatic novel that delves into the intricacies of toxic relationships. While not always an easy story to read, Robin Wasserman does an excellent job keeping the storyline unpredictable and the novel’s conclusion is rather shocking and completely unexpected. An overall unsettling story that I recommend to mature readers.

I received a complimentary copy for review.

Girls on Fire by author Robin Wasserman takes place in a small town in Pennsylvania during the ‘90s. Hannah Dexter had managed to stay under the radar at high school until her senior year when a humiliating encounter with popular girl, Nikki Drummond, brings her to the attention of Lacey Champlain. Fueled by their mutual hatred for Nikki, they form a strong but unequal bond. Lacey takes over Hannah’s life, renames her Dex, changes her style from nondescript to grunge and introduces her to casual sex, binge drinking, the music of Kurt Cobain, and a couple of bad boys suspected of dabbling in drugs and Satanism. Dex’s mom has misgivings about the relationship between the two girls but her father seems to enjoy his daughter’s new rebelliousness and her new friend – perhaps a little too much. Running in the background is the story of the suicide of Nikki’s boyfriend, Craig, the previous Hallowe’en, an event that has raised a lot of questions and created some hysteria in the small town about Satanism.

Girls on Fire is a well-written, compelling and suspenseful YA novel. It is also almost unceasingly dark. The narrative is divided between Lacey and Dex as they give us their own separate stories, an Us section in which we get their shared perspectives and a Them in which we get the perspective of others. Wasserman does a fascinating job of showing how toxic teenaged relationships can become as the story and their relationships move towards what can only be a bad ending for everyone. She has created some extremely unlikeable characters doing increasingly disturbing things and somehow makes us care how it will turn out. A definite high recommendation from me.

Thanks to Edelweiss and Harper Publishing for the opportunity to read this novel in exchange for an honest review

Hannah Dexter was just a bland girl going through the motions until Craig decided to kill himself and through their small town into chaos. After feeling the burn of humiliation at the hands of Craig's love Nikki Drummond, she bonds with fiery newcomer Lacey and they become inseparable. Lacey dubs Hannah Dex, giving rise to a persona who cares about music, experiencing life, rejecting the norm, and Lacey's approval. Dex is suddenly somebody, but is it the person she wants to be or the person Lacey wants her to be? Lacey is pretty clearly hiding something and won't share with her best friend no matter how close they get. Her secret threatens to destroy their relationship and their small town.

Girls on Fire is an intense read that takes place in the early 90's featuring teenage girls in the most dramatic point in their lives. Everything is about surviving the horrific landscape of high school where one wrong move can destroy you. While I like aspects of these girls, each of them is so steeped in manipulating others and projecting a socially appropriate or a socially disastrous image that they become desperate and willing to do terrible things. Hannah is pretty bland and fine with doing well in school, but then Lacey turns her life upside down. Lacey introduces her to drugs, parties, Nirvana, and not caring what others think of her. Lacey's approval means everything to Hannah and she will do anything to keep it. Lacey has her own issues and secrets. Her whole persona is designed to be rebellious. Hannah makes her feel powerful because Lacey molded her new persona and manipulates her when it suits her. To Lacey, she's being benevolent and protecting her, but it's clear she just wants to control something in her life when she controls nothing. Her home life is horrible with an alcoholic mother and a controlling, religious stepfather. Nikki Drummond, on the other hand, is the golden girl externally, but the queen bee mean girl underneath. She can manipulate anyone to do exactly whatever evil move she wants and come out looking like a paragon. All of them choose to be cruel to each other and all of them come out with scars they try to hide from the others.

The format of the book is interesting. The "Us" sections are Lacey and Hannah's alternating points of view. The "Them" sections show other people's point of view like Hannah's, Lacey's, and Nikki's mothers. It shows that absolutely everyone has inner depths beneath what they project to the world no matter what their age or experience. We see their true selves and their inner thoughts. Everyone tempers themselves to fit in to whatever society they are a part of. Every character has something to relate to and thoughts and feelings they would never share with anyone else. At first I thought it should have been a teen book, but the violence, the sex, the grey morality, and the honest and multilayered depiction of each character is much more adult.

Girls on Fire is a magnetic read that I couldn't put down. Robin Wasserman's amazing writing crafted a complex story that was masterfully revealed through multiple points of view. Craig's suicide story loomed in the background of the entire narrative until all is revealed in the final pages. The only flaw I found was the ending. I just didn't quite believe it, but it had an interesting symmetry with the rest of the plot. I look forward to the next book Robin Wasserman comes out with.

Wow, this is a cracker!

This completely sucked me in from the very beginning, made me feel nostalgic about my own adolescence, messed around with my memories, distorting them, then spat me out the other end wondering which my real memories were, and which I’d just allowed to be shaped to fit along with the storyline.

If you’re like me, and grew up in the 1990s, loved rock music and lived in Doc Martens then this may be the story for you. I saved up for my first pair of Docs in 1991 when I was just 13 years old (my dad paid half) and I lived in that pair until I was 17, having to buy a new pair as I had worn the previous pair out.

Be warned, this is a dark, gritty and twisted story filled with all the complex challenges of being a teenager. If you’re willing to read about alcohol, drugs, sexual experimentation, bullying, insecurities, death, Satanism, and general pushing of boundaries, then I highly recommend this book.

Girls on Fire is an uncomfortably real feeling story (I want to insert ‘experience’ here instead of ‘story’) that I found really hard to put down.

I found this story thought provoking and was surprised how much I related to it. It made me realise how lucky I was not to get myself into this much trouble as a teenager, brought back memories of situations that could have ended up much worse, and reminded me of other people and situations I would much rather forget about all over again.

I would like to thank the publisher, Little, Brown Book Group for allowing me a copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Anything that’s about toxic friendships is an immediate draw for me. When I first read about GIRLS ON FIRE, I knew I wanted to read it so I had some high expectations upon starting it! Things started off well and interesting and then the book started to lose me.

This book was what I expected and also took a couple turns. I found myself kind of losing interest a little towards the middle and I felt like things kind of plateaued a little early, even though there still was more to come. It was gripping and also a little horrifying witnessing such toxic friendships but it’s also a really interesting from a psychological aspect. While it felt genuine and plausible, it also was just lacking some element that really allowed me to connect with it and get sucked in like I had hoped.

The pacing really just threw me off and once the middle hit, I was starting to really lose focus. I thought it was an interesting concept and story but the book just didn’t flow and I thought it could have been set up a little bit better.

If you’re looking for a book about toxic friendships, this one definitely fits the bill. There’s also a mystery and other coming-of-age topics (relationships, friendships, family), but it just didn’t quite fit for me.

Fierce
Dark
Glistening
Haunting

The truth about teenage girls, and the tragedies that follow them forever.

Where were you,
Who were you,
On Halloween, 1991?

Were you in the woods on Halloween 91', one boot "of age" grounding your young teen body while the other foot danced freely in the burning fire of your soon to be future memories, your burning regrets, and to come; the ashes and remains, your real life nightmare.
Because us girls, we always burn bright, but we never know for just how long... our poor sad naive selves, thinking it will last forever but it can't, it might last the summer but it's sure to end in deadly destruction.
Anything that burns that high, that bright, must crack, pop and faulter.
We always go to bed with the fire burning bright, not knowing that when we wake up there will be nothing but ash and a distinct smell of whats left, sulfur latching on and dancing up our noses, causing Sunday's worst headache, prolonging it by drenching you down with what have I dones, what did I says, who am i in the dark of the night like our careless drunken, dancing bodies are strangers to the shells of our daytime tv selves.
Like the freaks & monsters only come out at night and hoping you weren't/aren't one of them... but you are, we all are atleast once on a Mayan calandar.

If only we could go back to those times as a whisper in the wind and say "keep dancing, breathe the fire, let it consume you because it won't last long now"
or "get the *u*k out of dodge, you stupid bright eyed little wayward girl".
Would you rewrite your history, never knowing how good it must've felt to burn bright, the fire that only comes once, and can level all of humanity around you in seconds, even you... just completely destroy your soul for one night, or if you're lucky, longer.
Maybe thats what "deja vu" is... our futuristic souls coming back in time to tell us what we didn't know then and we don't listen, because the fire is just all too consuming.
It felt so good and although I still have nightmares of what the fire left around me, I yearn to light myself on fire to feel it all over again, and again, and again...
I'll always chase that dragon, alot of us will, if you don't... were you ever really on fire?
Did you ever step both boots in?
Like quicksand eating you whole;
But us girls, we love digging our feet in, just to feel the cold, sun bleached sand on our perfectly manicured, and polished white or black toes.
Like the polish determines what caliber we are, separating girls alike with what mask we choose to wear.
We're not all that different, who we choose to portray may be but inside no, we all hurt the same, feel pleasure the same, and make mistakes that we either learned from or were too deep to leave the wreckage in the past.

Because we all were there on Halloween 91' and we weren't at the same time, a time of a new music revolution, say no to drugs, and say hello to be perfect or else... Satan will grab you by the throat.
We all have THAT year, that night, remembering it like a horrible anniversary of all the things we did when we were young and not so bright.
You didn't have to be there to know how it felt, because we all have our own version of it.

This book was the best dark coming of age story, I've ever read. This author didn't hold back and she pinched you at all the right times, slicing you open to the connection of "Girls on Fire" and your own story of burning out bright.
It can hurt to remember, but it feels good to know you aren't alone in the remains of "once upon a time there was a girl, or there were two girls or a whole group of friends that dissolved quicker than you can blink because they felt invincible... and were not"

"Girls on Fire" begins with a popular jock found dead in the woods with a gun in his hand and a hole in his head.
A shot heard round' the block with questions of suicide or satanic rituals as the 90's had been a decade of what are the children capable of? Kurt Cobains better days, set the tone to this gritty, teenage angst wasteland up and down the pages, chapter after chapter titled all of Nirvana's best 
"Something In the way", "Come as you are", "Nevermind"

And two main characters you'll end up hating to love.
You'll maybe even see yourself in them,
like I did.
10/10, a 5 star title, and I would read it again, while searching Robin Wassermans bookshelf because she hit the mark on what every coming of age story should be...
Soiled & unbleached just like we were as teens.

Title: Girls On Fire: A Novel

Author: Robin Wasserman

Age Group: Adult

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Series: N/A, standalone

Star Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars

I borrowed this book from my local library and reviewed it.

I've read a lot of Robin Wasserman's young adult work, most notably the first two novels in her Skinned trilogy. I've been looking forward to more of her work ever since. Ever since I'd heard of the existence of Girls on Fire, I've been salivating for it. I was really looking forward to it, and I enjoyed it, for the most part. But there were also some things I weren't crazy about, so my feelings are mixed.

Girls on Fire is a twisting and magnetic mystery/thriller wrapped in a coming of age story wrapped in one of the most twisted love stories I've ever come across. It is the story of Lacey Champlain and Hannah 'Dex' Dexter, two volatile and uncertain young women who find in each other in little, podunk Battle Creek, and cannot live without each other. When dark secrets come to light, the two young women must decide if their relationship is worth paying the ultimate price...

Told in prose as electric as this sleepaway hit's title, the girls become intoxicated by one another, alternately loving and betraying as they see fit. I was captivated, as I always am, by Wasserman's bright and electric prose. Through Dex, we see Lacey, and the little town that she finds so stifling. This book was impossible not to relate to--it really spoke to me. Growing up is hard, and even harder if you happen to be a young woman. In Dex, I saw some of myself--the longing to belong, to be content, to love and be loved--even if it means sacrificing who you are. Lacey, Dex's emotional, wild, I don't give a crap foil, was just as compelling, if not more so. The girls' relationship--deeper than friendship--is so all-consuming that everything around it is destroyed, ripped to tatters by the end of the novel.

I really enjoyed the style of the novel--it was told in a frighteningly stoic voice, from the end to the beginning and back again. This book also tackled one of my favorite topics in fiction, especially contemporary: a toxic friendship. I don't know why it is, but I'm drawn to books about destruction, degeneration. Bonus points if it's personal. The format was fantastic, and by the end, I was frantically flipping pages, desperate to find out what would come of these girls on fire--if they would flare so bright they would eclipse the sun, or if they would flicker and burn out. I was spellbound, almost against my will. Even when I wanted to put it down, I couldn't.

That being said, there were times when I was reading that I was kind of let down--but the ending was worth it, and I'm so glad that I stuck with it. Dex and Lacey were the main characters, the focus, and the characters around them, including their parents, seemed almost like caricatures in comparison to them. Even when they were included more in the story than just supporting characters, they didn't seem real to me. The bottom line: A mystery thriller wrapped in a twisted love and coming of age story in the golden age of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, Girls on Fire was, for the most part, mesmerizing! Despite the stiffness of the supporting characters, I really enjoyed it. Next on deck: Outrun The Moon by Stacey Lee!

2016 is seeing a veritable plethora of young adult authors publishing novels intended for grownups. Jacqueline Woodson, Gayle Forman and Meg Rosoff are just a handful of authors who are writing for a more mature audience this year. Joining them is Robin Wasserman, who has written several popular and acclaimed novels for teens. In GIRLS ON FIRE, she continues to explore teenaged relationships and conflicts, but does so with a far darker tone.

GIRLS ON FIRE introduces us to high school junior Hannah Dexter, a hardworking “good girl” who is happy enough, she supposes, but lacks a close friend. Instead, she makes her way through high school with a handful of acquaintances, doing her best to avoid interactions with mean girl Nikki Drummond. Everyone in town is treating Nikki with kid gloves, though. After all, her boyfriend, Craig Ellison, recently killed himself.

No one can figure out why Craig, star athlete and all-around popular guy, would have gone out into the woods on the edge of town and shot himself in the head. There are plenty of theories, of course. It’s the early 1990s, and recently publicity of satanic cults (not to mention the new popularity of grunge music) has the adults of the small town of Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, on high alert for the moral safety of their young people.

Meanwhile, Hannah attracts the notice of relative newcomer Lacey Champlain, whose frank talk and devil-may-care attitude appeal to the more cautious Hannah. Lacey eagerly takes Hannah on as a project, remaking her in her own image, outfitted with Doc Martens, flannel shirts and her own Nirvana tapes. She even gives Hannah a new name: Dex. Lacey and Dex embark on an intense and possibly toxic friendship, until Lacey begins to reveal secrets that might push the two girls apart…or pull them even closer.

Wasserman effectively takes readers (at least those of a certain age) back to the early ’90s, suffusing Dex and Lacey’s story with the music, fashion and cultural preoccupations of the time. The novel is narrated in sections labeled “Us” and “Them.” The “Us” sections are told from the points of view of Lacey and Dex, while the “Them” sections take readers into the minds and memories of their mothers, grown women whose own girlhoods seem both like distant memories and continued influences on their present-day lives.

GIRLS ON FIRE illustrates, at times brutally, the powerful hold teenage girls’ friends and friendships can exert on their beliefs, their self-image, their entire lives. Readers will waver back and forth about whether Lacey’s influence on Dex’s life ultimately will be positive and transformative or negative, even toxic. This is a question that remains largely unanswered even at the novel’s close, making it ripe for ongoing contemplation and discussion.

Audiobook available; performed by Cassandra Campbell, Soneela Nankani and Allyson Ryan

Reviewed by Norah Piehl

Any book that starts off with a Kurt Cobain quote is going to speak to me. Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman did just that; it started off strong and raw and powerful and it burned just as fiery red hot all the way through.

Teenage girls. I don’t think you can ever fully understand the complex, cruel, complicated mess of hormones and thoughts and insecurities that make up a teenage girl unless you were one. Not are one, even living through it I don’t think you can fully understand the power and danger and hugeness of it all, it’s more something you see when you look back on it. There’s been few things over the years that I thought represented this existence in the rawest, most real way possible. The book Go Ask Alice was one, the movie Thirteen was another.

I’d add Girls on Fire to this list as well. It isn’t necessarily new, the idea of a good girl falling in with a bad girl and completely transforming and losing herself isn’t new, but it’s important. The messages and the descriptions and the warnings are important. And there were some really great passages that talk about the obsessions between girls, the cruelty and power that they don’t know they have, and my favourite, a contemplative chapter about whether instead of telling girls to be careful because they are vulnerable and weak and will be taken advantage of, teach them how powerful and dangerous their actions can be. I thought this had some really good points to think about and to touch on.

That said, there was a lot of repetition and back and forth between characters that felt a bit like beating a dead horse. The direction you were being lead wasn’t hard to see, and yet you were still dragged along for a long while before ever really going anywhere. If you read a lot of books like this, I could see how maybe the intensity and impact of it all might not have the same bang. But nonetheless, there was still a lot of heat that I think burned pretty deep.

The book took a much darker turn towards the end. Satanism was brought into it; things kind of seemed more like a witch hunt for a while and it went to some very deep extremes. Things definitely go pretty far and screamed out a thousand warnings about the dangers of lies and secrets and that kind of power. But I liked how it ended. The book was so loud and blunt throughout it, it would be a disservice to have a pretty little ending where people learned their lesson and everyone lived happily ever after. The way it does end I think shows even further the complexities of female friendships and the thin line between friends and enemies.

I’m going to try really hard not to turn this into a OMG-Lacey-Loves-Kurt-Cobain-As-Much-As-I-Do-We-Must-Be-Soulmates kind of review, but OMG, Lacey loves Kurt Cobain as much as I do and the way she talks about him, how his music changed her life, how his voice consumed her, I could be reading my own high school diary. They’re dangerously similar, her thoughts, her teenage obsessions. It’s so eerie reading about a character that so very much mimics how you perceive yourself.

Yet at the same time, I see myself so much in Dex, too. I certainly wasn’t as cool as Lacey and while I may have harboured her teenage angst and praised the same grunge gods, I was much more timid and insecure and uncertain like Dex was, searching aimlessly for something to connect to, someone to open my eyes to what else is out there.

Again, I’m going to try really hard not to turn this into a nostalgic analysis of my teenage years, but this is why I love books like this. Two characters who speak to two different sides of girls, giving us something solid to relate to, something tangible to watch through these safe pages and see how things work out for them, how was can make similar or difference choices to get us through whatever needs getting through. Even what, 15 years after my teenage prime, I can still so strongly relate to these themes and fears and remember exactly what those moments felt like and the names of the girls who made me feel little, the names of the boys who made me feel even smaller. Those are the kind of burns that never fade away.

Originally posted on citygirlscapes.com

Girls can be really vicious to each other. No one knows that better than any adult woman who was the victim of bullying classmates back in the school days. But these girls are even darker and worse than one can imagine. This is a dark and intense thriller, not for those that are easily upset by what they read or especially sensitive. As a reader who loves darkness and psychological terror, this is a real winner.

In 1991, a handsome and popular high school basketball player wonders into the woods, and is found shot in the head later, with a gun in his hand. In a small and insular community already upset over rumbles of satanic activity in the area, this is just one more horror for them. People are nervous and on edge.

At the high school, Hannah Dexter is a cute but shy and retiring girl, not really noticed by most, and mostly a loner. When a rebel Cobain worshiping classmate, Lacey seeks her out, it's a friendship that turns lives upside down. This is an atmospheric and eerie story, told by a gifted storyteller who manages to pull the reader in from page one. I could not put it down, and thought about it at odd times for weeks after finishing it. That's the gift of a storyteller who knows how to deliver real characters with feelings and emotions that come through as realistic, in settings not so different from those surrounding us all.

Wasserman has written a book that will frighten and engross you, and you'll be telling your friends to read it too.

This book has been getting a lot of advance press, and I resisted for a while, but finally gave in. And FINE, it's actually really good. Hannah Dexter has led a fairly mundane life in her small town, where everyone knows everyone and everything that happens. But her life is turned upside town by two events: the suicide of a peer, Craig, and the arrival of a new girl, Lacey. Hannah and Lacey rapidly unite over their hatred of the town's "it girl" Nikki. Lacey transforms Hannah into Dex--a darker version of Hannah. But Hannah doesn't realize that Lacey is hiding a secret from her, a pretty big one, which threatens to destroy the very fabric their friendship is based on.

"Girls on Fire" is an oddly captivating and compelling novel. It's told mainly from the alternating points of view of Lacey and Hannah, and we slowly learn about the events that led to their friendship and its aftermath--and also Craig's suicide. Parts of the novel are a bit cliched (it's almost too dark, too awful) but it doesn't stop it from being intriguing and captivating. The writing is intense, the story is intense, and you're left almost breathless at the end. I didn't really enjoy the book, per se, but I appreciated it. It's a wild ride, a dark one, and definitely one worth taking. More at (...)

Hannah has always lived life in the background. Quiet, polite, just plain boring. So when Lacey, the schools new beautiful, dangerous rebel defends her against Nikki, the school bully, Hannah feels something she never imagined possible, special. Desperate to hang onto that feeling, Hannah adopting the new nickname ‘Dex’, blindly follows Lacey down a dark destructive path. But Lacey isn’t as strong and independent as she appears. Both girls feel a desperate need each other and their friendship turns into one of toxic obsession. Their passion for one another fuelled by drugs, bullying, peer pressure and a lack of support and stability at home lead them to an event that will change their lives forever.

Equally compelling as it is disturbing, Wasserman’s beautifully written novel about the power and destructiveness of teenage friendships really puts it’s reader through the emotional ringer. Her choice of alternating the narrative between the central characters keeps you on your toes and offers deep insight into her leads state of mind. This intense, complex story will stick with you long after reading.

*Thank you Harper and Edelweiss for this review copy.

Girls on Fire is a well written, compelling novel. It's also a slap in the face, a fever dream of misspent youth and friendship gone wrong. It's a nightmare of high school horror, but it goes far beyond the usual "mean girl" story. The author utilizes characters that are finely crafted to tell a story of power, manipulation and love. She explores the fine lines that lie between those things in a manner that is so honest and authentic that it's both hard to read and hard to look away from. She amps up the dynamics that operate in female friendships, mother daughter relationships, and examines the fire that can exist in young women just discovering their sexuality.

Wasserman is an accomplished YA author and it's obvious in this debut adult novel that she has retained her flair for teen characters. Don't expect to fall in love with any of these girls. Like most teens, they are a heady mix of hormones, drama, and emotions. Dex. Lacey, and Nikki are a trio that represents everything bad about the struggle to overcome adolescence and come out the other side. Unfortunately, their combination is so toxic that none will emerge without scars. The author does an eye opening job of illustrating the fine line between friendship and manipulation and will leave readers wondering just where the line exists and how easy it might be to cross over.

This book is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended. It's filled with graphic sex, violence, and language. It's profane and disturbing. This book is hard to read and hard to put down. When I started reading the novel, I was bothered by prose that felt overly florid. I soon discovered that the author's style was in fact creating suspense and propelling the narrative along at a fever pace. The author expertly sets the scene and the time as she evokes a small town in the 90's with a keen, observant eye and an instinctive feel for the culture of the period.

Girls on Fire is a memorable read. If I could award 4 1/2 stars I would for this read. My one reservation is that this one was just a bit too much. I loved it, but couldn't help but feel that it was a little over the top. The author offers some profound observations such as this statement as the mothers wonder about their daughters: "They wondered at the consequence of teaching a girl she was weak instead of warning her she was strong." That's wonderful stuff, and this novel is full of moments like this, but they get lost in the fire. I wish the author would have been able to turn this story into a house fire instead of a towering inferno. Then it could have been mind blowing. Still, Girls of Fire is one I won't soon forget.

You remember teenage friendships. That fierce cleaving to another person, the two of you against the world, united against anyone or anything that would dampen your dreams or try to make the two of you ordinary. That's how it was when Lacey and Dex found each other.

Dex, who everyone else knew as Hannah Dexter, was the ignored girl. Her parents were on the fringes of the social life in their small town, but somehow Hannah was the one always left out, always made fun of when someone actually noticed her. She drifted through school trying to be invisible. She was the good girl at home although her parents wanted her to be popular.

Lacey was the rebel. Raised by a single mom who was always working or out with various boyfriends, she grew up doing whatever she wanted. She hung out with undesirable boys, drank and did drugs, and learned about sex way too early. When her mom finds and marries a born-again Christian with a mean streak and has a baby with him, Lacey is uprooted and moved to small town Battle Creek, Michigan.

Dex can't believe it when Lacey talks to her in the bathroom one day after a brutal encounter with the queen bee of their high school. It's even more unbelievable when she takes her out in her car and they start to learn about each other. Soon, it is them against the world and Dex learns about life and what is real. There is nothing but Lacey and the united front the two of them present to the world. But fairy tales aren't real and soon hidden secrets start to crack the foundation of their friendship. How far will one go to continue to live in the exclusive world of the other?

Robin Wasserman has written a fierce, raw novel that will strike an instant chord in all those who grew up on the fringes. The fringes of high school popularity, of boys and parties and being desired. Who wake up with white-hot anger growling right beneath the surface as they go through the halls of their school, who pretend it doesn't matter and pretend they are normal for their parents and teachers. Who if they are lucky emerge on the other side and go out into life and wrest from it what they want. Who if they are unlucky fall deeper into dependence on the other person in their world and let that dependence take them down into actions they would never have done alone. This book is recommended for young adult readers and for mothers raising daughters.

The writing in this novel was a standout. It was hypnotic at times, and a perfect culmination of the '90s when the events in this book take place. Maybe I connected to it more because of that. I was in middle school/junior high when these characters were in high school, and the scenes took me back.

But be warned: this novel is raw and gritty. There are shock factors including language, violence, and sex. These characters live a life far from anyone I associated with. So even though the characters are teens, I'm glad this was classified as an adult novel.

I can easily see this adapted into TV or film (edited, of course). It's a fascinating and scary look into how girls develop as teenagers.

First there is Hannah Dexter: unassuming, a forgotten girl in her high school, except when popular Nikki Drummond deigns her worthy of mockery. Then there's the new girl, Lacey, and suddenly there is Lacey and Dex, best of friends, jamming out to Kirk Cobain, sneaking booze, plotting the day they will leave Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, in the dust. But before all of this, there was the suicide of one of Hannah's classmates, found in the woods on Halloween, adding fuel to the fire of Satanic cults roaming the area. And there's a dark and twisted story that is aching to come to be told.

Robin Wasserman's GIRLS ON FIRE is sordid, incendiary, suspenseful, and dark. I haven't read her before, but apparently she's a successful young adult writer. This is not a Y.A. novel. Nossir, not by even my most liberal stretches of the imagination. GIRLS is a relentless thriller; a riveting character study; at times, a borderline horror novel. It's not for the feint of heart, and there's not necessary a light at the end of its tunnel. It's a novel about the trappings--and I mean that in the most literal sense--of friendship, and the evils that people commit on each other for the sake of self-preservation.

This book is forcefully written by someone who doesn’t just see young girls as pretty things. We like to think that we send our children to school to learn skills for their future and make friends. We tell ourselves they are safe there and making friends is always a good thing. Right?

Wasserman tells a story that we hope wouldn’t and couldn’t be true. It has to be fiction. Yet, in the back of our brain, there’s a tiny voice that says, “it could be true, what a nightmare.” Toxic relationships, we’ve all heard of them. Yet, the word intoxicating implies a draw to something bad for us. How far afield could young girls go? For a parent, reading this book might make you afraid for your children. It is scary and raw. There’s harsh language and situations. Is it well written and certainly tells a dark and compelling story.
I was provided a free copy of the book in order to read it and write my honest review.

It always starts with the cover. That's what drew me to Robin Wasserman's Girls on Fire-- the same way I was drawn to Alissa Nutting's similarly graphic, at first glimpse- shocking novel, Tampa. But where Tampa disappointed in its descent, Girls on Fire sparkles in its ascent. Robin Wasserman is a novelist at the height of her creative powers with a gift for storytelling, crafting reliable and unreliable voices, tackling complex issues and imbuing themes with idiom and metaphor. Most of all, Wasserman's brave novel moves fiercely, pulls no punches, and hits the informed reader in the mid-brain and the heart. I've read several of the reviews here and find myself disagreeing with most of them (good and bad) in whole or in part. For me, Wasserman's tale was not necessarily "Dark" as much as it came from the rich tradition of transgressive fiction by male authors such as Henry Miller, Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk or, on another side of the spectrum Patricia Highsmith, Joyce Carol Oates, or Mary Karr. To be sure, this is not fiction for the timid or faint of heart. Regardless of those who seek to pigeonhole Girls on Fire as a sexually explicit Young Adult novel or scorn such fiction and its uses-- Wasserman clearly knows her subject, her characters, their cultural history and the world into which she drags the reader-- happily peeling back the curtain on small town Pennsylvania with the virtuosity Capote brought to Kansas or Mailer did to Utah. A literary novel is rarely so much about plot as it is about story and character. Sometimes a book is less about what is happening IN the narrative or what happens TO the characters as it is about how the story is being told-- where the characters take us and what happens to the reader on the journey. Girls on Fire is such a novel that while reading it, I frequently found myself caring less about the transformation of its characters as much as I thought about the setting, the themes, and Wasserman's dazzling command of language. I am a year or so younger than Dex and Lacey but was fully capable of transporting to the early 90s, high school and memories of watching Twin Peaks in its original run or scrutinizing VHS. I remember well discovering Nirvana and the danger inherent in Loud soft LOUD music with confessional or nonsensical lyrics that struck a chord with "our little group." (Where were the Smiths? The Pixies?) There was currency in being awkward but not necessarily dangerous. And therein lies what, for me was at the heart of Wasserman's big book full of lyricism and metaphor. A novel about longing more than sexuality. Gender more than identity. Power more than rebellion. The book has its share of devices-- sex, drugs, hero worship, satanism, parental stereotypes-- but just when you are about to cringe, thinking you're moving into too-familiar territory, Wasserman wields these devices expertly, bringing a hammer down on convention, harming her darlings physically and emotionally in ways that make the morally vacant somehow believably intellectual and spiritually superior. In contrast, Girls on Fire was akin to Bret Easton Ellis's love letter Luna Park and, like the confessional opening and closing of that book, Wasserman's first chapter (or preface) and the penultimate chapter accomplish much. The fact that she completed what lies between those bookends with soulful honesty, hard-wrought courage, and without quoting a single Nirvana song-- makes Girls on Fire a seething at times, gorgeous at others, but truly unforgettable escape from the world our generation inherited.

Book #87 Read in 2016
Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

This is not a nice book. This book is gritty, disturbing and edgy. Hannah is a nice girl but not popular in high school. The new girl, Lacey, takes an interest in her and turns her into "Dex" a more wild, rebellious girl, much like Lacey. But Lacey has a lot of issues in her world that bring a dark side to her. How far will she go? This book will hook readers will non-stop angst and action and readers will be on the edge of their seats seeing how far into the darkness these high school girls will go. I recommend it.

This book is unlike anything I've read before. It doesn't coddle the reader, and it's this freshness and psychological rawness that make this book memorable. Each time you put it down, you can't wait until the next free moment to pick it up. It starts as a slow burn, setting up the characters, giving the reader a bit more access to the two protagonists (my favorite innovation: having the mothers of the protagonists narrate their own section). The prose is... is melodic the right word? Lyrical? At times you want to just pick up a highlighter to mark the passage that will convince others to pick it up, and then a few pages later, more. As the story progresses forward in time, you learn more about the past, and the defining events which set the match to the powderkeg. There is no coddling the reader. The author has faith in her reader's capacity to handle who her characters are, on their own terms, and I appreciated that. I know many have compared this to Gone Girl, but this was better to me. Why? It allows for girls and their relationships to be taken seriously -- and not simply in relation to boys/men. The girls are the story.

4.5 Stars - Original review @ 125Pages.com

Oh dear god yes. This book brought back all of the angst of high school, toxic friendships, lies compounding lies, a social stratus that defines all and so much more. Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman is a book about teenagers that is not a YA in the best way. Dark and even sinister at points, it shows how deeply a person will go when they are truly obsessed with another.

The plot of Girls on Fire reminded me of the best of the dark parts of Heathers andJawbreaker with a smattering of Mean Girls thrown in. Hannah gets so wrapped up in the friendship of Lacey that she will literally change everything about her self including her name and the downward spiral is a delight in an almost perverse way. Robin Wasserman wrote a tale of friendship that surpasses the ordinary. She had a lyrical way of phrasing that made even the awful parts intriguing. The pacing had a few issues where I felt it jumped too much but it was quickly brought back down and did not detract from the read as a whole. The world built was rich and I got a great image of each of the scenes. There were plenty of emotions in the book, most of them very deep. This was such a nuanced ride, that even some of the scenery played a role. I loved the two main characters. They were each attempting to alter themselves in different ways and relied on the other to make them whole. I did not care for any of the parents, and one plot line with Hannah’s father was really not necessary and did detract from some of the overall story.

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman brought me back to my teen years where I had a friend very similar to Lacey. She ran the show and we were all her puppets; dressing like her, listening to the same bands, ganging up on whoever she declared not cool for the week. I read this book and it made me anxious and uncomfortable and I loved that. I always enjoy a book that takes me so out of my comfort zone and this one did it in a way that I really enjoyed.

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Wasserman nailed it!! This book is her first adult book after writing mostly YA and I can't wait to read her next novel. It was dark and twisted but it had some hard truths as the storyline. Very well written and the way it's written from different perspectives...from past to present ..kept me wanting more!! If you grew up in the 90s you knew one of these characters!! You probably didn't like them but you knew them .lol

This book totally, totally destroyed my bedtime. I so admire the writer's bravery with her characters. If plot is the art of watching characters do things-- wow, does this have a plot! But not just a plot. It's smart, riveting paced, compulsively readable. Need a beach read that will make you think, will stay with you, and also features well-crafted sentences? This is it.

I wasnt shocked by this book all though the author was going head over heels trying to do it. Frankly, I got bored and kept thinking there is a stack of better books over there I need to read. Satanic worship, even fictional, is something that has never interested me, including the gruesome killing of animals. I thought this was just a terrible book about kids in a dead end Pennsylvania town with nowhere to go and nothing better to do.

I had trouble getting into this book for two primary reasons. First, it begins with the death of a high-school student (an apparent suicide), someone the narrator is only peripherally acquainted with. The problem I had here was that this is the second or maybe the third novel I've read in the last twelve months that began with this setup. Second, the writing seems to be somewhat overdone. I can understand if some readers find the writing insightful or deep, but to me it seemed a bit much, especially since the narration is primarily first person (although switching between characters).

That said, I did eventually get into the story, and I found the reading significantly easier and faster as I turned the pages. I'm not sure how contemporary teens will respond to a book in which one character practically worships Nirvana and, in particular, Kurt Cobain (who died in 1994), but the darkness of the relationship between the good girl Dex and the Cobain-worshipping Lacey does become gripping, even in light of a few implausibilities.

Quite well written, but I lost interest about half way through. In recent years, there's been a glut of books featuring the fraught inner lives of angsty teen girls that end in tragedy. I'm just about over it.

Very captivating. Many reviewers have said they found it 'dark'. I wouldn't say the same. It touched on some themes that may be viewed that way by people who haven't actually read anything dark. It talks about sex and sexual exploration with teenagers which is just life. Great ending. Interesting relationship dynamics. Multiple surprises. I like the format of the book and the way the writer used different voices for different chapters. The whole book was very raw and real. I quite enjoyed this book. I like it when a writer can talk about young adults realistically. I would definitely recommend it. Glad I stumbled across it.

As other reviewers indicated, this is a disturbing story. I knew it wasn't going to end well and it did not have a feel good premise. I read the entire book but afterwards felt many negative emotions. Some people might enjoy this kind of book but I felt it very depressing. I'm sure there are real life girls who act and think the way Hannah, Lacey and Nikki did and it makes me darn glad that my daughter wasn't like them.

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman is billed as her first adult novel and – although an enjoyable read for this 48yr old – suspect it will appeal more to young adults.

It reminded me very much of Beautiful Broken Things by Sara Barnard. A YA book I read recently and LOVED. And... Girls on Fire probably suffered as a result of that comparison. If I hadn’t read the two books within a month or so of each other I’d probably cut Girls on Fire a little more slack but it wasn’t as engaging as Beautiful Broken Things and I didn’t connect (as much) with the voices of the young people.

This novel’s set in 1992 and Wasserman does a good job of grounding the plot and settings in that time.

We’re predominantly in the heads of both Hannah (Dex) and Lacey, narrating from their own points of view and sharing their thoughts – and secrets – to which the other is not privy.

Girls on Fire takes a darker turn than Beautiful Broken Things and felt a tad more fanciful – but deals with difficult and important issues such as suicide, sexuality and complex family situations. And in the end it’s hard to work out the ‘goodies’ from the ‘baddies’. In fact, it’s an important reminder that life’s not that cut and dried.

Comparisons aside, I very much enjoyed this novel by Wasserman think that it will appeal to a broad audience, but particularly young people.

Read the full review on my blog: [...]

3.5 stars

I was very intrigued by the concept, but the characters started and stayed on one note. Their overblown self-awareness was distracting. I felt the author relied on too much 90's teenaged nomenclature (and I'm of the exact generation as the author) which fell far more into cliche than into flesh and blood characters that I could truly care about.

A popular high school basketball star commits suicide in Battle Creek, Pennsylvania. The boy's girlfriend bullies Hannah who is a shy, a quiet girl at least until she is befriended by recently arrived Lacey. Lacey is a Cobain-worshiping extremely bad influence on Hannah to say the least. Throw in some satanic worship and teenage lesbian sex and this is a very dark novel.

•Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

It is the '90s in a small, rural town in Pennsylvania. Hannah is a quiet girl, the type who gets lost in the crowd, when suddenly Lacey appears on the scene. Lacey is new to town and she is anything but invisible. Hannah and Lacey become the closest of friends and Hannah adapts much of Lacey's world including her rebellious attitude, goth-like fashion, and her love for all things Kurt Cobain. She even adopts a new nickname, Dex. The friendship develops in the wake of a popular boy's suicide and a cruel bullying incident involving his popular girlfriend Nikki, who is nearly but not quite a third protagonist. Dex and Lacey's tie takes extremely dark twists and turns with sex, drugs, and violence abounding, all building to an explosive conclusion.

This is NOT a happy teenage story. It is VERY dark and readers need to know that (a few moments of bubbly-girlhood only serve to make the dark moments darker). There are moments that make my stomach turn even as I write this review. It is hard to put that aside. I certainly believe there is a place for dark fiction. I believe that some of the very best books make the reader a bit uncomfortable. However, I feel like that discomfort needs to serve a purpose and I have trouble finding one here. I can see the power of Wasserman's prose and I can see that there is an audience for this book. It's just not really me.

There is POWER here and the book deserves praise for that. I want to recognize that Wasserman certainly has a talent and there are moments that are drawn in very vivid, real-feeling prose. Still, I was anxious for it to be over and felt like the story just kept piling more and more damage and darkness to the narrative. It is tough to place a rating on this book because I want to recognize the strengths of this book, but I always promise an honest review (I received an ARC from the publisher) and I end up at 2-2.5 stars.

I'd never come across Wasserman before, which really surprises me. She has an exquisite turn of phrase; her prose is almost syrupy (but not sweet!). In fact, she has written quite a few novels before which are fairly well read - where was I missing in all of this?

Anyway, Girls on Fire. It was one of those hard-to-rate books because, though wonderfully written, it wasn't exactly enjoyable. I don't think I'd recommend it to people, although if I did it would definitely come with a health warning. It's, just to be blatant, horrific. But it's also viscerally real. It's certainly an experience reading it; emotional engagement is a non-negotiable.

In a way, I loved it. It was an amazing portrayal of the potential destructiveness of female friendship: a subject I feel I can really understand. It was a girl moulded by another. Familial scars being saddled on children. Secrets begetting secrets.

But I just can't give it a higher rating, because it was so awful to read. Does that make any sense? Perhaps I get too emotionally involved in books...

All the same, I don't think this is the last novel I'll read by Wasserman; my feelers are out now, trying to see what I'll go for next.

Having finished high school right at the time that this was set, this book rang very true to me. She captured the time period and the angst of adolescence and the need for something to happen so well. I thought the end was a bit abrupt, but overall I thought this was a great read and she is also a talented writer.

This book is unreadably bad. I made it through the first 50 pages and skimmed the rest.

It's overwrought, tries too hard to be shocking and most of obnoxiously of all is a unimaginative rehash of the fabulous movie "Heathers" (Seriously, this book literally lifts lines from the movie ("F*** me gently with a chainsaw") with crediting them.

DO NOT PROCEED!!

I thought it was a flop. Contrived, unlikable characters (not that likable characters is a must, but these ones were just so one-dimensional it was difficult to stay with them), and basic writing. I'm guessing Wasserman's young adult novels are better.

I would like to thank Net Galley and publishers Little, Brown Book Company for the copy of ‘Girls on Fire’ by Robin Wasserman in exchange for my review.

Hannah Dexter is your usual High School misfit, a social pariah, subjected to ridicule by the Queen of the school, Nikki Drummond. When she sees new girl Lacey Champlain, a girl who stands out from the rest of the crowd, she hopes to find in her a friend, someone with whom she can share her hatred of Nikki. For a while, Lacey doesn’t notice Hannah, but when they finally meet up, Lacey begins to transform Hannah into Dex, a girl with more confidence and determination than she had ever known was possible, liberating Hannah from the sensibilities of her past.

But what Dex doesn’t know is that Lacey and Nikki are keeping a secret. At Halloween, Nikki’s boyfriend went into the woods surrounding their small provincial town, and commits suicide, leaving behind a simple note, but one or the other of them understands the true reason why.

In a small town community, the fear of paganism is rife and anything which undermines their simple existence must be stamped out. With Dex and Lacey becoming more and more out of control, they anger parents and teenagers alike and as Lacey seemingly turns to witchcraft, it is all too easy for the town to turn against her, driving the story forward to an almost inevitable conclusion which will see Lacey and Dex’s futures intertwined forever.

For me, Girls on Fire is an intriguing look at teenage life, the constant battle to find a place where you truly belong, the feeling of disenfranchisement and isolation that comes from not being part of the popular clique. The relationship between Lacey and Dex is both toxic and yet defining for Dex/Hannah, I that it allows her to tap into a deep seated hatred of the people around her, releasing an inner wild child. The story sort of reminded me of a cross between ‘Heathers’ and ‘The Craft.’ Clear parallels can be drawn between Nikki Drummond and Heather Chandler, the most popular, beautiful and powerful girl in the school. No matter how cruel she is, people will fall over themselves to be her friend, to prove themselves worthy of her attention. The same can be said of the relationship between Lacey and Dex when comparing to ‘The Craft’. While Lex does not actually practice witchcraft, the town’s suspicions and paranoia lend a certain self-fulfilling element to the woes that befall her ‘victims’, and the ultimate breakdown in trust between the two friends is very similar to the way in which the four friends in ‘The Craft’ are pushed apart through jealousy and deceit.

The story is also one of small town America, of a community where church and family and status are valued above all else. Where the paranoia and suspicion of anything which does not fit the status quo drives the need of the community to demonise Lacey rather than look to the cause of her behaviour. A community that is happier to believe she is a witch, than simply a child in desperate need of help and support.
Set at the start of the 1990’s, the story is told primarily from Hannah/Dex’s point of view and the sections where we dip into Lacey’s voice drives the story in as much as we are able to realise there is much more to her hatred of Nikki Drummond than simple envy of her popularity at school. That they share an intimate secret, one which Lacey goes to great pains to keep from Dex. Interjected between the two voices, are three sections from the mothers of Lacey, Nikki and Dex, which give us a different perspective on how they see their children and perhaps what it is that has made them who they are.

I found the pacing of the story just right, although at times I did want the action to move on a little as there was perhaps a little too much wallowing on the part of Dex. The motives of both Lacey and Nikki in befriending Dex are kept well hidden, and the reveal as to the true reason is both surprising and perhaps shocking in equal measure. It was well written, the characters and teenage angst well observed and the sense of foreboding as Dex and Lacey’s relationship progressed kept the story suspenseful, making me want to keep reading on, if only to see how it would finally implode as you know it will.

Overall, I found it to be a compelling story of pre-internet and smartphone school life, where image and social status were everything. The musical and historical references took me back in time (I was just leaving school at this time and can easily recognize some of the pains of late teenage years in the tale, although I never took my dislike of some fellow pupils to this extreme.) A highly recommended four stars.

Be prepared to stay up all night reading this gripping, harrowing and deeply disturbing novel. I couldn't put it down. The characters are believable and fascinating, and the story will trouble you and keep you thinking long after you've read the final pages.