A Slow Fire Burning: The addictive new Sunday Times No.1 bestseller from the author of The Girl on the Train

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Theo admits to Carla that he went to see Angela. Laura admits to Irene that she stole Carla’s tote bag of jewelry. Laura gives Miriam’s manuscript to Irene. Irene reads it and thinks it sounds familiar. She realizes it reminds her of Theo’s book, which she has in the box of books Carla gave her. In the book (which belonged to Angela) she finds Daniel’s drawing of a naked Carla. After being introduced to Ms. Hawkins with her psychological, twisty thriller “Girl on the train”, I was so drawn into her story about complex, broken, unreliable characters. I was led to believe Miriam killed Jeremy – that’s why she told Theo to NOT call the cops. Instead, he would have lured him to Miriam.

Yes. If you have a success on that kind of scale, I think it is natural to feel that it is in some sense undeserved, or that one has been disproportionately rewarded for one’s efforts! But that is the nature of this sort of work, criticism and praise are subjective, earnings are not neatly related to hours worked – I had plenty of experience of being completely ignored before I found success. Angela is Carla’s sister, living a lonely and unhappy life. She lived with her son Daniel until recent years when Daniel went to live on his own. They had a caustic, unhealthy relationship.Did Angela death was really an accident or was it murder? There are at least two instances where it’s mentioned the carpet on top of the stairs. One particularly where Carla is watching Daniel “fixing” the carpet which I find it odd. Pike makes deft work of these unreliable narrators who span several generations, imbuing their voices with a defensiveness and vulnerability born from past disappointments and trauma. Miriam is forever second-guessing the judgment of strangers who she knows see her as a lonely busybody, while Laura is chaotic and brittle-sounding, convinced that none of the calamities that befall her are ever her fault. In particular, Pike captures the melancholy of the widowed Irene, whose frail appearance and occasional mishaps prompt others to condescend and patronise rather than treat her as a sentient adult. This being a Hawkins novel, the plot twists are sprinkled liberally to keep listeners on their toes, though the story is sustained by the humanity of these expertly narrated characters whose secrets are slowly brought to the surface. One woman in her 20s suffered a brutal hit-and-run as a child that resulted in brain damage causing behavioural issues. One of the most unpredictable and saddest characters in the book is Laura. Deeply damaged mentally and physically in a car accident and left abandoned by her mother and father. Her life is complicated and scarred by a number of abusive events. She confides and cared for by Irene, another character with a tie-in and side story. This is a murder mystery that has something for everyone. A man is found murdered on a houseboat by his neighbour. We learn of 3 women in his life who have good reason to want him dead. There are unreliable and unlikeable characters, a book within a book and plenty of twists and turns.

Theo goes to Angela’s to look for Carla. Irene tells him that she saw Theo and Angela arguing shortly before Angela died. Theo recalls that he went to see Angela to tell her that Daniel had asked him for money. Irene tells Carla that Theo came to talk to Angela before she died. Carla remembers her sister Angela, who confessed to being the one who left the study door open so that Ben fell. Deliciously dark and dangerously unsettlingly, A Slow Fire Burning will give you chills with every chapter."A young man is found murdered on his canal boat. Three women were among the last to see him - Laura, his one night stand, Miriam, his neighbor and Carla, his aunt. Each is an unreliable narrator and all seem to be hiding something. We actually hear from other narrators, this is a book with a lot of POVs. We also are given glimpses into small segments of a best selling mystery written by one of the characters. Overall: maybe this book may have been promoted as contemporary fiction, I could have a chance to like it more. From the beginning of the novel, I expected something big, earth shattering, surprising will happen or something so smart will come out to fool me but none of them happened. That’s why I still hear the choo choo sound of disappointment train. Laura denies killing Daniel. The police find Daniel’s watch in Laura’s bathroom and take her to the police station for questioning. They mention that she was recently charged with stabbing another person with a fork. Laura has had issues since she was hit by a car at age ten. and left with a traumatic brain injury. Since then she has problems with memory, anger management and impulse control. The character development was awesome! I truly felt like I got to know each of the characters. Irene was a badass. I hope I’m exactly like her when I’m 80 years old. 😂 Like the three parts of a braid, the stories of the three women in A Slow Fire Burning come together and are interwoven into one.

Overall, I am greatly looking forward to reading this book again. It has the complexity of The Great Gatsby - everything was set up perfectly and was surprising at the end. However, the greatness of this novel is not apparent in the first half of the book. As if someone else wrote it, chapter 30 was my favourite one, where I asked why couldn’t have been like that throughout the book? It was a moment of great lucidity and that was what I was expecting from this author.October 2019!? Can't she wrote instead of... You know... Eating or sleeping? Is that too much to ask? I was expecting a big surprise, a major twist and I suppose it is here. But the reason I frame it in this way is that it came and went before I’d realised that that's what it was. I can’t say it was an explosive moment for me and that’s perhaps because there are many minor twists here and this one sort of melded in with the crowd. In retrospect it did explained things, it was the moment all should have become clear in my mind (as I’m sure it will in the minds of more switched-on readers). Carla recalls that the year before Angela died, Daniel turned up on her doorstep, upset. She let him stay the night but awoke to find him sketching her naked. Then after Angela’s death, she found some letters written by Angela to Daniel’s father, saying how much she hated Daniel. This was my third Paula Hawkins book and while I found it somewhat slow going, the writing was superb. It was the pacing and the large cast of unlikable and unreliable narrators that bogged this one down for me a bit. Otherwise this would probably have been a 5*. Twists and turns like a great thriller should, but it's also deep, intelligent and intensely human'

This was a well written story that was well plotted with a good constant pace. Almost all the characters were damaged but not very likeable and unfortunately I just didn’t engage with any of them. The lives of the women was the interesting part of the story but again it didn’t offer anything particularly new and exciting. I loved the authors other book I read ‘Girl on the train’ which was much more enjoyable. From the first sentence to the last, this explosive, startling novel grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go. Fiendishly clever and with a wonderful sense of place too. Go read! Kate Mosse And her brand new work “A slow fire burning” has exactly the same problems! The author decided to create a slow burn mystery which could be helpful to build high tension and increase the expectations of the readers as the pace gets faster at the second half. But unfortunately this book couldn’t be defined as a mystery. It looks like a contemporary fiction about crowded and very unlikable characters’ connections with each other!All three women have many secrets and tell some lies, and ideally would like some sort of justice... or even better, revenge! Can't say I loved it but did find the characters and their motivations interesting. Tragic and frustrating in measure. The book revolves around the gruesome scene of Daniel's death occurring on a London houseboat he was living in. There are numerous characters seen leaving the crime scene reportedly by his nosey neighbor Miriam, who has a side story of her own tying the Twist and turns and complicating who did it. The author sets in motion a number of scenarios and vindictive reasons to commit the crime. The narrative also includes excerpts that I think are supposed to be from Theo’s book, which is based on Miriam’s real experience. I am not including these in the summary. In short, Miriam and her friend were abducted at age 15 while hitchhiking. The man took them to a house, and Miriam escaped but her friend was murdered.