“You can never leave your past behind.”
A small cottage in a small town and a creepy chapel in need of repair. A town that pays homage to the burning girls with twig dolls. Creepy atmosphere? Check.
Sometimes, small towns are the worse. You have no privacy because everyone is into your business. It’s even worse when you’re the new vicar of the town that’s rife with controversy. I really dug Jack. Jack’s views are laid back, and they make sense. “Belief should be a conscious choice, not something you’re brainwashed into when you’re too young to understand or question it. Faith isn’t something you pass down like an heirloom.”
I also liked Jack’s parenting style to Flo, and Flo is a genuinely good kid. I can’t imagine how hard it was for her to up and leave her school and her friends to such a small town. With spotty Wi-Fi, it keeps her cut off. That she went through such horrific bullying speaks volumes about how rife it still is today.
This was a fun storyline. I received this book 5 days ago from Ballantine Books, and I worried about finishing it in time for release day. Pish! It’s a C.J. Tudor book. Of course I finished it in time for release day. I loved the atmosphere, the supernatural elements, and the writing style which started lazily and then really hooked you. Overall, a super fun read.
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The Burning Girls is available on Amazon for $13.99.
About the book:
A dark history lingers in Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, Protestant martyrs were betrayed—then burned. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And a few weeks ago, the vicar of the local parish hanged himself in the nave of the church.
Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping for a fresh start. Instead, Jack finds a town rife with conspiracies and secrets, and is greeted with a strange welcome package: an exorcism kit and a note that warns, “But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known.”
The more Jack and daughter, Flo, explore the town and get to know its strange denizens, the deeper they are drawn into the age-old rifts, mysteries, and suspicions. And when Flo begins to see specters of girls ablaze, it becomes apparent there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.
Uncovering the truth can be deadly in a village with a bloody past, where everyone has something to hide and no one trusts an outsider.
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