Review: Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

This was my first audio from Netgalley and I was so ridiculously excited to see audios up for grabs over there!

Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power

Published July 2020

Dark Fiction  |  Goodreads  |  Amazon 

Source: Received for Review Consideration

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a new twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery—until she decides to return to her mother’s hometown . . . where history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot’s questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along.

But that’s not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for.

Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there?

The only thing Margot knows for sure is there’s poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she’s there, she might never escape.

My 2 Cents For Free!

Burn Our Bodies came to me via Netgalley on AUDIO! Audio! Is this not exciting?! Well, it's exciting for me anyway, haha.

I read Wilder Girls late last year and I thought it was a great slow burn of a book with some chilling organic body horror and very complicated relationships. Burn Our Bodies Down isn’t quite as horrorish as Wilder Girls but it’s still quite chilling especially when you learn all of its secrets!

Margot lives with her unstable mom and they have a very strained relationship. Her mom reminded me a little bit of Chuck from Better Call Saul and if you’ve seen that show (and you should) you’ll understand why Margot is having such a rough time. Margot loves her mom but, well, this quote says it all “I love her so much more when she’s not here.” It’s complicated and genuine and it is hard to read those conflicted and painful emotions and that is why I adore the way this author writes. Margot is desperate to learn more about her family so when she sees an opportunity to do so she grabs it and she runs and she lands at a blighted, twisted, homestead.

That’s the setup. What follows is a very creepy and slow reveal of family secrets. And when I say creepy I am not exaggerating. These are some bizarre family secrets but if you’ve read Wilder Girls you won’t be too taken aback. I’m not going to reveal anything else because this is the type of book where the less said about the plot, the better.

Now, because I listened to the audio version I feel the need to say that some choices here weren’t my favorite. The audio echoes early on and it is distracting. I thought it was my cheapie headphones at first, or perhaps it was because I always speed up my audios a bit and I don’t know if it cleared up or if I just became accustomed to it but eventually I stopped noticing it and fell into the story. Also, the narrator often sounds on the verge of tears. Margot is an emotional character and this narrator gives it her all and I applaud her for that but sometimes her all was just a wee bit too much for me to take. Other than that she does a fine job with this wildly unusual story.

⭐⭐⭐⭐