Girls on Fire - Robin Wasserman

So, teenagers again. Becoming a bit of a theme isn't it? The teenagers in this book couldn't be more different to the ones in the last book I read, 'Extraordinary Means' if they tried. And there is one key difference. This is a book about teenagers written for adults. Robin Wasserman has written YA in the past and she seems to know teenagers inside out. Nothing in this book is sanitised or watered down. Teenagers can be cruel, particularly teenage girls and this is a book that focuses on a friendship between two teenage girls and where this takes them. 

Friendships between girls can be by turns cruel and intense and this covers both aspects of friendships in this way. One criticism I've heard of this book is that the 'bad girl turns good girl bad' thing has been done before. I don't see this book in this sort of way. It's the interplay between the characters that's the thing in this book. It feels at times that every bad girl needs a good girl to urge her on, to be the one who inadvertently encourages her to do the things she does. I also don't think that the characters in this book, Dex and Lacey, can be slotted into a simple good girl/bad girl archetype. Especially towards the end you're left thinking of who the real ringleader is. 

It's written mainly from the perspectives of the two main characters, they have unique voices that are brutal and real. There are ocassional vignettes focussing on the adult characters in the book, their brevity only emphasises the lack of importance of adults in these young people's lives as they are slowly pushed to the margins.  

The setting during the 1990s allows the interpersonal contact between characters to not be dominated by the online world. Their secretive world isn't by private message, but driving around in cars and hanging around at the lake. As it's an adult novel, many of the readers will recognise this as their world as a teenager.

The front cover, a bobby pin with a sole strand of hair attached speaks to me of a world of beauty and cruelty combined. (How many times have I pushed one into my hair and stabbed myself in the head) but also looks like spent matches. Although there is no 'fire' in this book, there is an urge to destroy and watch things burn. The characters are frightening in their intensity, cruelty but particularly in their normality. This could have been any of us. 

P.S. After going on about the bloody cover, I can't find a picture of the UK one. Ho-hum. You can use your imagination can't you...