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Bonfire
Fire, folklore and sanctioned chaos - DCI Holly Hennessy just wants to survive her first Lewes Bonfire when a flaming barrel tears through the crowd and smashes open to reveal the charred body of a teenage girl.
As Holly takes control of the investigation, the trail leads her straight into the path of Kyra Ford, a local academic and documentary presenter, who Holly hasn't seen since their friendship imploded at school fifteen years earlier. Kyra isn't just a witness to the crime - she's also a reminder of a betrayal Holly has spent her entire adult life trying to forget. As the two women circle each other against a backdrop of festering hatreds and hidden abuses of power, Holly must confront both her past and a killer who may be planning to strike again.
Bonfire is an intense debut crime thriller into which Hepburn channels years of experience at the front line of the medical profession, and that blazes a trail that must be seen to be believed.
As Holly takes control of the investigation, the trail leads her straight into the path of Kyra Ford, a local academic and documentary presenter, who Holly hasn't seen since their friendship imploded at school fifteen years earlier. Kyra isn't just a witness to the crime - she's also a reminder of a betrayal Holly has spent her entire adult life trying to forget. As the two women circle each other against a backdrop of festering hatreds and hidden abuses of power, Holly must confront both her past and a killer who may be planning to strike again.
Bonfire is an intense debut crime thriller into which Hepburn channels years of experience at the front line of the medical profession, and that blazes a trail that must be seen to be believed.
- GenresCrime
348 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 22, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
2.5 rounded up
Newly appointed as DCI, Holly Hennessy is about to witness her first Lewes (pronounced Lewis) Bonfire Night traditions, unique to this lovely town. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices a flaming barrel tearing down the hill towards pedestrians and she pushes a couple to safety. As the barrel comes to rest, it smashes open to reveal the charred body of a teenager, who later dies from catastrophic injuries. The subsequent investigation, leads Holly to Dr Kyra Ford, a local academic and TV presenter, with whom she has history from school days. Thus begins an investigation set against a backdrop of abuse of power.
The novel starts really well and gets my interest. The setting in Lewes is excellent, it’s a very atmospheric and beautiful place with a rich history and its extensive Bonfire Night traditions form a good start to the novel. The relationship between Holly and Kyra is interesting too, and that underpins much of what transpires. Their characters are well portrayed and there’s intensity between them.
Unfortunately, the really good start isn’t maintained as the plot dizzyingly strays into multiple areas such as feminism, sexuality, exploitation and financial misdealing. There’s so much going on my head starts to spin and I lose the thread to be honest. The crime/police procedural element gets lost in all these scattered plot directions.
It’s a great pity as I think there’s huge potential for this to have been really good but an overcrowded plot spoils that.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Allison and Busby for the much appreciated early copy in return for an honest review.
Newly appointed as DCI, Holly Hennessy is about to witness her first Lewes (pronounced Lewis) Bonfire Night traditions, unique to this lovely town. Out of the corner of her eye, she notices a flaming barrel tearing down the hill towards pedestrians and she pushes a couple to safety. As the barrel comes to rest, it smashes open to reveal the charred body of a teenager, who later dies from catastrophic injuries. The subsequent investigation, leads Holly to Dr Kyra Ford, a local academic and TV presenter, with whom she has history from school days. Thus begins an investigation set against a backdrop of abuse of power.
The novel starts really well and gets my interest. The setting in Lewes is excellent, it’s a very atmospheric and beautiful place with a rich history and its extensive Bonfire Night traditions form a good start to the novel. The relationship between Holly and Kyra is interesting too, and that underpins much of what transpires. Their characters are well portrayed and there’s intensity between them.
Unfortunately, the really good start isn’t maintained as the plot dizzyingly strays into multiple areas such as feminism, sexuality, exploitation and financial misdealing. There’s so much going on my head starts to spin and I lose the thread to be honest. The crime/police procedural element gets lost in all these scattered plot directions.
It’s a great pity as I think there’s huge potential for this to have been really good but an overcrowded plot spoils that.
With thanks to NetGalley and especially to Allison and Busby for the much appreciated early copy in return for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
DCI Holly Hennessy has her first Lewes Bonfire to control but her night explodes into something far bigger when a barrel is loosed into the crowd. When it finally comes to a halt the body of a young woman is discovered inside and Holly has her first major case to unravel. But the case will bring her back into close contact with Dr Kyra Ford who Holly has a painful history with.
This novel had a promising start with a new DCI who has a history with a suspect. The story quickly becomes much more complex but felt like an interesting thriller/police procedural with a historical twist.
However the story soon lost its way, trying to cover so many current subjects - sexuality, online grooming and pornography, toxic masculinity, parenthood, university costs, peer pressure, sexism etc etc. It felt like the author had so issues she wanted to cover that the actual crime came way down the list and what she really wanted to write was an essay about young people struggling at university.
Holly was such a reactive character. She seemed to bounce from one emotional crisis to another without stopping. In fact most of the characters felt more like caricatures after the story lost its way; the baddies were one mwah haha from a white cat on the knee.
I did finish it but confess to skimming quite a lot of the confusing and very melodramatic denouement. I knocked the half mark off because it gave me a headache by the end.
If you like a vast amount of action and current issues thrown together into a thrller then this book is for you. It wasn't for me.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Amber Jupp at Allison & Busby for the digital review copy.
This novel had a promising start with a new DCI who has a history with a suspect. The story quickly becomes much more complex but felt like an interesting thriller/police procedural with a historical twist.
However the story soon lost its way, trying to cover so many current subjects - sexuality, online grooming and pornography, toxic masculinity, parenthood, university costs, peer pressure, sexism etc etc. It felt like the author had so issues she wanted to cover that the actual crime came way down the list and what she really wanted to write was an essay about young people struggling at university.
Holly was such a reactive character. She seemed to bounce from one emotional crisis to another without stopping. In fact most of the characters felt more like caricatures after the story lost its way; the baddies were one mwah haha from a white cat on the knee.
I did finish it but confess to skimming quite a lot of the confusing and very melodramatic denouement. I knocked the half mark off because it gave me a headache by the end.
If you like a vast amount of action and current issues thrown together into a thrller then this book is for you. It wasn't for me.
Thankyou to Netgalley and Amber Jupp at Allison & Busby for the digital review copy.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The Murder Is Complicated. The Interpretations Are Worse.
Iona Hepburn’s “Bonfire” Gives Us Flaming Barrels, Queer History, Online Exploitation, One Extremely Unhelpful Fifteen-Year Misunderstanding, and a Town That Knows Far Too Much About Fire
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | October 4th, 2026
Drenched in smoke, ash, fireworks, and bad civic judgment, Iona Hepburn’s “Bonfire” begins with DCI Holly Hennessy trying to decide what kind of crowd she is looking at. Lewes is “high on light and community,” yet Holly keeps renaming the same spectacle: pageant, tribe, football crowd, finally “a hair’s breadth from a mob.” Her senses are not failing her. Children really are carrying flame; “No Popery” banners really are passing through the street; the crowd really does possess the unnerving coordination of people briefly surrendering themselves to ritual. The uncertainty lies in the noun. Then a burning barrel tears through the festivities and breaks open to reveal a badly burned young woman. Hepburn has her murder, but she has also planted the mistake that will matter more: seeing clearly and explaining badly are not opposites.
Evidence begins multiplying almost faster than Holly can sort it. The victim is nineteen-year-old Lily Taylor; the case spreads through Bonfire Societies, local money, academia, gaming culture, sexual-content platforms, institutional reputation, and online misogyny. It also puts Holly back in front of Dr Kyra Ford, née Santiago, a historian and documentary presenter she has not seen since their friendship detonated at school fifteen years earlier. The investigation and the reunion run together until each starts contaminating the other. Holly is trying to establish what happened to Lily. Holly and Kyra are also, with considerably worse professional discipline, trying to establish what happened to them.
Most of the trouble in “Bonfire” comes not from an empty evidence board but from a crowded one. A women’s pagan retreat looks sinister because Lily was burned. An abrasive lecturer with ugly sexual interests fits a familiar predator profile until his death ruins the convenience of that conclusion. A message seems to prove a dead girl is alive until the distinction between a person and the account speaking in her name becomes unavoidable. Holly’s life produces another convincing false positive: boyfriend, child in the household, career success, family continuity, all the outward evidence of settlement. The facts are often sound. The arrangement is where trouble begins.
Elsewhere, digital uncertainty and Holly’s private uncertainty collide almost indecently well. During a video call, Zara tells her that being caught with a girl changed the course of her family life. Holly hears herself responding too personally and thinks, “Is this my narrative now too?” Then Zara says Lily cannot be dead because Lily has messaged her that morning. In a handful of lines, Holly is forced to consider whether somebody else is speaking through a dead woman’s account while realizing that she may have spent years speaking through an increasingly inaccurate account of herself. The scene gets in and out quickly enough that the parallel feels discovered rather than displayed.
The prose moves by similar little acts of correction. Hepburn writes in an intimate, fast third person, favoring short-to-medium declaratives, abrupt questions, fragments, profanity, and free-indirect commentary that seldom allows a thought to remain dignified for long. Holly notices risk, rank, competence, embarrassment. Kyra reaches more readily for history, gender, spectacle, politics, and the inconvenience of having a body that keeps developing opinions of its own. Both women are funniest when their preferred version of themselves lasts only a sentence or two. Holly can convert anxiety into procedure; Kyra can convert embarrassment into historical commentary and then discover that neither maneuver has fooled her body. The fragments matter because they interrupt self-explanation before it hardens into certainty. A judgment arrives. Something inconvenient intrudes. The mind swerves.
Rather than simply chopping the novel into thriller-sized pieces, the seventy-five chapters keep shifting who gets to name what is happening. Chapter One gives the burning barrel to Holly as emergency, professional challenge, and appalling reunion; Chapter Two gives the same moment to Kyra as smell, spectacle, documentary material, and the return of the girl she believes betrayed her. The event stays still while authority moves. Even the chapter break functions like a small argument: Holly’s version is not disproved, only deprived of monopoly. That transfer keeps recurring. One consciousness settles on an explanation, another loosens it, and the reader spends much of “Bonfire” crossing the gap before either woman can close it.
In Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen, the criminal case and the emotional one briefly use the same circuitry. At Natasha Ferdinand’s women-only retreat, Holly’s usual self-policing loosens enough for her to reconstruct how Lily may have been moved toward the barrel and to acknowledge truths about Ian, Joe, Kyra, and herself that she has kept in separate rooms. Then the focal point changes. Kyra revisits the school catastrophe from the side that absorbed its social cost. Holly calls her adolescent desire “creepy.” Kyra answers, “That’s not creepy, that’s puberty.” One noun turns shame into development. It cannot turn damage back into innocence.
Permission, Natasha tells Holly, is the only drug she has given her. The line is almost too polished, but the novel earns it by showing how thoroughly Holly has mistaken self-denial for self-command. Kyra’s memory then prevents Holly’s awakening from swallowing the moral frame. At school, Holly redirected queer suspicion toward Kyra, whose darker skin, black hair, food, and less secure place among their classmates made the accusation easier to absorb. They were both frightened girls. They were not equally protected frightened girls. Mutual desire does not retroactively equalize what happened.
At Holly’s kitchen table, the problem becomes less dramatic and in some ways more painful. Ian, his son Joe, talk of custody, reduced working hours, perhaps a baby: none of it is fraudulent. Holly cares for them. That is precisely why the life cannot be dismissed as a mistake she simply corrects by choosing Kyra. Partner, potential stepmother, daughter of a policeman, newly promoted DCI – the roles lock neatly together. Domestic permanence makes the closet feel less like a secret compartment than a load-bearing wall. Move it and the question is not whether the house was fake. It is what can remain standing afterward.
Perhaps inevitably in a novel so interested in versions of people, cameras keep multiplying. Press lenses, documentary equipment, CCTV, phones, subscriber pages, sexual-content recording, livestreams, anonymous profiles: bodies in “Bonfire” are forever being turned into material. Lily can be hyper-visible and still barely known. Kyra can be a historian on camera, an anonymous cyberfeminist online, a sexual target in captivity, and eventually the woman who replaces theduchessofmalfi’s mask with her own soot-blackened face. The useful distinction is not exposure versus privacy. It is whether the person being seen can still alter the terms of the seeing.
Against that, Wesley Jones becomes almost suspiciously easy to read. He has learned how to make coercion sound permissive. The women want to create sexual material, he insists; he understands what male consumers require; older feminists who object are the real shamers. When Kyra protests that women are being pushed into pornography, he can convert resistance into prudishness before converting disagreement into physical violence. It is an ugly, credible rhetorical trick. It also leaves Wesley carrying grooming, sexual entitlement, blackmail, assault, murder, abduction, humiliation, and attempted mass violence. By the final act there is little left to learn about him except the next thing he is capable of doing.
Deeper unease comes from Calvin because his grievance contains a truth Wesley’s does not. Accused by Kyra of exploitation, he responds with the Campion-Fuller family’s treatment of his father and of him: economic ruin, disposability, compromised prospects, resentment fermented into a private theory of justice. He has been used. He then uses that fact to justify using other people. Hepburn refuses the cheap arithmetic by which suffering cancels guilt, but Calvin’s late emergence as someone psychologically knotted rather than simply monstrous exposes a pacing cost. By the time the knot becomes visible, the novel is already racing through captivity, explosives, fire, armed police, and pursuit.
If the opening teaches Holly to fear Lewes around fire, the Pelham Arms blaze teaches her something more awkward. Townspeople form a human chain, carrying water, sand, and extinguishers toward an unstable inferno that any sensible civilian would flee. Her response is wonderfully unreformed: what the hell is wrong with these people? Then experience makes her change the category without changing the facts. “In any normal town this would be a disaster,” she thinks, but in Lewes the same familiarity with flame that looked like civic lunacy at the beginning becomes practical fluency. She was not wrong to see recklessness. She was wrong to think recklessness had only one possible use. The close reading is almost embarrassingly literal: the same town that made Holly recoil from people carrying flame now supplies people carrying buckets toward it. Hepburn changes no symbol. She changes the action performed around it.
Moments later, the correction turns dangerous in the opposite direction. Wesley is led through an enraged crowd, and Kyra feels how little would be required to convert anger into vengeance. “It’s a tinderbox. They just need one spark.” She wants to be that spark. These are essentially the same people who passed buckets down the human chain. The difference is not virtue suddenly gained or lost; it is what their shared energy is being asked to do. Holly’s opening phrase, “a hair’s breadth from a mob,” returns with an uncomfortable amendment. She had misnamed the crowd, but she had not imagined the hair’s breadth.
Iona Hepburn did not need to invent the tension between Lewes Bonfire and authority. The historical timeline maintained by Lewes Bonfire Night Celebrations records police attempts to suppress the festivities, the Riot Act being read during serious clashes in 1847, and a 1906 prohibition on street fires and burning tar barrels that ended with four Bonfire Boys arrested, acquitted, and supporters lighting another fire outside the police station. That history does not certify the novel’s politics. It simply makes Holly’s institutional position stranger: she is a police officer entering a civic tradition whose modern identity was partly forged in resistance to people like her telling it where, when, and how to burn.
The elemental pattern is intentional too. In a September 2026 interview with Cathy Hayward for the Creative Writing Programme, Hepburn described the hoped-for Sussex series as returning to folklore, power dynamics, and historical parallels, with fire giving way to air as the governing element of the second book. Intentions do not improve pages after the fact. What the interview clarifies is why the recurrence feels so insistent. Fire is not simply an image that returns because the title requires it; it is meant to be a pressure system through which violence, ritual, spectacle, danger, belonging, and rescue keep changing relation. More revealing is where “Bonfire” occasionally mistrusts what it has already built and gives a character the job of explaining it.
Read beside one another, the murder, the old friendship, the Bonfire traditions, the online sexual economy, and the local hierarchies begin to occupy similar shapes without becoming the same story. Community can resemble a mob. Sexual agency can be made to resemble consent under pressure. Visibility can resemble self-possession even when somebody else controls the image. Explanation can resemble excuse. Historical memory can resemble permission to keep doing what has always been done. The better scenes leave those resemblances unstable long enough for the reader to feel why sorting them matters.
One scene shows the risk when that patience runs out. After her captivity, Kyra records a video with the burning pub and the OnlyCams women behind her. She invokes the Sussex motto “We won’t be druv,” folds together shame, coercion, collective resistance, politics, and pornography, then replaces the anonymous image on her feminist account with her own blackened face. The gesture is excellent. The speech is nearly a paragraph of the review the novel has already written for itself. The image is strong enough to finish the argument. The speech keeps going.
Physical force keeps the book from floating away into a theory of who controls the story. Kyra can reclaim an account; she cannot reclaim what Wesley did. Lily’s body cannot be restored by a better explanation of the systems surrounding it. Race, money, professional status, sexual vulnerability, and institutional authority affect whose version of events has consequences before anyone gets the luxury of narrating them well. “Bonfire” is most convincing when stories are one form of pressure among others, not the master explanation for all of them.
One of the quiet strengths of Holly and Kyra’s relationship is that reciprocal desire never becomes retrospective absolution. Holly loved Kyra. Kyra loved Holly. Neither fact cancels Holly’s decision to protect herself by letting suspicion settle more heavily on somebody with less social protection. Their adult chemistry therefore cannot function as compensation for finally discovering what happened. If anything, a more accurate account leaves them with fewer excuses for treating the hurt as finished.
Under the soot and sirens, Chapter Seventy-Five becomes unexpectedly patient. Holly and Kyra embrace until Holly cannot tell whose heartbeat is whose. For a moment the prose physically merges them. Then the conversation starts pulling them apart again. Holly’s desire is not Kyra’s. Explanation is not forgiveness. Attraction is not readiness. Behind them the burning building gives way just as Holly learns that Kyra had wanted her too, that each girl had mistaken the other’s retreat for rejection. The symbolism could hardly make itself more available. Hepburn declines the easiest version of it. The old structure falls; the women remain complicated.
Less neatly, Kyra says that part of her may still want to punish Holly. She does not know whether her attraction tells her something settled about women, something singular about Holly, or something more uncomfortable about enjoying the power Holly’s desire gives her. She proposes friendship, then admits she wants to kiss Holly, then warns that she may break Holly’s heart. Holly says, “I know,” and reaches for her hand. The line lands because the whole novel has made knowing look dangerous whenever it becomes too complete. Here “I know” is small enough to be trustworthy. It promises no forecast.
On the level of individual sentences, “Bonfire” is lively more often than singular, which is one reason I stop short of the highest rating band. Hepburn gets people through rooms, clues, jokes, embarrassment, desire, and danger with enviable speed, but I rarely paused over a sentence for its construction alone. Wesley flattens as his crimes multiply; Calvin becomes interesting later than he should; a few secondary characters arrive already carrying the institution or argument they are meant to represent. None of those weaknesses tears the book apart. They do mark where its ambition outruns its texture. The gap is clearest when a scene already contains the right friction and a later sentence translates it into an argument. Hepburn is at her best when she lets the friction remain audible.
So my final rating remains 86/100, translating to 4/5 Goodreads stars. That is a strong four for a consistently accomplished thriller: formally alert, emotionally intelligent, exceptionally well paced, and more ambitious about the mechanics of its mystery than its rapid chapters initially advertise. The missing points come from the same appetite that produces some of its best effects. Hepburn likes connections. Usually she lets them ignite one another. Occasionally she keeps striking the match after the fire has caught.
Difficult as the murder is, the image that stays with me is quieter: Holly and Kyra on the church steps while blackened timbers collapse behind them, finally possessing the most accurate version of their shared past they have ever had and still unable to say what happens next. One reaches for the other’s hand. Nothing is solved except the mistake. For once, “Bonfire” leaves interpretation there.
Iona Hepburn’s “Bonfire” Gives Us Flaming Barrels, Queer History, Online Exploitation, One Extremely Unhelpful Fifteen-Year Misunderstanding, and a Town That Knows Far Too Much About Fire
By Demetris Papadimitropoulos | October 4th, 2026
Drenched in smoke, ash, fireworks, and bad civic judgment, Iona Hepburn’s “Bonfire” begins with DCI Holly Hennessy trying to decide what kind of crowd she is looking at. Lewes is “high on light and community,” yet Holly keeps renaming the same spectacle: pageant, tribe, football crowd, finally “a hair’s breadth from a mob.” Her senses are not failing her. Children really are carrying flame; “No Popery” banners really are passing through the street; the crowd really does possess the unnerving coordination of people briefly surrendering themselves to ritual. The uncertainty lies in the noun. Then a burning barrel tears through the festivities and breaks open to reveal a badly burned young woman. Hepburn has her murder, but she has also planted the mistake that will matter more: seeing clearly and explaining badly are not opposites.
Evidence begins multiplying almost faster than Holly can sort it. The victim is nineteen-year-old Lily Taylor; the case spreads through Bonfire Societies, local money, academia, gaming culture, sexual-content platforms, institutional reputation, and online misogyny. It also puts Holly back in front of Dr Kyra Ford, née Santiago, a historian and documentary presenter she has not seen since their friendship detonated at school fifteen years earlier. The investigation and the reunion run together until each starts contaminating the other. Holly is trying to establish what happened to Lily. Holly and Kyra are also, with considerably worse professional discipline, trying to establish what happened to them.
Most of the trouble in “Bonfire” comes not from an empty evidence board but from a crowded one. A women’s pagan retreat looks sinister because Lily was burned. An abrasive lecturer with ugly sexual interests fits a familiar predator profile until his death ruins the convenience of that conclusion. A message seems to prove a dead girl is alive until the distinction between a person and the account speaking in her name becomes unavoidable. Holly’s life produces another convincing false positive: boyfriend, child in the household, career success, family continuity, all the outward evidence of settlement. The facts are often sound. The arrangement is where trouble begins.
Elsewhere, digital uncertainty and Holly’s private uncertainty collide almost indecently well. During a video call, Zara tells her that being caught with a girl changed the course of her family life. Holly hears herself responding too personally and thinks, “Is this my narrative now too?” Then Zara says Lily cannot be dead because Lily has messaged her that morning. In a handful of lines, Holly is forced to consider whether somebody else is speaking through a dead woman’s account while realizing that she may have spent years speaking through an increasingly inaccurate account of herself. The scene gets in and out quickly enough that the parallel feels discovered rather than displayed.
The prose moves by similar little acts of correction. Hepburn writes in an intimate, fast third person, favoring short-to-medium declaratives, abrupt questions, fragments, profanity, and free-indirect commentary that seldom allows a thought to remain dignified for long. Holly notices risk, rank, competence, embarrassment. Kyra reaches more readily for history, gender, spectacle, politics, and the inconvenience of having a body that keeps developing opinions of its own. Both women are funniest when their preferred version of themselves lasts only a sentence or two. Holly can convert anxiety into procedure; Kyra can convert embarrassment into historical commentary and then discover that neither maneuver has fooled her body. The fragments matter because they interrupt self-explanation before it hardens into certainty. A judgment arrives. Something inconvenient intrudes. The mind swerves.
Rather than simply chopping the novel into thriller-sized pieces, the seventy-five chapters keep shifting who gets to name what is happening. Chapter One gives the burning barrel to Holly as emergency, professional challenge, and appalling reunion; Chapter Two gives the same moment to Kyra as smell, spectacle, documentary material, and the return of the girl she believes betrayed her. The event stays still while authority moves. Even the chapter break functions like a small argument: Holly’s version is not disproved, only deprived of monopoly. That transfer keeps recurring. One consciousness settles on an explanation, another loosens it, and the reader spends much of “Bonfire” crossing the gap before either woman can close it.
In Chapters Fifteen and Sixteen, the criminal case and the emotional one briefly use the same circuitry. At Natasha Ferdinand’s women-only retreat, Holly’s usual self-policing loosens enough for her to reconstruct how Lily may have been moved toward the barrel and to acknowledge truths about Ian, Joe, Kyra, and herself that she has kept in separate rooms. Then the focal point changes. Kyra revisits the school catastrophe from the side that absorbed its social cost. Holly calls her adolescent desire “creepy.” Kyra answers, “That’s not creepy, that’s puberty.” One noun turns shame into development. It cannot turn damage back into innocence.
Permission, Natasha tells Holly, is the only drug she has given her. The line is almost too polished, but the novel earns it by showing how thoroughly Holly has mistaken self-denial for self-command. Kyra’s memory then prevents Holly’s awakening from swallowing the moral frame. At school, Holly redirected queer suspicion toward Kyra, whose darker skin, black hair, food, and less secure place among their classmates made the accusation easier to absorb. They were both frightened girls. They were not equally protected frightened girls. Mutual desire does not retroactively equalize what happened.
At Holly’s kitchen table, the problem becomes less dramatic and in some ways more painful. Ian, his son Joe, talk of custody, reduced working hours, perhaps a baby: none of it is fraudulent. Holly cares for them. That is precisely why the life cannot be dismissed as a mistake she simply corrects by choosing Kyra. Partner, potential stepmother, daughter of a policeman, newly promoted DCI – the roles lock neatly together. Domestic permanence makes the closet feel less like a secret compartment than a load-bearing wall. Move it and the question is not whether the house was fake. It is what can remain standing afterward.
Perhaps inevitably in a novel so interested in versions of people, cameras keep multiplying. Press lenses, documentary equipment, CCTV, phones, subscriber pages, sexual-content recording, livestreams, anonymous profiles: bodies in “Bonfire” are forever being turned into material. Lily can be hyper-visible and still barely known. Kyra can be a historian on camera, an anonymous cyberfeminist online, a sexual target in captivity, and eventually the woman who replaces theduchessofmalfi’s mask with her own soot-blackened face. The useful distinction is not exposure versus privacy. It is whether the person being seen can still alter the terms of the seeing.
Against that, Wesley Jones becomes almost suspiciously easy to read. He has learned how to make coercion sound permissive. The women want to create sexual material, he insists; he understands what male consumers require; older feminists who object are the real shamers. When Kyra protests that women are being pushed into pornography, he can convert resistance into prudishness before converting disagreement into physical violence. It is an ugly, credible rhetorical trick. It also leaves Wesley carrying grooming, sexual entitlement, blackmail, assault, murder, abduction, humiliation, and attempted mass violence. By the final act there is little left to learn about him except the next thing he is capable of doing.
Deeper unease comes from Calvin because his grievance contains a truth Wesley’s does not. Accused by Kyra of exploitation, he responds with the Campion-Fuller family’s treatment of his father and of him: economic ruin, disposability, compromised prospects, resentment fermented into a private theory of justice. He has been used. He then uses that fact to justify using other people. Hepburn refuses the cheap arithmetic by which suffering cancels guilt, but Calvin’s late emergence as someone psychologically knotted rather than simply monstrous exposes a pacing cost. By the time the knot becomes visible, the novel is already racing through captivity, explosives, fire, armed police, and pursuit.
If the opening teaches Holly to fear Lewes around fire, the Pelham Arms blaze teaches her something more awkward. Townspeople form a human chain, carrying water, sand, and extinguishers toward an unstable inferno that any sensible civilian would flee. Her response is wonderfully unreformed: what the hell is wrong with these people? Then experience makes her change the category without changing the facts. “In any normal town this would be a disaster,” she thinks, but in Lewes the same familiarity with flame that looked like civic lunacy at the beginning becomes practical fluency. She was not wrong to see recklessness. She was wrong to think recklessness had only one possible use. The close reading is almost embarrassingly literal: the same town that made Holly recoil from people carrying flame now supplies people carrying buckets toward it. Hepburn changes no symbol. She changes the action performed around it.
Moments later, the correction turns dangerous in the opposite direction. Wesley is led through an enraged crowd, and Kyra feels how little would be required to convert anger into vengeance. “It’s a tinderbox. They just need one spark.” She wants to be that spark. These are essentially the same people who passed buckets down the human chain. The difference is not virtue suddenly gained or lost; it is what their shared energy is being asked to do. Holly’s opening phrase, “a hair’s breadth from a mob,” returns with an uncomfortable amendment. She had misnamed the crowd, but she had not imagined the hair’s breadth.
Iona Hepburn did not need to invent the tension between Lewes Bonfire and authority. The historical timeline maintained by Lewes Bonfire Night Celebrations records police attempts to suppress the festivities, the Riot Act being read during serious clashes in 1847, and a 1906 prohibition on street fires and burning tar barrels that ended with four Bonfire Boys arrested, acquitted, and supporters lighting another fire outside the police station. That history does not certify the novel’s politics. It simply makes Holly’s institutional position stranger: she is a police officer entering a civic tradition whose modern identity was partly forged in resistance to people like her telling it where, when, and how to burn.
The elemental pattern is intentional too. In a September 2026 interview with Cathy Hayward for the Creative Writing Programme, Hepburn described the hoped-for Sussex series as returning to folklore, power dynamics, and historical parallels, with fire giving way to air as the governing element of the second book. Intentions do not improve pages after the fact. What the interview clarifies is why the recurrence feels so insistent. Fire is not simply an image that returns because the title requires it; it is meant to be a pressure system through which violence, ritual, spectacle, danger, belonging, and rescue keep changing relation. More revealing is where “Bonfire” occasionally mistrusts what it has already built and gives a character the job of explaining it.
Read beside one another, the murder, the old friendship, the Bonfire traditions, the online sexual economy, and the local hierarchies begin to occupy similar shapes without becoming the same story. Community can resemble a mob. Sexual agency can be made to resemble consent under pressure. Visibility can resemble self-possession even when somebody else controls the image. Explanation can resemble excuse. Historical memory can resemble permission to keep doing what has always been done. The better scenes leave those resemblances unstable long enough for the reader to feel why sorting them matters.
One scene shows the risk when that patience runs out. After her captivity, Kyra records a video with the burning pub and the OnlyCams women behind her. She invokes the Sussex motto “We won’t be druv,” folds together shame, coercion, collective resistance, politics, and pornography, then replaces the anonymous image on her feminist account with her own blackened face. The gesture is excellent. The speech is nearly a paragraph of the review the novel has already written for itself. The image is strong enough to finish the argument. The speech keeps going.
Physical force keeps the book from floating away into a theory of who controls the story. Kyra can reclaim an account; she cannot reclaim what Wesley did. Lily’s body cannot be restored by a better explanation of the systems surrounding it. Race, money, professional status, sexual vulnerability, and institutional authority affect whose version of events has consequences before anyone gets the luxury of narrating them well. “Bonfire” is most convincing when stories are one form of pressure among others, not the master explanation for all of them.
One of the quiet strengths of Holly and Kyra’s relationship is that reciprocal desire never becomes retrospective absolution. Holly loved Kyra. Kyra loved Holly. Neither fact cancels Holly’s decision to protect herself by letting suspicion settle more heavily on somebody with less social protection. Their adult chemistry therefore cannot function as compensation for finally discovering what happened. If anything, a more accurate account leaves them with fewer excuses for treating the hurt as finished.
Under the soot and sirens, Chapter Seventy-Five becomes unexpectedly patient. Holly and Kyra embrace until Holly cannot tell whose heartbeat is whose. For a moment the prose physically merges them. Then the conversation starts pulling them apart again. Holly’s desire is not Kyra’s. Explanation is not forgiveness. Attraction is not readiness. Behind them the burning building gives way just as Holly learns that Kyra had wanted her too, that each girl had mistaken the other’s retreat for rejection. The symbolism could hardly make itself more available. Hepburn declines the easiest version of it. The old structure falls; the women remain complicated.
Less neatly, Kyra says that part of her may still want to punish Holly. She does not know whether her attraction tells her something settled about women, something singular about Holly, or something more uncomfortable about enjoying the power Holly’s desire gives her. She proposes friendship, then admits she wants to kiss Holly, then warns that she may break Holly’s heart. Holly says, “I know,” and reaches for her hand. The line lands because the whole novel has made knowing look dangerous whenever it becomes too complete. Here “I know” is small enough to be trustworthy. It promises no forecast.
On the level of individual sentences, “Bonfire” is lively more often than singular, which is one reason I stop short of the highest rating band. Hepburn gets people through rooms, clues, jokes, embarrassment, desire, and danger with enviable speed, but I rarely paused over a sentence for its construction alone. Wesley flattens as his crimes multiply; Calvin becomes interesting later than he should; a few secondary characters arrive already carrying the institution or argument they are meant to represent. None of those weaknesses tears the book apart. They do mark where its ambition outruns its texture. The gap is clearest when a scene already contains the right friction and a later sentence translates it into an argument. Hepburn is at her best when she lets the friction remain audible.
So my final rating remains 86/100, translating to 4/5 Goodreads stars. That is a strong four for a consistently accomplished thriller: formally alert, emotionally intelligent, exceptionally well paced, and more ambitious about the mechanics of its mystery than its rapid chapters initially advertise. The missing points come from the same appetite that produces some of its best effects. Hepburn likes connections. Usually she lets them ignite one another. Occasionally she keeps striking the match after the fire has caught.
Difficult as the murder is, the image that stays with me is quieter: Holly and Kyra on the church steps while blackened timbers collapse behind them, finally possessing the most accurate version of their shared past they have ever had and still unable to say what happens next. One reaches for the other’s hand. Nothing is solved except the mistake. For once, “Bonfire” leaves interpretation there.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Bonfire Night in Lewes, and DI Holly Hennessy has just leapt across the road and knocked a camera team out of the way of a burning barrel, which continues down until it crashes into the exhibit of a Bonfire Society. The camera team, one operator and the woman being recorded, are initially angry, then they realise Holly has saved them from serious injury, then they witness the barrel shattering on impact, releasing the badly burned body of a young woman, Lily. The woman who was being recorded is University History Lecturer Dr Kara Ford and Holly realises that she knows her, well knew her twenty years when they were both fifteen year old pupils at a Catholic Convent School. They had been close (very close) which had led to a schism between them. Holly is given the SIO role in the investigation into the murder of Lily, and Kara is a crucial witness, not only to the event but as a source of information about the centuries old rituals of Bonfire Nigh in Lewes, especially the roles played by the various Bonfire Societies. Was her death part of a traditional ritual, or was it connected to her work on ‘private’ websites?
Bonfire night (5th November) is a tradition throughout the UK, but Lewes in Sussex goes way beyond the norm. This more complex set of traditions and rituals is the background to this police procedural. It is a very good background and some of its peculiarities are helpful in clouding the investigation. Police procedurals have their own conventions, one being that the “Detective” is troubled in some way. Holly is true to this convention, being a closeted lesbian now falling in love with Kara. This is a fairly rare trope (e.g. the Kate Delafield and LA Metro series) and is handled well, impeding the investigation as required. As to the plot, it is rather too long through the middle (back and forth evidence gathering ), but speeds up considerably in the closing stages, lots of tension. The ending is rather abrupt, suggesting that these characters might return, and I find myself – somewhat surprisingly – looking forward to reading that.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.
Bonfire night (5th November) is a tradition throughout the UK, but Lewes in Sussex goes way beyond the norm. This more complex set of traditions and rituals is the background to this police procedural. It is a very good background and some of its peculiarities are helpful in clouding the investigation. Police procedurals have their own conventions, one being that the “Detective” is troubled in some way. Holly is true to this convention, being a closeted lesbian now falling in love with Kara. This is a fairly rare trope (e.g. the Kate Delafield and LA Metro series) and is handled well, impeding the investigation as required. As to the plot, it is rather too long through the middle (back and forth evidence gathering ), but speeds up considerably in the closing stages, lots of tension. The ending is rather abrupt, suggesting that these characters might return, and I find myself – somewhat surprisingly – looking forward to reading that.
I would like to thank NetGalley, the publishers and the author for providing me with a draft proof copy for the purpose of this review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
In Lewes there are different - and rival - Bonfire societies, one of which is The Pelham. We meet Natasha Ferdinand, vineyard owner and self-styled Wiccan. She was once a senior member of The Pelham Society but, like Kyra and Holly, they have fallen out in dramatic fashion. Coincidentally (or perhaps not) Lily's stepfather Phil Dean is a member of The Pelham Society. Via one of her students, Kyra discovers that Lily's gamer persona had a rather different side to it. She was also to be seen on the adult channel OnlyCams and may have even been groomed by her tutor Dr Ambrose Woolf.
CCTV footage emerges that shows a ceremonially masked man in a pub full of revellers. He meets Lily, appears to slip something into her drink and, when the drug takes effect a little while later, he 'helps' her from the pub. Woolf is brought in for questioning, but is not detained. The next day, he is found dead in his house. It is a grim scene that Holly sees.
"In the weak oyster light, she takes in his ashen, lifeless face. Pulling back the duvet to reveal the rest of his body, she sees the deep slit on his right wrist and the shallower slash on his left. He's wearing nothing but a pair of soiled y-fronts and his body is marble white. The lean torso and stomach so hairless he looks almost polished."
Iona Hepburn is an ICU doctor who has worked in Lewes, taught at Sussex University, and now lives in Brighton with her wife and daughter. She likens her medical career to that of police detectives in their shared sense of humanity and over-familiarity with death. Bonfire has an unusual subtext for a mainstream crime novel, but it works. There is drama a-plenty, human passion, and a wry take on modern values.The narrative is immersive and totally convincing. It is Iona Hepburn's debut novel, and it will be published by Allison and Busby on 22nd October.
CCTV footage emerges that shows a ceremonially masked man in a pub full of revellers. He meets Lily, appears to slip something into her drink and, when the drug takes effect a little while later, he 'helps' her from the pub. Woolf is brought in for questioning, but is not detained. The next day, he is found dead in his house. It is a grim scene that Holly sees.
"In the weak oyster light, she takes in his ashen, lifeless face. Pulling back the duvet to reveal the rest of his body, she sees the deep slit on his right wrist and the shallower slash on his left. He's wearing nothing but a pair of soiled y-fronts and his body is marble white. The lean torso and stomach so hairless he looks almost polished."
Iona Hepburn is an ICU doctor who has worked in Lewes, taught at Sussex University, and now lives in Brighton with her wife and daughter. She likens her medical career to that of police detectives in their shared sense of humanity and over-familiarity with death. Bonfire has an unusual subtext for a mainstream crime novel, but it works. There is drama a-plenty, human passion, and a wry take on modern values.The narrative is immersive and totally convincing. It is Iona Hepburn's debut novel, and it will be published by Allison and Busby on 22nd October.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks NetGalley for the ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.
I almost DNF this around the 40% mark. I was bored and had to reread paragraphs over-not only because the language was hard to understand at times, but I couldn't focus on the story.
There was so much hateful things the men in this book did, and yes, I get that is real life and men definitely suck, but I got tired of reading how much these men derogated these women. It was slander this and rape that and murder. So, the themes are definitely dark, but that wasn't necessarily what bothered me.
The romance is definitely subplot-ish. There's an attraction that Holly immediately feels after 15 years of not seeing Kyra. Hepburn doesn't devote too much time into describing the recognition that Holly can't be with men anymore, until nearly the end of the book. I would have liked to see more of this flushed out and described.
On top of that, Kyra isn't even sure she's attracted to women, though she's had sex with two others whilst she was married to her husband but "there's something about Holly." I just think that was a bit lazy and would have liked more development.
Also, the ending... I do *not* like ambiguous endings and IMO, Bonfire definitely has one.. I get that the story is a bit grim but if Hepburn had just given the romance a tad more attention, even in small ways, I wouldn't have read it and (literally) rolled my eyes, saying "Are you serious? I'm so annoyed I spent my time on this book."
Yeah, so this book was not for me.
I almost DNF this around the 40% mark. I was bored and had to reread paragraphs over-not only because the language was hard to understand at times, but I couldn't focus on the story.
There was so much hateful things the men in this book did, and yes, I get that is real life and men definitely suck, but I got tired of reading how much these men derogated these women. It was slander this and rape that and murder. So, the themes are definitely dark, but that wasn't necessarily what bothered me.
The romance is definitely subplot-ish. There's an attraction that Holly immediately feels after 15 years of not seeing Kyra. Hepburn doesn't devote too much time into describing the recognition that Holly can't be with men anymore, until nearly the end of the book. I would have liked to see more of this flushed out and described.
On top of that, Kyra isn't even sure she's attracted to women, though she's had sex with two others whilst she was married to her husband but "there's something about Holly." I just think that was a bit lazy and would have liked more development.
Also, the ending... I do *not* like ambiguous endings and IMO, Bonfire definitely has one.. I get that the story is a bit grim but if Hepburn had just given the romance a tad more attention, even in small ways, I wouldn't have read it and (literally) rolled my eyes, saying "Are you serious? I'm so annoyed I spent my time on this book."
Yeah, so this book was not for me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The initial premise in Bonfire had serious potential however the execution just didn't hold my interest. The book starts with a bang literally, a flaming barrel rolls down the street during the Bonfire celebration and splits open to reveal a body. It’s a dramatic, atmospheric hook that makes you think you're in for a gritty, fast paced ride.
Unfortunately, right after that fiery opening chapter, the momentum just drags. The story gets bogged down by an endless parade of side quests and a muddled web of suspects that caused my connection to the main murder investigation to completely wane. Instead of building on the unique folklore or leaning into the cool, ritualistic elements hinted at by the setting, the world building ended up feeling zero to none.
The pacing felt incredibly weird and I spent a lot of time feeling disconnected and confused by the disjointed timeline. My biggest issue, though, was with the characters and their unusual interactions. We are told that Holly is a lesbian yet she has a boyfriend and the narrative spends an exhaustive amount of time focusing on their respective male love interests instead of developing the actual sapphic plot. To make matters worse, the story reveals that Holly was the one who originally cheated on Kyra fifteen years ago. The math is just not mathing for me.
Unfortunately, right after that fiery opening chapter, the momentum just drags. The story gets bogged down by an endless parade of side quests and a muddled web of suspects that caused my connection to the main murder investigation to completely wane. Instead of building on the unique folklore or leaning into the cool, ritualistic elements hinted at by the setting, the world building ended up feeling zero to none.
The pacing felt incredibly weird and I spent a lot of time feeling disconnected and confused by the disjointed timeline. My biggest issue, though, was with the characters and their unusual interactions. We are told that Holly is a lesbian yet she has a boyfriend and the narrative spends an exhaustive amount of time focusing on their respective male love interests instead of developing the actual sapphic plot. To make matters worse, the story reveals that Holly was the one who originally cheated on Kyra fifteen years ago. The math is just not mathing for me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
> "Like rewarmed bacon fat on the base of a grill pan. Fleshy, metallic and sweet."
★ ★ ⯪ ☆ ☆
CAN YOU FORGIVE THE PAST, TO MOVE INTO THE PRESENT?.
Just as DCI Holly Hennessy is promoted in her field, she's faced with an unprecidented crime -- a teenage girl, murdered in front of the entire town. But solving the crime won't be easy, the locals don't trust her and a woman from her past stands in her way. Can she prove herself to her team, and right her wrongs?
I read this book incredibly quickly, and it was an easy to digest read -- the concept was initially what drew me to the book, and I am glad I read it.
One of my biggest problems about the book is the first few chapters, there's a lot of reading to be done without much happening and the initial writing of the incident feels frantic, but in a way where I feel I read the writing on the page but couldn't READ it if that makes sense.
However, one thing Hepburn does well is the whole procedural part of the book -- you can tell she has experience within that sort of area (due to her time in the front line of the medicial profession). If you enjoy that sort of thing in a book, then this 100% is right up your alley!
I do hope Iona Hepburn continues within this series, to see DCI Holly Hennessy grow and change -- and we can get deeper into her physce and her development through more books!
★ ★ ⯪ ☆ ☆
CAN YOU FORGIVE THE PAST, TO MOVE INTO THE PRESENT?.
Just as DCI Holly Hennessy is promoted in her field, she's faced with an unprecidented crime -- a teenage girl, murdered in front of the entire town. But solving the crime won't be easy, the locals don't trust her and a woman from her past stands in her way. Can she prove herself to her team, and right her wrongs?
I read this book incredibly quickly, and it was an easy to digest read -- the concept was initially what drew me to the book, and I am glad I read it.
One of my biggest problems about the book is the first few chapters, there's a lot of reading to be done without much happening and the initial writing of the incident feels frantic, but in a way where I feel I read the writing on the page but couldn't READ it if that makes sense.
However, one thing Hepburn does well is the whole procedural part of the book -- you can tell she has experience within that sort of area (due to her time in the front line of the medicial profession). If you enjoy that sort of thing in a book, then this 100% is right up your alley!
I do hope Iona Hepburn continues within this series, to see DCI Holly Hennessy grow and change -- and we can get deeper into her physce and her development through more books!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This book had a really interesting premise, but there was just too much going on, and I never found a character I actually liked. It centers on a murder that takes place during an annual bonfire ceremony in a small town, with Holly as the main character leading the investigation. Holly quickly became my least favorite of the bunch- she came across as selfish and a bit holier-than-thou, and I had a hard time buying that someone so wrapped up in her own love life was also leading a murder investigation that was supposed to consume her every waking thought.
The book tried to cover a lot of ground- there were a lot of different threads and areas explored, and while they all technically made sense together, it ended up feeling unrealistic and like it didn't fully tie together. I also wasn't always clear on some characters' motives for the decisions they made, though that could just be a byproduct of there being so many characters to keep track of. The ending did wrap up the loose ends well, but by that point I found that I didn't really care what happened to any of these characters going forward.
Overall, this one just didn't work for me- too many moving parts and not enough characters worth rooting for. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
The book tried to cover a lot of ground- there were a lot of different threads and areas explored, and while they all technically made sense together, it ended up feeling unrealistic and like it didn't fully tie together. I also wasn't always clear on some characters' motives for the decisions they made, though that could just be a byproduct of there being so many characters to keep track of. The ending did wrap up the loose ends well, but by that point I found that I didn't really care what happened to any of these characters going forward.
Overall, this one just didn't work for me- too many moving parts and not enough characters worth rooting for. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Every year the town of Lewes in Sussex has a Bonfire and this is the first time DCI Holly Hennessy has been there. However, the celebrations are soon called to a halt after a flaming barrel comes down the hill, Holly pushes a few bystanders away before it smashes to reveal a young woman, barely alive.
Briefly, the woman dies and it is now a murder case and as the investigation continues Holly has to face a blast from the past. A former friend from her schooldays, Kyra Ford, who she betrayed putting an end to their friendship. Kyra is now an academic and documentary presenter and was one of those Holly pushed aside from the burning barrel.
This started really well, high tension and interesting characters, but I did find the multiple threads that were happening was probably just a bit too much. I enjoyed the main storyline and the relationship between Holly and Kyra, although at times it seemed more important than the murder. I love a good police procedural and this had a lot of good things so I would definitely read the next in series, but maybe not quite so busy please. Entertaining read. 3.5⭐️
Briefly, the woman dies and it is now a murder case and as the investigation continues Holly has to face a blast from the past. A former friend from her schooldays, Kyra Ford, who she betrayed putting an end to their friendship. Kyra is now an academic and documentary presenter and was one of those Holly pushed aside from the burning barrel.
This started really well, high tension and interesting characters, but I did find the multiple threads that were happening was probably just a bit too much. I enjoyed the main storyline and the relationship between Holly and Kyra, although at times it seemed more important than the murder. I love a good police procedural and this had a lot of good things so I would definitely read the next in series, but maybe not quite so busy please. Entertaining read. 3.5⭐️
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Bonfire shows some potential but ultimately becomes another police procedural. The start and the ending are full of action, but the middle section of the book is slower and gets tied up with too many sub plots.
Set in Sussex, the opening sees a burnt body in a barrel rolled into a bonfire parade. New DCI Holly Hennessy investigates, being drawn into the history of bonfire societies in the area. Her guide to this turns out to be a former friend/ crush from her school days. And the attraction may still be there.
The plot strays into cybersex, exploitation and trafficking and dodgy financial dealings, while Holly tries to juggle her failing relationship with Ian, her attraction to Holly and investigating links to the old money family that seems to run the small town.
The ending is neat, and ties up some of the plot lines, but leaves enough for future books. Overall, a fair read but no more.
Set in Sussex, the opening sees a burnt body in a barrel rolled into a bonfire parade. New DCI Holly Hennessy investigates, being drawn into the history of bonfire societies in the area. Her guide to this turns out to be a former friend/ crush from her school days. And the attraction may still be there.
The plot strays into cybersex, exploitation and trafficking and dodgy financial dealings, while Holly tries to juggle her failing relationship with Ian, her attraction to Holly and investigating links to the old money family that seems to run the small town.
The ending is neat, and ties up some of the plot lines, but leaves enough for future books. Overall, a fair read but no more.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The start of a new series. DCI Holly Hennessey is newly promoted and is now stationed in Lewes. On her first operation, a teenage girl is murdered in an horrific fashion. Numerous strands of investigation are opened but the perpetrators are elusive.
This is a character driven police procedural with an interesting and engrossing plot. Holly's personal life is in turmoil and she must balance this with a mask of professionalism. I enjoyed reading Holly's struggle which excellently showed her vulnerability in oppositiion to the tough facade of her police role.
The crime was well plotted and the ending provided thrills and a speeding up of the pace. An excellent start to a new series. I don't know why so many readers on Goodreads have marked this book down. In my opinion it is a highly recommended read.
This is a character driven police procedural with an interesting and engrossing plot. Holly's personal life is in turmoil and she must balance this with a mask of professionalism. I enjoyed reading Holly's struggle which excellently showed her vulnerability in oppositiion to the tough facade of her police role.
The crime was well plotted and the ending provided thrills and a speeding up of the pace. An excellent start to a new series. I don't know why so many readers on Goodreads have marked this book down. In my opinion it is a highly recommended read.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This is the author’s debut crime thriller and I look forward to reading more.
DCI Holly Hennessey is stationed in Lewes, Sussex, and at her first Lewes Bonfire. When the burning barrel comes racing down the hill, it crashes and reveals the badly burned body of a young woman. Holly forces her way through the crowd, pushing people aside, to reach the barrel. One of the people she forces out of the way is Kyra Ford, a television presenter and expert on the history and folklore of the Lewes Bonfire. Kyra is also something else – an old schoolfriend of Holly, but the friendship ended very badly. Kyra and Holly have to face each other during the police investigation.
A gripping police procedural.
Thank you to NetGalley and Allison & Busby for an advance reader copy in return for an honest review.
DCI Holly Hennessey is stationed in Lewes, Sussex, and at her first Lewes Bonfire. When the burning barrel comes racing down the hill, it crashes and reveals the badly burned body of a young woman. Holly forces her way through the crowd, pushing people aside, to reach the barrel. One of the people she forces out of the way is Kyra Ford, a television presenter and expert on the history and folklore of the Lewes Bonfire. Kyra is also something else – an old schoolfriend of Holly, but the friendship ended very badly. Kyra and Holly have to face each other during the police investigation.
A gripping police procedural.
Thank you to NetGalley and Allison & Busby for an advance reader copy in return for an honest review.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This was a taut thriller that did not shy away from the grisly details of a multiple murder case. On bonfire night in Lewes, UK, during a torchlight procession, a flaming barrel comes down the street containing a student from the local university. DCI Holly throws herself at a camera crew to save them from the oncoming barrel. She saves the life of a local historian, Kyra who just happens to be someone she treated cruelly at school 15 years previously. In the ensuing investigation, the two cross each others path and once the bad feeling is eliminated between them, the attraction they once felt is rekindled. In a dark plot, together Holly is able to apprehend the villains who had been guilty of sexual abuse and manipulation of vulnerable people. An absorbing read, but one that delves into the darker side of humanity.
Read
September 7, 2026Bonfire by Iona Hepburn kicks off with a central tragedy—a local blaze that claims more than just property. As the investigation deepens, the story weaves back and forth between past events and present-day fallout. The main protagonist is forced to return to or confront a tight-knit community where everyone has a motive, and no one’s memory of the past aligns completely. The mid-book slump is one of the most frustrating parts of a psychological thriller—especially when the premise starts strong with a fire and a pile of small-town secrets. The final act abandons the slow-burn procedural pace for a high-intensity, chaotic confrontation. The tension ramps up dramatically compared to the sluggish mid-section, providing a strong adrenaline rush to cap off the story.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Review of advance copy received on NetGalley
Bonfire started out strong and had a premise that I thought had a lot of potential, but unfortunately, it quickly became a tangled web of characters, secrets, and storylines that left me feeling pretty confused.
I also never felt like I fully understood the whole bonfire ritual/secret society aspect of the story, which made it harder for me to connect with the mystery. There were definitely some interesting pieces here, but they didn't come together as cohesively as I had hoped. And that ending...I genuinely thought my Kindle had frozen because I was like, wait... that's it?! Nope. That really was the last page. It felt incredibly abrupt and left me wanting more resolution.
Bonfire started out strong and had a premise that I thought had a lot of potential, but unfortunately, it quickly became a tangled web of characters, secrets, and storylines that left me feeling pretty confused.
I also never felt like I fully understood the whole bonfire ritual/secret society aspect of the story, which made it harder for me to connect with the mystery. There were definitely some interesting pieces here, but they didn't come together as cohesively as I had hoped. And that ending...I genuinely thought my Kindle had frozen because I was like, wait... that's it?! Nope. That really was the last page. It felt incredibly abrupt and left me wanting more resolution.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I think this book has great potential and is a good murder/thriller mystery. However, the sapphic romance storyline that goes along is never really fully developed, and that is why I give it a 3.5 rating. The book starts off with a lot of action and really doesn’t let go until the end. The police procedural aspect was very well written. However, it felt like the author couldn’t decide whether this was a murder mystery or a sapphic romance, and the storyline kind of teeters between the two and ultimately just feels unsatisfying in the end. While the murder investigation is tied up nicely at the end, the sapphic part just felt extraneous at that point.
September 22, 2026
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I liked the premise of this story, even though the subject matter was something I don't know anything about. If you're familiar with Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes, or the Gunpowder Plot, this book might be right up your alley.
There were times in the book where I felt like I was lost or being left behind after the author made certain insinuations. It felt like it was my fault for not understanding what was being said or what had just happened, but really it seem like an underdeveloped plot point from the author.
Overall, it was a good story premise but the writing left me a little lost.
I liked the premise of this story, even though the subject matter was something I don't know anything about. If you're familiar with Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes, or the Gunpowder Plot, this book might be right up your alley.
There were times in the book where I felt like I was lost or being left behind after the author made certain insinuations. It felt like it was my fault for not understanding what was being said or what had just happened, but really it seem like an underdeveloped plot point from the author.
Overall, it was a good story premise but the writing left me a little lost.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
3.5 ⭐
Possible spoilers
I liked this one.
Taking a location, and tradition that dates back a long way, and making it the basis for your crime.
The book certainly starts with a bang, or rather a spark, a rolling barrell on fire coming down the street.
That's enough to get the heart rate pumping.
I liked Holly and Kyra, though less convinced on their fast making up.
It's quite intense, and not overloaded with central characters, which makes you get a better idea of what and why.
Thanks to netgalley for the free digital copy
Possible spoilers
I liked this one.
Taking a location, and tradition that dates back a long way, and making it the basis for your crime.
The book certainly starts with a bang, or rather a spark, a rolling barrell on fire coming down the street.
That's enough to get the heart rate pumping.
I liked Holly and Kyra, though less convinced on their fast making up.
It's quite intense, and not overloaded with central characters, which makes you get a better idea of what and why.
Thanks to netgalley for the free digital copy
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you NetGalley and Allison and Busby for the eARC.
This book starts with DCI Holly Hennessy attending her first Lewis Bonfire when a flaming barrel rolls down the hill.
On investigation there is a body in it.
So starts this mystery that held my attention at first, but then I had a hard time following the story.
The relationship between Holly and her childhood girlfriend was not that believable to me and the writing style was sometimes difficult . I had a hard time following the story, it felt uneven to me.
This book starts with DCI Holly Hennessy attending her first Lewis Bonfire when a flaming barrel rolls down the hill.
On investigation there is a body in it.
So starts this mystery that held my attention at first, but then I had a hard time following the story.
The relationship between Holly and her childhood girlfriend was not that believable to me and the writing style was sometimes difficult . I had a hard time following the story, it felt uneven to me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
2.5 Stars
The story started off on a high note - dramatic and a scene stealer, however, afterwards the pace and momentum dragged.
The case itself was adequately interesting. The multiple line of inquiries and possible suspects muddled the water quite a bit. There were too many side quests that my connection to the main plot waned as the story went on.
The overarching sapphic characters were not very likeable. Each one had their own personal baggage and them trying to rebuild their connection felt forced.
In conclusion, it Bonfire was an underwhelming read for me.
The story started off on a high note - dramatic and a scene stealer, however, afterwards the pace and momentum dragged.
The case itself was adequately interesting. The multiple line of inquiries and possible suspects muddled the water quite a bit. There were too many side quests that my connection to the main plot waned as the story went on.
The overarching sapphic characters were not very likeable. Each one had their own personal baggage and them trying to rebuild their connection felt forced.
In conclusion, it Bonfire was an underwhelming read for me.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
This is a crime thriller, where a young girl is burnt alive in a flaming barrel. Holly is the investigating officer of this murder and she has to discover the truth. Full of secrets and lies, she ends up working alongside Kyra a documentary presenter and lecturer at the local university. With folklore tied in as an undercurrent throughout which complimented the plot and character development.
I felt that there were a lot of characters included which could make it confusing at times. The ending was the best part of the book very suspenseful and gripping.
I felt that there were a lot of characters included which could make it confusing at times. The ending was the best part of the book very suspenseful and gripping.
October 24, 2026
DCI Holly Hennessy has to investigate the case of a burning barrel that contains the body of a local teenage girl.
The barrel is released during the local Lewes bonfire celebrations which are full of folklore and tradition .
Holly has to confront her past whilst trying to prevent another murder .
Some of the back ground story did weigh me down a little and was a distraction from the main thread of the book .
However , it’s a strong debut and a story involving serious issues .
Thanks to NetGalley and Allison and Busby,
The barrel is released during the local Lewes bonfire celebrations which are full of folklore and tradition .
Holly has to confront her past whilst trying to prevent another murder .
Some of the back ground story did weigh me down a little and was a distraction from the main thread of the book .
However , it’s a strong debut and a story involving serious issues .
Thanks to NetGalley and Allison and Busby,
October 22, 2026
As a debut novel, there was a lot to like in the story. Yes there were many pov's telling the story however each chapter told the reader who was narrating it and I didn't have any difficulty following it. For me personally, it was a bit sapphic at times although this is part of the crux of the book. It certainly has potential to be a series otherwise it will be interesting to see the author's next book.
Thanks to Netgalley/Allison & Busby for the ARC to review
Thanks to Netgalley/Allison & Busby for the ARC to review
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
A fairly easy read although it got a little worthy at times having started well. A person is murdered at a bonfire celebration & DCI Hennessy has to solve the crime while battling her feelings towards old school friend Kyra Ford. There were times I was skimming all the feminism & the little lecture towards the end was rather off-putting. A very sudden ending to the novel was a bit jarring too.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
I received a free copy of, Bonfire by Iona Hepburn, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. DCI Holly Hennessy has a crime to solve. This book had way too much going on, it took away from the main story.
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October 4, 2026I really wanted to enjoy this book, the plot sounded great. The book for some people will be a 4-5* read I’m sure but Unfortunately for me this was a struggle.
October 7, 2026
When a teenage girls body is rolled through the crowd of the annual Bonfire festival in Lewis in a flaming barrel, DCI Holly Hennessy and her team are brought in to investigate.
The investigation uncovers the myths and folklores that surround the Bonfire festival and the secrets held by several of the community. Holly is also forced to confront her own secrets and her futures when a face from the past, Kyra Ford emerges.
A great police procedural with a great lead character.
Thanks to NetGalley and Allison and Busby for the advanced copy.
The investigation uncovers the myths and folklores that surround the Bonfire festival and the secrets held by several of the community. Holly is also forced to confront her own secrets and her futures when a face from the past, Kyra Ford emerges.
A great police procedural with a great lead character.
Thanks to NetGalley and Allison and Busby for the advanced copy.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Bonfire by Iona Hepburn is the beginning of a new police procedural series featuring DCI Holly Hennessy. The story begins on Bonfire Night, when a burning barrel rolls down a crowded street and is discovered to contain the body of a young woman who had mysteriously disappeared.
Holly is a really interesting character. She has some complexities in her marriage, and the investigation becomes even more personal when she discovers that one of the people making a documentary about Bonfire Night is Dr Kara Ford, someone she has a complicated history with. Holly and Kara knew each other at school, when Holly was tentatively exploring her sexuality, but things between them ended very badly in the face of homophobia, peer pressure and all the awfulness that can come with being a teenager who is trying to work out who they are.
The crime itself explores corruption in small towns and the idea that the people who appear to be the most respectable can sometimes be the most corrupt and despicable. The police procedural elements are strong, but for me it was Holly and Kara who really gave the book its heart. I cared about both of them and became very invested in their complicated history and what might happen between them now.
Holly is a really interesting character. She has some complexities in her marriage, and the investigation becomes even more personal when she discovers that one of the people making a documentary about Bonfire Night is Dr Kara Ford, someone she has a complicated history with. Holly and Kara knew each other at school, when Holly was tentatively exploring her sexuality, but things between them ended very badly in the face of homophobia, peer pressure and all the awfulness that can come with being a teenager who is trying to work out who they are.
The crime itself explores corruption in small towns and the idea that the people who appear to be the most respectable can sometimes be the most corrupt and despicable. The police procedural elements are strong, but for me it was Holly and Kara who really gave the book its heart. I cared about both of them and became very invested in their complicated history and what might happen between them now.
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