This was a random freebie that found its way onto my Kindle. There are at least two kinds of those…ones where it’s a daily deal you manage to grab of a regular (aka decent quality enough to be worth money) book and ones where the book just isn’t good enough to be worth paying for. This was (woohoo) the former kind. A genuinely thrilling thriller, decently written and featuring enough originality to make itself distinguishable from the myriad of other similar works. It even delivers on its attention grabbing title in a very literal fashion. Cue in This Girl is on Fire….fire. But seriously, this novel is somewhat difficult to discuss without giving away crucial plot aspects. So I’ll start by talking about safe to mention, then post an alert (for those who haven’t read the book) and then move onto the unmentionables. At a glance you have a fairly prototypical genre standard with a likeable young man of restrictive circumstances doing the best he can to rise above meets a wealthy gorgeous daughter from a well known moneyed family. Sparks fly, but the girl is engaged, the boy has no money to woo, just his good looks and basically decent personality. This may go nowhere…but then he discovers a secret about her family that is far reaching and dangerous enough to upend a lot of lives. That sort of thing binds like crazy glue and soon the girl and the boy are working together to uncover a dark disturbing coverup involving at least one brutal murder. Sounds like fun so far? Well, it is. It’s fun and easy reading set near enough to the water to make it a perfect beach read in more ways than one. And then the novel pivots radically enough to give you a whiplash. That’s where the originality comes in, because it is that very pivot that makes the book, but alas it cannot be discussed without a warning, so…warning. Please read no further if you haven’t read the book yet. Ok? Ok. So here we are, all those in the know. And so we know that the pivot basically changes the entire story. Basically now you got an unreliable narrator situation followed by a discovery and pursuit. In the very nice and notably humble afterword the author admits to not being quite sure if he succeeded with the plot twist. And I’m not quite sure, either, to be honest. Which makes it difficult to review, because the twist is easily the best thing about the book. Maybe if the narration was done in first person, it would have worked best. Because first person narration preconditions a certain level of expectations for a reader and a certain level of engagement also. But it does make it easier to accept a complete character turnaround, because first person’s perspectives are so subjective by nature. And sometimes the character tricks you. In this book, the narration is done in third person and the protagonist is made to seem so nice and normal, that it is the author who has to trick us. The curtain is ripped away abruptly, disorientingly so. Fun trick, for sure, and it retrospect it does explain some of the previous behavior, which at the time seemed way over the top and occasionally suspect, but it is a trick and tricks can leave some readers think they were being cheated somehow. I’m not sure, I enjoyed it, much like I do all sort of narrative trickery…and magical trickery for that matter. But then again, my predisposition for the enjoyment of trickery makes me maybe not the best judge of whether it worked or not here. Actually, I believe it would have worked perfectly if this were a movie, then all the narration would be at a certain distance, all things equal and all that. In book form it seemed kind like there were different books colliding together or more like one came to take over the other, very suddenly, and then the original one was never heard from again. Essentially, the pivot subsumed the narrator, who was then exposed by a third party and never given a chance to tell his story. But at any rate, I seem to be overthinking what was generally a very entertaining story…idle minds and all that. So no more. I liked the book and, going by the very enjoyable, uncharacteristically informative and reflective afterword, the author too. I liked his intentions for this book very much, I like the subversion of genre stereotypes. To a large extent he did succeed with this. And certainly entertained me, lots. The only definite way to improve this book would be to read it on the beach by the ocean or maybe on the (not burning) boat in the ocean. Recommended.