Carla remembers her sister Angela, who confessed to being the one who left the study door open so that Ben fell. What did you think of this one? It was definitely a slow burn. I didn’t mind that, though I wished for a little more tension and suspense. A young man is found murdered on his canal boat. Three women were among the last to see him - Laura, his one night stand, Miriam, his neighbor and Carla, his aunt. Each is an unreliable narrator and all seem to be hiding something. We actually hear from other narrators, this is a book with a lot of POVs. We also are given glimpses into small segments of a best selling mystery written by one of the characters. After being introduced to Ms. Hawkins with her psychological, twisty thriller “Girl on the train”, I was so drawn into her story about complex, broken, unreliable characters.

Pike makes deft work of these unreliable narrators who span several generations, imbuing their voices with a defensiveness and vulnerability born from past disappointments and trauma. Miriam is forever second-guessing the judgment of strangers who she knows see her as a lonely busybody, while Laura is chaotic and brittle-sounding, convinced that none of the calamities that befall her are ever her fault. In particular, Pike captures the melancholy of the widowed Irene, whose frail appearance and occasional mishaps prompt others to condescend and patronise rather than treat her as a sentient adult. This being a Hawkins novel, the plot twists are sprinkled liberally to keep listeners on their toes, though the story is sustained by the humanity of these expertly narrated characters whose secrets are slowly brought to the surface. Like the three parts of a braid, the stories of the three women in A Slow Fire Burning come together and are interwoven into one.The atmosphere is dark, the small group of characters unlikable, harboring secrets and truths. The young woman Laura, a tragic past, I felt sorry for and Irene a older woman, with a big heart, the only character I actually liked. There are many misdirections which change the story in small and big ways. A book within a book which also serves to confuse. The pacing is slow, but there are constant revelations and the truths are slowly revealed.

This was a well written story that was well plotted with a good constant pace. Almost all the characters were damaged but not very likeable and unfortunately I just didn’t engage with any of them. The lives of the women was the interesting part of the story but again it didn’t offer anything particularly new and exciting. I loved the authors other book I read ‘Girl on the train’ which was much more enjoyable. The book revolves around the gruesome scene of Daniel's death occurring on a London houseboat he was living in. There are numerous characters seen leaving the crime scene reportedly by his nosey neighbor Miriam, who has a side story of her own tying the Twist and turns and complicating who did it. The author sets in motion a number of scenarios and vindictive reasons to commit the crime. That knowledge, the sense of betrayal that came with it, that changed her. It left her marked. It left her angry." Mindset One highlight is that the audio version I listened to was impeccably narrated by the brilliant actress Rosumund Pike. But in summary, I enjoyed this tale but I didn’t love it. It didn’t do for me what The Girl on the Trian did. I’ll be interested to see what others think of it: I expect some will absolutely love it though others might feel as I do, that it rather passed them by.One of the most unpredictable and saddest characters in the book is Laura. Deeply damaged mentally and physically in a car accident and left abandoned by her mother and father. Her life is complicated and scarred by a number of abusive events. She confides and cared for by Irene, another character with a tie-in and side story. Who killed Daniel and why? I found it ambitious in that each character had reasons to be the murderer, depending upon the chapter. Each character endured tragedy and trauma; each has a suspicious pedigree. No one is an unreliable narrator, yet in reflecting their pasts, we wonder what the truth is. Each of us are a bit of unreliable narrators of our past, or, I should say we “color” our past to reflect what we want. What Hawkins is great at, is exposing the “shady” parts, or the “grey”. As the book begins, Laura is cleaning blood off herself. She calls her father for help but her stepmother intervenes and cuts her off. It’s unclear exactly what happened to Laura, but she has the watch of someone named Daniel.

Growing up where I did was a big part of why I wanted to become a journalist, so in a roundabout sort of way it probably did affect my writing style. It certainly affected my perspective, in all sorts of ways, but I suppose the thing I’m most conscious of is not so much where I grew up, but the feeling of relocating from one place to another at a formative time. Being uprooted and having to make a new home somewhere else had a significant impact on me; I felt an outsider for many years, in a lot of ways I think I still do. Overall: maybe this book may have been promoted as contemporary fiction, I could have a chance to like it more. From the beginning of the novel, I expected something big, earth shattering, surprising will happen or something so smart will come out to fool me but none of them happened. That’s why I still hear the choo choo sound of disappointment train. Being uprooted and having to make a new home somewhere else had a significant impact on me; I felt an outsider for many years, in a lot of ways I think I still do. Paula Hawkins

Theo admits to Carla that he went to see Angela. Laura admits to Irene that she stole Carla’s tote bag of jewelry. Laura gives Miriam’s manuscript to Irene. Irene reads it and thinks it sounds familiar. She realizes it reminds her of Theo’s book, which she has in the box of books Carla gave her. In the book (which belonged to Angela) she finds Daniel’s drawing of a naked Carla. Overall, I am greatly looking forward to reading this book again. It has the complexity of The Great Gatsby - everything was set up perfectly and was surprising at the end. However, the greatness of this novel is not apparent in the first half of the book.

Welp, somehow I was able to finish the book with no enjoyment. Third time isn't always the charm in the case of Paula Hawkins.One woman in her 20s suffered a brutal hit-and-run as a child that resulted in brain damage causing behavioural issues. A young man in his twenties is found stabbed to death on the houseboat where he had been living. I admit that I've always been entranced by the idea of living in one, minus the murder of course. A woman who lives in another of the boats is the one to find his body and at first glimpse she seems like the typical busy body type of person, always looking, judging. Soon though, there will be two other women involved, unreliable narrators all. There are connections between these women and the dead man, but these are uncovered slowly.