Rory Power did it again. But multiplied by ten. Burn Our Bodies Down is a second novel by this talented author and it is 2020 release that you do not want to miss.
The story revolves around Margot, a teenager whose life has been dictated by her mother’s strange behavior and isolated lifestyle. She never knew anything about her family, including her father until one day when she finds out about her grandmother in a nearby town called Phalene. Margot rebels for the first time in her life and runs away from home to find answers.
When you put it like this, it doesn’t sound as much, right? This is where Power’s brilliance comes at play – simple plot twists are turned into the darkest nightmares. Think of the 2019 Ari Aster’s movie Midsommar or Daren Aronofsky’s Mother! from 2017. This book has something that could be described as horror movies narration and setting. It is easy to imagine all the places and feel the tension, panic, confusion and utter despair of characters. Power takes well-known tropes of horror stories and makes them her own.
Burn Our Bodies Down can be described as a story about a small man in the big world of environmental disaster. This had been masterfully done by picking the small fictional American town that is being run over by capitalism and constant economical drive to expand which ultimately leads it to its demise.
Final judgment? Delightfully twisted read that you won’t be able to put down until the last page is read and it will probably give you nightmares.
Who should read Burn Our Bodies Down? Fans of Stephen King, Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone.
* ARC provided by Penguin Random House International in exchange for an honest review. *
