The Burning Girls

This book!!! I loved every minute of it. C.J. Tudor has a knack of drawing you in with her opening sentence and once she has you hooked, you cannot escape! Enthralling and heart thumping this novel makes for one hell of a read.

Reverend Jack Brooks is transferred to a new parish after a traumatic event that leaves the local community angry and the press crawling all over the church. Having no choice in the matter, Jack and daughter Flo arrive in a small Sussex village to find a rundown chapel and a lot of hidden secrets. What was really interesting was the tradition of the Burning Girls that featured throughout the novel; twig dolls to represent the villagers who were burnt to death during Queen Mary's purge of the Protestants, the Sussex Martyrs. This historic event along with the supernatural sightings of two girls who seemingly are haunting the chapel give this novel such a thrilling Gothic feel.

Jack isn't your typical ‘Reverend' and I loved this about Jack; not afraid to stir up the past, ballsy and foul mouthed. I immediately connected with Jack and Flo and were routing for them from the outset.

The complexity of the plot with the different story lines was well written and made The Burning Girls quite the page-turner. The hauntings of the two girls, the mystery surrounding the two teenagers who went missing thirty years ago, as well as Jack's own past and the situation Flo finds herself in makes this a standout book that just kept giving. Just when you think you know where the novel is heading it completely turns on its head, leaving you with more questions than answers. Tudor beautifully balances the amount of action, mystery, crime and gruesomeness into this novel and leaves you with a WOW ending, one that I didn't anticipate.

An atmospheric, spooky, chilling mystery which I couldn't read fast enough.