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Book Summary and Reviews of The Burning Girls by C. J. Tudor

The Burning Girls by C. J. Tudor

The Burning Girls

by C. J. Tudor

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  • Feb 2021, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

An unconventional vicar must exorcise the dark past of a remote village haunted by death and disappearances in this explosive and unsettling thriller from the acclaimed author of The Chalk Man.

A dark history lingers in Chapel Croft. Five hundred years ago, Protestant martyrs were betrayed—then burned. Thirty years ago, two teenage girls disappeared without a trace. And a few weeks ago, the vicar of the local parish hanged himself in the nave of the church.

Reverend Jack Brooks, a single parent with a fourteen-year-old daughter and a heavy conscience, arrives in the village hoping for a fresh start. Instead, Jack finds a town rife with conspiracies and secrets, and is greeted with a strange welcome package: an exorcism kit and a note that warns, "But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed and hidden that will not be known."

The more Jack and daughter, Flo, explore the town and get to know its strange denizens, the deeper they are drawn into the age-old rifts, mysteries, and suspicions. And when Flo begins to see specters of girls ablaze, it becomes apparent there are ghosts here that refuse to be laid to rest.

Uncovering the truth can be deadly in a village with a bloody past, where everyone has something to hide and no one trusts an outsider.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"[T]autly suspenseful...Tudor expertly doles out the plot twists, some of them small, some sizable, and one so shocking that it turns the entire story inside out. Jack, Flo, and the other fully realized characters and their eventual fates won't be easily forgotten by any reader." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"The author steadily cranks up the scares and the suspense while smoothly toggling between multiple narratives...Jack is immensely appealing...Readers will savor the final, breathless twists. Top-notch and deliciously creepy storytelling." - Kirkus Reviews

"Tudor (The Other People) strikes again with another thriller filled with twists and turns right up to the mind-bending ending." - Library Journal

"Tudor is always several steps ahead. She is a brilliant storyteller." - Alex Michaelides, New York Times bestselling author of The Silent Patient

"Tudor is the queen of the cliffhanger." - John Marrs, international bestselling author of The Passengers

"Tudor has proven that she is a true master at creating perfectly dark, highly propulsive, and tightly coiled mysteries that are utterly impossible to put down." - Aimee Molloy, New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Mother

This information about The Burning Girls was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

lani

spine tingling
Never have I felt more sure that a mystery deserved 5 stars. You will be introduced to a vicar at a local parish that bears no resemblance to any priestly figure I have ever met. And SHE is named JACK. A book that crackles with energy and a narrator who constantly surprises with her ironic tongue. I had to keep smiling along with the suspense at all the wisecracks blurting from her mouth. Jack is suddenly transferred to the quiet sleepy town of Chapel Croft where she takes over from the untimely death of the previous vicar. There she and her teenage daughter find the community obsessed with creating twig like dolls that commemorated 8 Protestant martyrs 500 years ago. What she and her daughter discover is a community full of secrets and conspiracies that read like an onion constantly revealing new narratives, ghostly figures, devious characters and layers of twists and turns. As they unravel the truth, I found myself more and more absorbed, not wanting my bedtime to interfere with the narrative of this high wire story line. Don't miss this one!

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Author Information

C. J. Tudor Author Biography

Photo: Bill Waters

C. J. Tudor is the author of The Burning Girls, The Other People, The Hiding Place, and The Chalk Man, which won the International Thriller Writers award for Best First Novel and the Strand Magazine Award for Best Debut Novel. Over the years she has worked as a copywriter, television presenter, voice-over artist, and dog walker. She is now thrilled to be able to write full-time, and doesn't miss chasing wet dogs through muddy fields all that much. She lives in England with her partner and daughter.

Author Interview

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