Rating: ⭐⭐✨⬜⬜
Title: Everything That Burns
Author: Gita Trelease
Genre: YA Fantasy/ YA Historical Fiction
Author Info: She/Her
Setting: Paris, France
Month Read: March, 2021
Book Type: Hardcover
Publication: 2021
Pages: 372
TRIGGER WARNING-
Gun Violence/ Murder
"Words are their own magic. Words make thoughts visible."
No Spoiler Summary:
Everything That Burns is the sequel to All That Glitters or Enchentée (if you got an early copy before they changed the title in the US). We revisit Camille Durbonne in Paris almost directly after the events in the first book. Camille is writing unsuccessful pamphlets and trying not to use her magic after everything that happened with Seguin.
The book starts with her helping a poor flower seller who gets in trouble with a rich man for not letting him buy her virtue, and this eventually starts a friendship between the girls. When Camille finds out she lives with a bunch of other poor girls, she decides to write pamphlets for each of them so they can try to keep the house they are on the verge of being evicted from.
All of this is set against a backdrop of the French Revolution, and thrown in for added effect is bounties being set for killing or arresting the magicians in Paris as traitors to the French people. Not only must Camille hide her magic, sell her pamphlets, and take care of her beloved friends- but she must also try to discover magical ways to escape from France where she will no longer be hunted. Will she escape?
Review:
Everything That Burns was a tragically slow read, and I struggled to like it as much as I loved the first book.
The characters felt really flat, and most of what I loved about the first book seemed to not exist in the sequel. I found myself being glad there wasn't a trilogy in the works- and that made me sad because I LOVED Enchentée. It seemed that instead of leading off of the plot of the first book, the author felt everything needed to be a new struggle and it seemed SO forced.
I didn't hate the book because I loved the characters so much, but I was looking for a more effortless transition and more of a continuation than a novel that could have almost been a standalone.
I made the mistake of looking up the name change, and got SUPER MAD that the covers and titles in the UK are SO MUCH BETTER than the ones released here. I don't know why we got All That Glitters & Everything That Burns when the UK got Enchentée and Liberté (MUCH more fitting titles for the series, by the way.) Their covers were also super cute and minimalistic, while the US editions had weird girls on the front and didn't make sense a t a l l. I'm actually going to try to see if I can swap copies with someone in the UK so I can have the ones I love way better for my shelves.
Recommendations:
Caraval Series by Stephanie Garber for historical fiction, magical dresses, love stories, and strong female characters.
We Hunt The Flame by Hafsah Faizal for magic, female heroines, and a book you can't read fast enough.
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