Let It All Burn

 Let It All Burn 

By  Denise Grover Swank

Darcie Weatherby of Perry's Fall, Ohio has a preteen, sixteen-year-old twins, a wayward grandmother, a nightmare boss, a manipulative ex-husband, and hot flashes that start fires like the one that burned her boss's house down. Unless she figures out a way to get things under control, there's a chance she'll spontaneously combust at the Founder's Day Masquerade Ball.

I don't know what the heck THAT was. It started out normal enough, a woman having hot flashes accidentally starts fires, okay, okay, okay, some magical realism, sure, gotcha, and then at the like, 90% mark, we take an abrupt right turn into millennials-long guardianship over a Greek goddess who gets reincarnated every fifty years (and a somehow completely unrelated side plot about diamond smuggling). What the fuck?

The basic idea is fine, but Swank can't stop adding weirder and weirder parts that don't add anything and don't make sense, like the FBI agent who first meets Darcie while he's investigating this diamond thing, but then becomes intensely interested in her to the point of following her around and demanding answers like a crazed stalker.  And she doesn't have any answers! 

Or the part where Darcie's cousin Ella is an investigative reporter and we think there's going to be some big reveal about the Mayor or that Ella is going to find out what's going on with Darcie's firepowers but instead of any of that panning out, instead at the grand gala there's a lengthy digression about Ella acting drunk because of an allergic reaction, and she winds up spending the fateful event on a cot. 

The ending and explanation come out of nowhere and the book wraps up with all kinds of loose ends flapping in the breeze, like how Darcie will incorporate a fourth child in to her family (and what her current kids will think of that) whether it's noted that Tammy just up and disappeared, like, just... anything! Any of it! Even the parts that are explained are explained in a really baffling way. What is this stupid bargain Persephone made, and why does it reset every fifty years? Why does it make the gods mad? What happens when it ends? Why, why why?? It was like Swank couldn't figure out how to wrap it up so just added in some god stuff. It would have been better if Darcie was just becoming a fire demon, like her friend suggested.

However, prior to that point, it was a decent read. Darcie's nicely fleshed out, her friends and kids are fun and there's space there for an interesting story about her growing into herself in this new phase of her life. But we... got something else instead, so I'm just going to slowly back away. 

09: A Book That Features A Character Going Through Menopause