Burn Our Bodies Down

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My Opinion

(2 / 5) This was bizarre. It started out with a very depressing feeling that stays with you throughout.  A 17yo girl lives with her mom and is neglected and emotionally abused.  The teen ends up running away to a grandma she just found out about.  Her mom has never given her any information about her life or family before.  But Grandma is not all that she seems and weird events start happening as soon as she arrives.

I’m all for creepy.  I’m all for mind-blowing.  But this was just weird.  I could not wrap my mind around it. It was too vague and mysterious and I needed more information earlier. I think it would have helped.  The mystery is woven throughout the story and toward the end you figure it out with very gruesome details. I never shook the depressed feeling and it coupled with a feeling of disgust after learning the plot twist. I was happy to be done with the book but I was not happy with the amount of time I put into it. The end wrapped up the details well but I could’ve done without some of those details. 

The content grade overall is low, however, the violence and details of dead bodies were fairly detailed. It may be sensitive to some readers. Trigger warnings: Murder, abortion, gaslighting, suicide, arson, illegal substance, neglect and abuse of a minor.

Thank you to NetGalley, Rory Power and Delacorte Press for the opportunity to review this book in exchange for an honest review. This book is out today, July 7, 2020.

Burn Our Bodies Down

Rory Power

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Wilder Girls comes a new twisty thriller about a girl whose past has always been a mystery—until she decides to return to her mother’s hometown . . . where history has a tendency to repeat itself.

Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mother. No answers to Margot’s questions about what came before. No history to hold on to. No relative to speak of. Just the two of them, stuck in their run-down apartment, struggling to get along.

But that’s not enough for Margot. She wants family. She wants a past. And she just found the key she needs to get it: A photograph, pointing her to a town called Phalene. Pointing her home. Only, when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for.

Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there?

The only thing Margot knows for sure is there’s poison in their family tree, and their roots are dug so deeply into Phalene that now that she’s there, she might never escape.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.

Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings. 

Detailed Content Review

Language 

F***- 21

H***- 19

S***- 24

A**- 1

B****-

D***- 5

Bas****-

Religious Cursing

J****- 5

Chr***- 1

G**- 15

L***-

Derogatory terms etc-

Flipping off 

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

A group of teen boys share a cigarette.

A man drinks a beer, he swears he’s of age. 

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

*Very minor LGBTQ+ aspects included*

“I never got good at recognizing attraction in other girls—it took me long enough to recognize it in myself, and even longer to say “lesbian,” without blushing.” Her being possibly gay is referred to twice with no real details.

A 17yo is pregnant. She claims to be a virgin. 

An 18yo is pregnant and claims to be a virgin.

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

A young woman shoplifts. 

A young woman puts a flame against another young woman’s cheek and she screams. 

**SPOILER** A young woman is very sick, possibly dying. Her mother mentions that someone would have to end her life and that it would be a gift. Another young woman takes her with plans to hit her over the head with a rock. Instead she knocked her down and choked her until she died. Then she burned her body.

**SPOILER** A woman hits a young woman over the head with a shovel. Then she buries her alive. When she crawls out, there is another body that was beneath her, naked, with a broken neck. She pulls the body out only to find another underneath.  It is bloated and splitting. Touching her splits the skin away. She finds many more, maggots circling ones fingers, roots grown through ribs, an infant body. 

**SPOILER**A young woman walks into a house and sees blood all over the floor and walls. She sees the body of a woman with a shotgun hole in her and bloody footprints nearby. A man is crumbled in a closet with a shotgun hole in him. The young woman can see pieces of his bone in the blood. A young woman is hidden behind him, dead also. 

A young woman lights a house on fire with someone in it. 

Potentially Intense Themes

A young woman (17) hitchhiked. 

A young woman finds a young woman in a field on fire. She gets someone to help pull her out.

Two teens go to a morgue to look at a body. The body has black eyes that look like they’re bleeding black. 

**As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases.