Introduction

"Like lightning in a bottle, Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire captures girlhood friendship in all its shattering intensity. A captivating, terrifying novel, and one you won’t forget.” —Megan Abbott

On Halloween, 1991, a popular high school basketball star ventures into the woods near Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, and disappears. Three days later, he’s found with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand—a discovery that sends tremors through this conservative community, already unnerved by growing rumors of Satanic worship in the region.

In the wake of this incident, bright but lonely Hannah Dexter is befriended by Lacey Champlain, a dark-eyed, Cobain-worshiping bad influence in lip gloss and Doc Martens. The charismatic, seductive Lacey forges a fast, intimate bond with the impressionable Dex, making her over in her own image and unleashing a fierce defiance that neither girl expected. But as Lacey gradually lures Dex away from her safe life into a feverish spiral of obsession, rebellion, and ever greater risk, an unwelcome figure appears on the horizon—and Lacey’s secret history collides with Dex’s worst nightmare.

By turns a shocking story of love and violence and an addictive portrait of the intoxication of female friendship, set against the unsettled backdrop of a town gripped by moral panic, Girls on Fire is an unflinching and unforgettable snapshot of girlhood: girls lost and found, girls strong and weak, girls who burn bright and brighter—and some who flicker away.

Editorial Review

An Amazon Best Book of May 2016: Much will be made of the fact that Robin Wasserman has previously written only Young Adult novels; the heroines (if you can call messed up, Kurt Cobain-obsessed, violent Hannah and Lacey that) of her first adult novel, Girls on Fire, are teenaged high school nonentities who set out to get revenge on the popular kids they’re convinced despise them. But make no mistake: Hannah Dexter (also known as Dex, because Lacey thinks that makes her seem tougher) and her friends are involved in some pretty high stakes, grown up (and messed up) stuff, from booze and drugs (of course) to dangerous interactions with sometimes violent older men (ditto) to a climactic scene that even those of us who were blasé about those two previous examples didn’t see coming. Written in language that can turn from incandescent to overblown, this thrilling novel juxtaposes some pretty terrible behavior with the ordinary goings-on in a completely ordinary town – which makes it seem all the more realistic. It’s almost embarrassing how firmly it grabbed me, and how grateful it made me both that I don’t have any teenage daughters, and that I no longer am one. —Sara Nelson

Excerpt

No Excerpt Currently Available

Discussion Questions

No discussion questions at this time.

Weblinks

There are no web links at this time.

Book Club Recommendations

Recommended to book clubs by 0 of 0 members.

Member Reviews

There are no user reviews at this time.
Rate this book