My Five Word TL:DR Review: So Much Dark, and Hurt

I didn’t really know what to expect picking up Nowhere Burning. I mean, obviously, I wanted the book, and I’ve read and enjoyed Ward before, but these days I like to avoid reading too much about the book beforehand and even avoid reviews for the most part. So, I did go into this with very little knowledge of what to expect, other than I expected to be gripped – and I can confirm that I was gripped, which is definitely a consistent feeling across all the books I’ve read by this author.

I really don’t want to give too much away about the story as frankly I think it’s better to pick this up with little knowledge. That being said there are three predominant narrators here (with other little individual storylines appearing as and when required). We first make the acquaintance of Riley. Riley and her younger brother Oliver Olive are in the custody of a person they call ‘cousin’. Not to beat about the bush ‘cousin’ is not a very nice person and Riley eventually takes matters into her own hands, taking drastic measures and running away with her brother in the dead of night. She seeks a place called ‘Nowhere’, perhaps a haven where only children are allowed – or maybe they’ve run straight from the frying pan into the fire.

Anyway, I’m not talking about the plot.

What I really enjoyed about this.

It kept me hooked. I could barely put this down. It’s a dark nightmare, it’s harrowing, who are some of these people! It’s like watching a disaster, feeling how terrible it is and yet unable to tear your eyes away.

There are three main storylines but there are also short interjections by other storytellers that are relevant to the story and help you to make sense of certain aspects but without the need for tedious info dumping.

I liked Riley. Okay, she tells lies and lets just be honest, she doesn’t shy away from taking certain measures in order to escape, okay, I can’t deny that she has taken some very drastic measures for which she decides she must atone. But, she loves her brother. They’re really in a pretty awful situation and frankly drastic measures were the best she could come up with, plus, she’s a child herself. Oliver, he’s a small boy, he loves his sister but he also has this childlike way of blurting out the truth and this can definitely lead to trouble.

The setting. Well, there’s a wealth of history to the place known as ‘Nowhere’ and most of it is bad. It’s like all the bad deeds have seeped into the earth and created the darkest and most tempestous place. And, along the way we have individual stories that all feed into the overall sinister feel of the place.

What I really didn’t expect was to find some dark and brutal Peter Pan/Lost Boy’s style story. In place of the Lost Boys we have runaway children, forming a strange cult like existence in a ranch (called Nowhere) where a serial killer once lived. There’s a crocodile that squeaks (rather than ticks, because it’s been fed squeaky toys as oppose to a ticking clock). Is Riley really Wendy by another name, she certainly has a desire to look after some of the lost children even though she’s still a child herself. There’s a magical realism to the whole thing, is the place haunted by children from it’s past or are the magic mushrooms and sometimes near starvation causing hallucinations? On top of that there’s the mixed up timelines which are difficult to pin down, like the story has a timelessness to it.

One thing I will say, this is a very dark read – well, I thought so but I can admittedly be a bit of a wimp. It’s like Ward has brought all the baddies together in one boiling pot of horror. I distinctly remember thinking ‘where the hell is this place and who are all these horrible people’. Again, this feeds into the lost boys narrative, running from trauma to hopefully find something better, even though the reality can often be traumatic itself.

In terms of the characters. Like I said, I liked the central characters. I wanted things to be better for them. I’m not entirely certain I got my wish but ultimately I do think, in spite of the harrowing nature of parts of this, it’s a coming of age story that has hope and light at the end of the tunnel.

I liked the busy feel, maybe my reading experience was greatly improved by the fact that I was so gripped by the narrative because I think I picked up on so many little nuances that maybe I would not have been as aware of if I’d taken more time to dwell.

The setting really plays into the weird and dark feel. Nowhere is set high in the mountains. The ranch was creepy enough whilst it was still standing but is now little more than a blackened ruin following a huge fire. It’s difficult to get to, the children, for example, don’t use fairy dust but a zip line on which to fly home. It’s basically a creepy place but to these runaway children it’s home. They don’t fear it.

In conclusion, dark and harrowing, gripping and quite unputdownable. There’s a lot going on. Also, I think some of the themes may be triggering for some readers – these children have run away for a reason after all. This isn’t a fairytale. It’s not outright fantasy and yet it tiptoes back and forth over the line of magical realism. Are there actual hauntings and strange phenomena taking place up on this mountain? Or is that just a strange flight of fancy. Read it and decide.

This isn’t a long book particularly and in some ways it almost feels like a lot is going on, it’s ambitious and strange but ultimately it all comes together with a very fitting ending.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

My rating 4.5 of 5 stars