A woman who lives in another of the boats is the one to find his body and at first glimpse she seems like the typical busy body type of person, always looking, judging. She'd had that thought when she first realized who the boy was, but she'd not known how best to take advantage. Early in the book, one of the women mentions how old books are slowly self-combusting, alluding to the deterioration that occurs inside paper. The characters would be largely unlikeable and frustrating, if they hadn’t been bestowed with such carefully crafted and unspeakably tragic back stories. Pages later, we meet Miriam, who lives on a houseboat in London’s Regent’s Canal and “likes to keep an eye on things.

On her way to the bedroom, she stepped on her jacket, which she'd dropped in the hallway in her rush to get to the bathroom. Superbly told, its twists and turns reveal the slow fire burning inside each which might just destroy them. Eyewitness by another houseboat resident, Miriam leads to a young girl Laura, who seemingly had a very disturbing past and childhood resulting in her unpredictable behavior. With the same propulsion that captivated millions of readers worldwide in The Girl on the Train and Into the Water , Paula Hawkins unfurls a gripping, twisting story of deceit, murder, and revenge. It has the complexity of The Great Gatsby - everything was set up perfectly and was surprising at the end.Inside her a bitter darkness bloomed as she watched, with helpless desperation, her once limitless horizons narrow. This was one of my most anticipated reads of 2021 (this book as well as Survive The Night) so my hopes were HIGH. The author decided to create a slow burn mystery which could be helpful to build high tension and increase the expectations of the readers as the pace gets faster at the second half. She saw herself pulling on the cabin door, very gently, catching as she did a whiff of something, the smell of iron, meaty, hunger-inducing.

A Slow Fire Burning twists and turns like a great thriller should, but it's also deep, intelligent and intensely human. With so many characters in the plot, one would begin to wonder, if these deaths are in any way connected? I think I might have held on to the counter, just there, on the left-hand side, when you come into the cabin.

There are unreliable and unlikeable characters, a book within a book and plenty of twists and turns. Three women were among the last to see him - Laura, his one night stand, Miriam, his neighbor and Carla, his aunt. Add to this a mother who is not supportive and a father who is emotionally absent and you have one troubled young woman.

Hawkins builds and layers to a point where it’s perfectly feasible that any one of them could have killed in cold blood. There are quite a few characters to keep track of and how they are related and connected to each other.I disagree; Hawkins tells her tale so thoroughly that the pieces are obvious and careful readers will know who did it and why. The barge was a mess-paint peeling, lintels rusted, chimney all a skew-while he himself looked much too clean for canal life. Miriam is forever second-guessing the judgment of strangers who she knows see her as a lonely busybody, while Laura is chaotic and brittle-sounding, convinced that none of the calamities that befall her are ever her fault. It’s clearly a case of murder, so for the police it’s now simply a case of identifying who had both the opportunity and the motive. A child tragedy, a terrifying abduction and an accusation of plagiarism all play their part in solving the murder investigation.

A good everyday thriller / mystery that didn’t quite hit the mark on this occasion but I do like this author. The first half of the book was a bit slow and it took some time to figure out each character's personality and how it played into the storyline. When a young man is found gruesomely murdered in a London houseboat, it triggers questions about three women who knew him. Sorry but I have to admit this is not one of my favorite works of the author and not one of my favorite reads of this year! There were unbelievable occurrences, what felt like a rushed ending where parts were tied up but felt very lazily done.Even though all of them were incredibly damaged to the point it was sad and depressing, I was intrigued with their stories and felt an incredible sense of empathy for them. Now, the master of the sophisticated psychological thriller is back again (second novel Into The Water was released in 2017 and gobbled up by fans) with the addictive A Slow Fire Burning.