Dad, could you come round? I . . . I had a bad night. I was wondering if you could just come over for a bit, I know it's a bit of a drive but I-" The themes explored in A Slow Fire Burning are universal; readers from all walks of life will be able to relate to the characters' struggles and joys. The plot is tightly structured yet full of surprises, keeping the reader engaged until the very end. A heartfelt memoir about race, identity and mental illness. Read by the actor himself, it makes for moving listening. The police interrogated Laura, but then let her go because they did not have enough evidence to charge her. While visiting Irene, Laura noticed that Carla had left her purse in the hall of Angela’s house while she was clearing out Angela’s things. On impulse, Laura stole the purse and then took it to her home. The police searched Laura’s house and discovered a bloody knife and a shirt covered in Daniel’s blood.

She saw herself sway on her feet, hand over mouth, pitching forward for a long, dizzying moment, reaching out, grabbing the counter with her hand. Oh, God. The flaws of each character will surprise and perhaps even enchant you — and only a clairvoyant could anticipate the book’s ending.” — The New York Times Book ReviewWith 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. A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. She stumbled up the steps and out of the cabin, gulping mouthfuls of air, gagging. She threw up on the towpath, wiped her mouth, cried out, "Help! Somebody call the police!" but it was barely seven thirty on a Sunday morning, and there was no one around. The towpath was still, the roads up above quiet too, no sounds save for the throb of a generator, the squabble of moorhens ghosting gently past. Looking up at the bridge above the canal, she thought she might have seen someone, just for a moment, but then they were gone, and she was alone, gripped by paralyzing fear. Gives the term "thriller" a whole new meaning…Hawkins's new book is a bloody masterpiece that's darker than it appears.” —Popsugar

The central character is Laura who is a hot mess. “It’s not my fault” is her motto. As the story opens, she is seen leaving a houseboat in the early hours of the day the man who occupies the houseboat is found dead. Laura is carrying more emotional baggage than is imaginable. She’s not the only distressed female in the story. Miriam finds the dead body of Daniel, and through the story, the reader learns of her horrid past. Carla is the aunt of Daniel, and she is a grieving mother whose young son died tragically. Theo is Carla’s ex-husband; he is an author and a bit of a slippery character. Hawkins provides a map of the neighborhood with the homes of the different characters. I referred to that map often. A young man is found murdered on his canal boat. Three women were among the last to see him - Laura, his one night stand, Miriam, his neighbor and Carla, his aunt. Each is an unreliable narrator and all seem to be hiding something. We actually hear from other narrators, this is a book with a lot of POVs. We also are given glimpses into small segments of a best selling mystery written by one of the characters. Seriously, could you take me off speaker? I don't want to hear her voice; it makes me want to set fire to things."Miriam is a middle aged woman, living just several boats down from the boat where Daniel is brutally murdered. She sees, hears and knows a lot. She also has a vendetta against at least one of the characters.

A Slow Fire Burning twists and turns like a great thriller should, but it's also deep, intelligent and intensely human.”– Lee Child Inside Laura's head, Deidre spoke. The trouble with you, Laura, she said, is that you make bad choices. Inspired by David Copperfield, Kingsolver crafts a 21st-century coming-of-age story set in America’s hard-pressed rural South. I thought the title was very apropo because of the slow burn of anger, hatred, jealousy and deceit brewing within these characters.Overall: maybe this book may have been promoted as contemporary fiction, I could have a chance to like it more. From the beginning of the novel, I expected something big, earth shattering, surprising will happen or something so smart will come out to fool me but none of them happened. That’s why I still hear the choo choo sound of disappointment train. The novel is narrated by an omniscient narrator in the third-person past. The narrator spends each chapter in a different character’s perspective. The chapters alternate between Irene, Laura, Carla, Theo, and Miriam. Many chapters end with short excerpts from Theo’s fictional crime novel, The One Who Got Away, whose concept was stolen from Miriam’s memoir about her abduction as a teenager. The author's use of language is masterful; each sentence has a poetic quality that transports the reader into the world of the novel. The book revolves around the gruesome scene of Daniel's death occurring on a London houseboat he was living in. There are numerous characters seen leaving the crime scene reportedly by his nosey neighbor Miriam, who has a side story of her own tying the Twist and turns and complicating who did it. The author sets in motion a number of scenarios and vindictive reasons to commit the crime.

A young man, Daniel Sutherland, has been found deceased on a houseboat. Leaving the scene of the crime is Laura, a young woman known to police. Fortunately for Daniel, there is a noisy neighbor Miriam who takes detailed records of all of the comings and goings. However, Daniel's mother, Angela, died just a few weeks before Daniel in an accident. Are these deaths connected? Was it Laura? What do we really know? Laura, a young woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury when she was ten, is the prime suspect in the murder of Daniel, a young man who is found dead on his houseboat. Laura’s mother had been having an affair with a man who left their house and hit Laura on his drive home. Her mother had run out to the accident and urged the man to run away so that she would not get caught cheating. Laura spent three months in a coma and then underwent a series of painful surgeries to rehabilitate her body, which never fully recovered. When she got out of the hospital, her mother left her father and Laura felt abandoned and angry. As an adult, Laura worked at a laundromat and had extreme emotional and mental problems, including poor impulse control. The night before Daniel died, she met him at a bar and slept with him. In the morning, he called her a gimp and they got into a physical fight that ended with her biting him. He left the boat and she went home, stealing his watch, but then someone else murdered him. Because of her involvement with him, Laura became the prime suspect in the detective’s case.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. Hello? Pulling the door open all the way, climbing down the couple of steps to the cabin, her last hello catching in her throat as she took it all in: the boy-not a boy, a young man, really-lying on the floor, blood everywhere, a wide smile carved into his throat. This was my third Paula Hawkins book and while I found it somewhat slow going, the writing was superb. It was the pacing and the large cast of unlikable and unreliable narrators that bogged this one down for me a bit. Otherwise this would probably have been a 5*. The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Hawkins, Paula. A Slow Fire Burning. Penguin Random House, 2021. Kindle. I love Paula Hawkins, and this is why— A Slow Fire Burning twists and turns like a great thriller should, but it's also deep, intelligent and intensely human . . . the characters are just like people you know . . . or maybe even just like you yourself. Hawkins is proving herself a worthy 21st century heir to Barbara Vine and Patricia Highsmith.”— LEE CHILD