Title: Ember Burning
Series: Trinity Forest #1
Publisher: Sawatch Publishing
Hour length: 8 hours and 47 minutes
Senior year was supposed to be great–that’s what Ember’s friend Maddie promised at the beginning of the year. Instead, Ember Trouve spends the year drifting in and out of life like a ghost, haunted by her parents’ recent, tragic death.At home, she pores over her secret obsession: pictures of missing kids– from newspaper articles, from grocery store flyers– that she’s glued inside a spiral notebook. Like her, the people are lost. Like her, she discovers, they had been looking for a way to numb their pain when they disappeared.When Ember finds herself in Trinity Forest one day, a place locals stay away from at all costs, she befriends a group of teenagers who are out camping. Hanging out with them in the forest tainted with urban legends of witchcraft and strange disappearances, she has more fun than she can remember having. But something isn’t right.The candy-covered wickedness she finds in Trinity proves to be a great escape, until she discovers she can never go home. Will Ember confront the truth behind her parents’ death, or stay blissfully numb and lose herself to the forest forever?
The book starts with Ember, the main lead character that lives in Leadville, a very small and secluded town in the mountains of Colorado. She was once a very cheerful and smart girl with a synesthesia condition (it represents to her by sounds, she sees colors with the sound of music), but she starts the story with a sadness and depression because of her parents sudden death. She feels claustrophobic in a town where everybody knows her story from which she can’t escape. Ember surrenders to her pain and starts consuming harmful substances as a way out to her grief. One day, she wanders off to Trinity forest where she finds a fun crowd of people around her age and discovers that her pain is gone. However, the longer she stays, the more bizarre they seem…
The story plot is very engaging. Ember Burning had a series of difficult subjects such as loss, rape, guilt, drug addiction and depression, and yet, they were written in such a way that the author didn’t need to be very descriptive to make impact. But be warned, if you are triggered by these themes.
I love the setting of this story. It was set in a small town close to the enigmatic Trinity forest. While listening to the story, I felt goosebumps just by imagining the place along with a combination of wonderment, magic and it was delightfully eerie.
Ember had a medical condition called synesthesia that I think it was a fascinating topic on its own. I have heard about it, but it is until now that I looked it up that I know more about it. Whenever she hears music, she sees a combination of colors depending on the type of music. She calls it her “color crayon brain”. I think it is a very interesting topic that I rarely get to read on books and I found it quite interesting.
I really liked the characters in the story. At first, I must admit that I had some trouble understanding Ember and some other characters inside the book. However, as I kept listening to the audiobook, I began to realize why they acted that way. I specially liked Ember’s grandma, even though she was a difficult person to live with, I think she was going through the same harsh sentiments as Ember, but didn’t know how to deal with them. She was trying her best to take care of Ember, but clueless as to how.Also, I had a small problem with Jared (I believe it is spelled like this, but I’m not sure since I listened to the book). I felt like he showed little interest to Ember’s well-being and that he left her to her own devices after the loss of their parents. He had to go to college, but I still believe that he shouldn’t have left Ember alone.
Final Verdict:
Ember Burning is a great Paranormal YA book for me. It had so many interesting elements to the story and the ending left me wishing for the next book ASAP! I’ll be honest and say that paranormal is something that I don’t generally read, but I certainly enjoyed this book. To all Paranormal Witchcraft YA book lovers out there, this is for you!
Happy reading! — The Chef
Wow, this sounds really interesting! This one is new to me, but I'm definitely intrigued. I'm always up for a good small town/forest-theme also. I'll certainly be looking this one up–great review!
It was a really good audiobook for me! I hope you do get the chance to check it out 🙂
[…] this trilogy so much (currently reading book 3, Venus Shining!) and you can check out my reviews of Ember Burning and Oshun Rising by clicking on the […]