Trial by Fire
I Am A Witch and Witches Burn
Josephine Angelini
Lily suffers in her own world because she is allergic to things that no doctor can determine. After a party goes wrong, Lily finds herself literally in a whole different world, fighting for her own life in a different way.
To an extent I felt like I didn’t know Lily, despite having things from her perspective the whole time. She is a crucible I suppose, so being empty is part of it. I did feel like her character progressed though. Rowan on the other hand felt very static, although his attitude to Lily changed. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
This novel is going to keep you off balance the whole time. Lily is never sure what she is doing, and so the reader doesn’t ever get the big picture either. At the same time though, you know that there will be some sort of major confrontation.
Don’t let this title mislead you. It’s referring to the Salem witch trials, which don’t play a major role in the actual timeline of the novel, but were important in the past. Although basically everything could have been important in the past because of the multiple timelines.
Thank goodness I had the next novel in the trilogy waiting for me to read it. There are so many lovely loose ends that need to be cleared up! Yes, the novel circles back and you could consider it finished, but there are so many things still to be discovered.
4 stars from me. I read it breathlessly and couldn’t put it down.
Pan Macmillan | 10 November 2015 | AU $16.99 | Paperback
The first half of the novel kept me enthralled, but this petered out in the second half. I was fascinated by the gymnastics, not by the politics. In the end, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take away from the novel. Translated from French, I think this novel may have lost some of its charm.
I liked the realistic imagining of the different time periods. Phew, parallel worlds went completely nutty! There are so many ways for people to die, and then be refound. Maggie in particular gets to ‘enjoy’ this particular feeling, which is pretty crazy!
This novel’s perspective can be a little off-putting before you get used to it. It’s written as ‘we’, which progressively gets to be a smaller ‘we’ as the book goes on and more of them lose their powers.
Nooo! Past me, why did you not write notes on what you enjoyed about this novel? I could have sworn I had some notes sitting in my draft folder. Ah well. I can tell you that this was an excellent example of teenage fiction, and I really enjoyed it.
How accurate are the court scenes in this? I think that this author will have done due diligence in her research. But please! Don’t take the law into your own hands! I know that child protective services will often err on the side of caution to not take a child away. As I learnt in 
What sold the first novel to me was missing in this novel. While there were interlocking storylines, it didn’t ‘have the mystery of the first novel. It also lapsed back into too descriptive prose – the one line that has stuck with me is that Logan wears Burt’s Bees Cranberry flavour.
This novel was particularly pertinent to me when I read it, as I had just shown a group of year 9 students around my university. It’s so easy to be mean to other people without even thinking about it.
Considering that there are some situations that could potentially be huge, the writing is sensitive, nuanced, and realistic. It’s just as good as, and perhaps better than, this author’s other novels (I have reviewed 
Kendra deals with crimes that would make  a squeamish person nervous in a way that makes you think she has no feelings. In this novel though, you start to see her coming apart at the seams, and what her family and friends need to do to let her recover. I want Kendra to be happy, but I also want her to do more awesome things!