This was an odd book. It flicked between the current day and 20 years ago, even though the stories intertwined they were confusing at the same time. More so with so extra layers of weirdness thrown in with one of the main characters making up a social media account about another which didn’t go well and another catching and keeping birds after hypnotising them.

Growing Up in Flames is a powerful read that scorches the reader with flames of the main characters anger as she grieves and finds out the truth about her family and the secrets they hid.

I enjoyed this novel. The characters were appealing and I loved watching them grow throughout the novel. I was frustrated with the way things ended as I felt their growth together was counteracted by the ending of the book. Overall a great read. Setting (global location) was confusing at first, but worked itself out.

At first, I found this book difficult to get into as it is set in two different time zones however once I got used to this, I was gripped. It really picks up pace as the story unravels however there are very mature themes in here so another one for older teens.

I really liked this book, but I will admit it didn’t grab me right away. It took a bit of getting used to the dual timelines and multiple points of view, but once I got into the groove I was not disappointed. So if you start it and are not sure it's your thing, persist.
It’s a complex story, good for your stronger mature readers, who like a character driven plot as opposed to an action driven one. It’s a slow unravelling that culminates with all of the separate threads being brought together.
Deals with loss, grief, complex family dynamics, domestic abuse and secrets.
Will be highly recommending to my High School customers,.

The premise of this book sounded interesting from the very beginning. It was a quick, easy read.. enjoyable …

Growing Up in Flames is a complex tale, exploring family, loss and dealing with grief.
Our main character is Kenna, a young girl who has been sent to live with her uncle and his family after the death of her mother. She knows little about her mother, and nobody wants to talk to her. However, when she sees local boy Noah burning down the general store she realises that she’s got a chance to find out more.
These two teens are no strangers to loss. Noah is living with a mother who once tried to set him on fire and though he cares for her, taking huge risks to keep her medication up to date, he is desperate to leave and start his own life.
Watching these two interact shows how grief can impact on people, having lasting repercussions.
Between them, Kenna and Noah start to learn about those around them and to consider how they will use this knowledge to move on with their lives.
Thanks to NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read this before publication.

This is perhaps the most intriguing young adult novel I have read in the past couple of years, With themes of guilt, death, and mental health, this is a book that I think could be just the thing for many teens. I also have never read a YA novel set in Australia, so that was a treat. Great book overall!

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!
This book was so good. The duel timelines and multiple POVs really got me hooked from the very start. In terms of plot, I felt not a huge amount happened but there are elements of mystery that keep you reading. It's the characters that make this book as good as it is. They're complex, deep and well written. So much is going on in their lives, facing different struggles and you feel for them. Especially Noah, my heart hurt for him. Overall, a really good YA read!

I love getting books like this from NetGalley, going in blind and not exactly knowing what to expect. Pleasantly surprised with this! An easy 4⭐ for me!

TW: Domestic abuse/attempted rape/miscarriage/ coercive control.

For me this is a bit of a hard book to read with all of it's mental illness and hardship yet it actually makes you think and feel the emotions of all the characters in this book. I am glad that it wasn't too long of a book to read as if it had been any longer I probably wouldn't have finished it.

But having said that it it had good stories in it which revolved around the developing relationships among two troubled teenagers. It is well written and for some I can see where it would draw you in but for me I just didn't enjoy it that much.

This YA novel centres itself on four characters, two predominantly in the past and two set in the present day. The story sets off when Kenna sees the general store on fire and spots a boy, Noah, holding a canister watching it burn. Kenna is triggered by this as her mother died in a bush fire not so long ago. We follow these two characters who are dealing with grief, guilt, and self-punishment. The lingering theme of who deserves happiness and who deserves punishment are questions that these two main characters struggle to understand.

I thought that Jones created in-depth characters in Kenna, Noah, Ava, and James. They all went through some troubling things as teenagers and struggled to find their peace. Jones did a great job at pacing and creating a sense of place when we switched between past and present. As we learn more of the mystery that shrouds Kenna and her deceased mother it pulls the reader even further into the world he’s created. All the characters we follow were flawed in one way or another, reflecting human nature in ways that contribute to their upbringing and guilt/motivations. He did a really good job of highlighting the complexities of people and the way they think.

There were some decisions though, within the book that Kenna and Noah made, that for me should’ve held more weight in their guilty consciousness. For example, at the start, Kenna makes the decision to get back at Noah by creating social media posts that allude to him being gay. After she sees him being beaten up for it, Kenna feels some guilt but doesn’t find it in her to apologise, nor does she think about this for very long. Those actions have very dire consequences for victims in the real world, and I feel as though Kenna got away with something so detrimental.

Noah’s character is a borderline arsonist with little thought to the consequences of his arsonist actions. While his trauma and neglect as a child is awful, it doesn’t justify his actions and because he gets away with it, I think it might send the wrong message to young readers.

The story really did explore the range of emotions people can have and how they all deal with it in their own ways. By the end of the novel, we can see the characters who chose to forgive and have peace, characters who had no idea what they’d done wrong and characters who chose to take out revenge. I was left thinking about those characters and the choices they made throughout.

Overall, I thought this was a realistic YA fiction that was enjoyable from start to finish. I would recommend to mature teens and young adults. Especially more so if they can find the characters relatable.

This is a disturbing and complex YA novel, it is for the more mature readers as it has quite a lot of really complex ideas and risky stuff going on but mostly I think that younger students will struggle to follow the storyline. So it's complex, but it's great.

Set in a small town in country Australia we meet Noah, the troubled son of troubled parents. He looks after his mum who has serious addiction and mental health problems. He is managing to keep her medicated by dosing her drink. This keeps her largely out of trouble and on an even keel. It's tough, getting to school, managing his mother and with a bunch of other stuff going on.

And then there's Kenna, whose mother died in a bush fire, but there is suspicion around her death and Kenna has guilt and grief and way too much anger to make life easy. She's living with her uncle and family but sometimes the rage gets the better of her and she lashes out and then runs. When Kenna encounters Noah who appears to have set fire to the local store, she tackles him to the ground, takes his backpack and holds onto it and figures out who he is. What she finds in the bag is scary and she jumps to conclusions and thus a chain of events that might spiral out of her control is initiated.

There is a lot going on in here. Troubled teens trying to find their way in the world, both dealing with awful stuff. I really enjoyed how their relationship developed and the story developed. It is a challenging read, slightly difficult to follow in the beginning, trying to do quite a lot of things in a short space. I enjoyed this a lot, especially as it is a different and realistic fiction story and those are hard to find right now.

Thanks to Text Publishing and NetGalley for access to this book.

Jones' Growing Up in Flames is a tragic story of what happens when we take too much on ourselves, in the form of guilt and self-punishment. When do we offer ourselves forgiveness, and do we deserve it, seem to be questions that linger in the minds of our main characters as they struggle with whether or not good things should happen to people who feel or are perceived as undeserving.

I think what makes the story interesting, and what kept me reading, is that even though I didn't really care for the main character, Kenna, I did want to know her motivations and just what she would do and the mystery that surrounds her. Kenna hid enough from readers, and from herself and others, that it made her more compelling to try and understand. But to me, trauma doesn't excuse some of her behavior, such as those she takes toward Noah in the first couple of pages.
****Her actions toward Noah at the beginning of the novel, and everything he went through because of her decision involving social media, almost stopped me from reading further, as I saw it did another reviewer. In no way do I ever find actions like that justifiable, and as someone who works with teenagers, I know how something like that could severely impact a student. Also, I know it was a small town, but adding in that layer of homophobia just felt...unsettling. I felt as if she could have left it at the pills and it still would have worked.*****
But as I said, there was some sort of curiosity about Kenna that kept me going, and then when everything started to come together, I had to know where it went. The flashback scenes really unsettled me at times, and there were moments in those that were uncomfortable to read.

The ending, however, felt like a well-deserved end.

Due to some of the themes that are present, I would recommend this for my older students. I know I have students who could relate to the feelings of these characters more than I.

I received a copy of this text through NetGalley (Thank you!) but the opinions expressed above are entirely my own.

When I started reading this story I immediately liked the writing. Until I was six percent in and read a paragraph where the MC makes a boy she hardly knows an Instagram account and makes him questionably gay by adding drawings of half-shaded figures. I raised my eyebrows and read the paragraph again and again. I doubted for a day and then decided to DNF. The book might be wonderful but this paragraph just felt wrong and homophobic.

I never rate a book I DNF, therefore the three star rating. Maybe this paragraph is still editable?

'A gripping story full of suspense and longing, Growing Up in Flames pulls you in and doesn’t let you go.’—Mark Smith, author of The Road to Winter

I’ve heard of Noah the way you hear about car accidents. A series of whispers, theories, and rumors…

Kenna’s mother Ava was killed in a bushfire not long ago. Now Kenna’s living with her uncle and his young family in the small town where Ava grew up, and she feels like an intruder.

Noah’s mother has a mental illness that makes him both carer and jailer—constantly watchful, keeping things on an even keel.

One night Kenna sees the general store on fire, and a boy standing watching as it burns. It takes her a while to notice he’s holding a petrol can, but then things move fast. She’s tackled him and run off with his bag before she even knows what’s happened.

The bag belongs to Noah, and he really wants it back. Kenna wants something too. To make someone else burn the way her mum did. And there’s something she doesn’t know: how Noah can help her find out the truth about her family.

I really enjoyed this book, it was so well written and is a great book for both the young adult and adult market, I didnt feel like this had to be exclusively amrketed at young adults. The writing was great and I really liked the setting and the story idea. The characters were well written and I took them to my heart and have kept thinking about them since I finished the book.I really enjoyed this book.

I loved this book. Although categorised as young adult fiction as an adult I didn’t find it simplistic or lacking in anything. The story centres around a small cast of characters with Kenna our protagonist being a girl in her late teens living in her late mothers home town following the bushfire that destroyed her home and killed her mother. No sooner has Kenna arrived in town she is awake early in the morning and finds the towns old closed up general store burning to the ground and a boy her age watching it burn.
Gradually we get to know Kenna and this boy Noah in the present day and meet Kenna’s mother Ava when she was the same age. Why does her uncle Rob never speak about his sister or their past? Why did she never know that her mother was a prize winning dancer as a teenager, and why did her Mum simply up and leave the town she grew up in and stay away once she became a mother.
Fire is a wonderful metaphor and Zach Jones has built the entire novel onto it. The ash that Kenna describes from the bush softly covers each page giving a muted voice to the storytelling while also providing a haunting quality to it. The horrors that blight the lives of these characters are hidden behind a veil of smoke somehow all the worse for their lack of gratuitousness. Both Kenna and Ava are flawed human beings but both young women you root for regardless.
Forgiveness and retribution sit cheek by jowl in this small Australian town and somehow that is exactly as it should be. Sometimes to forgive is the only way to find peace and move on and some times, people really need to have rough justice meted out to them.