I am in love with this book. It is beautifully written and emotionally charged.

We follow Irini and her family cope with the effects of a wildfire that desimates their home and town in Greece. We hear the story of the fire through Irini's journal, that is written from a distance about a woman, her daughter and her missing husband. We also follow her experiences through the first person narrative of Irini, where we get a much more emotionally charged depiction of events.

However the emotional punch comes from the contrast of these two narratives as we find out more about this family and the fire that stole their home, the life they knew. The setting is alive and felt completely transported to Greece and some of the historical influences on the lives of those in the book.

I could not have been more engaged in this beautiful story of love, of grief, of trauma, the climate crisis, the responsibility we have to others, to ourselves.

A captivating powerful read.
You can feel the heat and smell the smoke as the fire rages and you can acutely feel the desperations of the survivors and their loss.
A brilliantly written book, dealing with the topical subject of wild fires.
As the survivors come to terms with their life-changing situations and losses the story alternates between two other timezones, how the main characters came to meet and the historical facts of how their forefather's lives were changed and shaped by another tragedy on the same lands decades before.

Just like 'The Beekeeper of Aleppo' this book is beautifully written and intensely emotional. It is a slow read, which returns to themes and locations and re-examines them.

This book tells Irini's story, but follows two timelines which are very different in tone. Irini finds herself trying to come to terms with the changed landscape, both literally and metaphorically, following an out of control fire started deliberately in the forest near her home on a Greek island. The story particularly resonated following the extreme wildfires which have been reported on the Greek island of Rhodes (and others) this summer.

The version of Irini's 'current' story is told in the present tense and first person. This juxtaposes with the past story which is told in the third person and explains the events of the fire and also how Irini fell in love with Tasso.

The fire destroys so much more than landscape and property. It is clear that so many lives are decimated in the fire's wake, and I am sure that, following this summer's events, there will be so many more similar tales to be told.

Like the 'Beekeeper,' Lefteri is writing a tale of hope and redemption - so many characters have to learn to forgive themselves and others because of the consquences of their actions: Mr Monk; Irini, Tasso, Mrs Gatika - all have to assess their actions in the cold light of day.

I was so excited to pick this up after receiving a NetGalley widget from the publisher, especially since I have loved all the previous books by this author, and I'm glad to say this one didn't disappoint either.

The Book of Fire follows a family that has been pulled apart after a forest fire destroys a small Greek town. This is not a book about the devastation caused by the fire but a story about loss and survival.

As with all of Lefteri's books, I thought this one was beautifully written. It's full of fab descriptions of the Greek town and its surroundings both before and after the fire. The story does jump around quite a bit and do wish it was told in chronological order rather than jumping back and forwards. there were also some lines that felt a little repetitive, especially at the start, but the repetition all makes sense as the story progresses.

I thought the characters were well drawn, and they felt realistic, and although they had their flaws, I couldn't help but feel for them all.

This is another great read, and if you've enjoyed Lefteri's previous books, then I highly recommend this one too!! Be prepared for your emotions to be taken on a wild ride!!

Thank you, NetGalley and the publishers Bonnier Books UK for my digital review copy (eARC).

These are my honest and unbiased thoughts that I am sharing voluntarily.

After a devastating fire ravages a Greek village, lives are changed forever. Encountering the man who set the fire, Irini makes a decision that she struggles to come to terms with. Hauntingly beautiful, The Book of Fire is a story of destruction, redemption and learning to live life again.

I love the authenticity in Christy Lefteri’s writing, which is visible in all her novels. The imagery to describe the forest is particularly beautiful and I love the use of Greek language. The sense of loss and the characters’ pain is palpable. At first I struggled with the ‘Book of Fire’ sections, finding them ethereal and somewhat hard to follow. However, once I got to grips with it, I found it an effective way to contextualise and deepen the meaning of the story. Definitely recommended for fans of Lefteri’s previous work.

For the most part i enjoyed this book, however I don’t think it was as good as the authors previous book. It showed how the villain can also be a victim and how a tragedy affects all of us.

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful village, which held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed by a fire that blazed up to the sky. The fire ran all the way down to the sea, where it met with its reflection."

The Book of Fire was a poignant read, all the more so in light of the recent wildfires in Rhodes. Christy Lefteri has such a beautiful way of writing, even when describing the desolation of the forest after the fire.

Irini lives in a bungalow in an idyllic village in Greece. A beautiful home near an ancient forest. She lives with her artist husband and her beloved daughter Chara. Irini sees herself as a good person until a fire destroys her home and the surrounding forest.

After the fire Irini's home is destroyed and her husband and daughter are left with both physical and emotional scars from the fire. Her much loved father-in-law has been lost without a trace since the day of the fire. As well as all these losses Irini is grieving the secondary losses of parts of her family heritage, the changed personalities of her loved ones and not least the loss of the creatures who lived within the forest. Irini is angry and it is that anger that surfaces when she sees Mr Monk in the forest in need of help.

"This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so did I. I left him.

I left him, and now he may be dead."

The book is told both in the present and in flashbacks, a device some readers have expressed displeasure at, but I felt it worked really well. It made the whole thing seem more real, as if Irini could only stand to relive the trauma of the fire if she relayed it in third person.

"Maybe I can write it down. Maybe, that way, I can allow myself to remember without burning. Remember it as if it is a story from long, long ago. A fairy tale with a happy ending, like one of those in the beautifully illustrated books on the shelf in Maria's kafenion. I will call it The Book of Fire."

I read The Book of Fire in just a few hours and it has cemented Christy Lefteri's place among my favourite authors. I loved the way I began by questioning Christy's moral fibre, but then before long I was questioning whether I would have done the same if I was looking into his eyes in the heat of the moment.

"Within them, I saw Lazaros. I saw Lazaros standing in the old forest. I saw the pine trees and fir trees and poplars and plane trees and oaks. I saw the weasels, and minks, the wildcats and the badgers. I saw the beautiful red deer that roamed the lowlands. I saw the birds and the rabbits and the hedgehogs and moles and rats, the lizards and the beetles, the tiny insects, the ladybirdsand butterflies. I saw the wildflowers. I saw the colours of the forest as it was...I saw then the fifteen people huddled together, the ones we had seen as we ran down to the sea from our home - they had died holding onto each other.

I saw my husband's face and my daughter's."

The Book of Fire is a piece of fiction but it is also a dire warning about the consequences of the damage we are inflicting on our planet.

"The forest fires have always been worse during a drought, and as the years pass, the droughts have become longer and more frequent, the land drying out most summers, and the winds becoming stronger, too, the humidity lower. The conditions have progressively worsened."

This book will haunt me for some time to come.

"While you live, shine. Have no grief at all.

Life exists only for a short while.

And time demands its toll."

A lovely thought provoking and hopeful read.
Set in a peaceful freak village, Irini, her husband Tasso and their daughter Chara live a happy and simple life.
Until one day their peaceful lives are turned upside down when a fire rips through the land, destroying lives and homes. The senseless act of greed and selfishness caused by one individual.
Chara and Tasso are left with physical scars to go with the mental ones they all suffer.
Irini finds herself with a decision of conscience when she discovers the man who started the fire dying under a tree?
What should she do? Will her cations even make and difference?
The narrative is split between the present day and the vents leading up to and after the fire.
Despite the story being about fire abs destruction it is a peaceful and soothing read leading the reader to examine whether or not it is really worth blaming someone - the outcome is still the same.
The families struggle to come to terms with their loss is evident throughout, but raises the question can we always find the Menai g behind tragedy?
Would definitely recommended, especially if you loved the beekeeper of alleppo.

A stunning book that sucks you right in. I read it after the fires in Greece, so I found it made me very emotional having so recently seen the devastation a wildfire causes. A beautiful, thought provoking and at times very sad read about a family trying to rebuild their lives following the tragedy that’s taken so much from them.

The easiest of 5⭐️ recommendations.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bonnier Books UK, Manilla Press for the advanced copy of this emotional read.

A fire that swallows all in its path and leaves behind a trail of destruction and misery. Set in modern times near the coast of Greece the story wavers between the aftermath of the fire, the time of the fire and then many years before. One of the things I took away from this book is that climate change is here now and we have to react better to the consequences, but also humans are resourceful and we will adapt, i hope.

It is one of those books that transports you making you forget about real life and full of fantastic characters that spring to life. I actually felt like I was there in the story with them ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This is beautifully written and very evocative. What the whole family has gone through is horrific and feels all the more prescient with the situation in Rhodes this summer. I thought the characters were well written and felt authentic. If I’m honest, I didn’t love the diversionary story about the Turks and the musical instruments- I just couldn’t get absorbed by that part of the story when there was already so much going on so I did skip those bits. But really enjoyed the rest.

This is a story within a story, about a woman and her daughter, about her husband and his loss, about a fire that devastated their forest, their town, their lives. It is about family and love, greed for money, regret, loss, and death. And always about the fire. And the man who started it.

It is also about kindness. The faithful dog that stays by their side, the old women they accompany, the family who takes them in, the baby jackal they rescue, the lies adults tell each other so the children do not learn of terrible truths too young.

And numbness. The kind that leaves you unable to do anything until it's too late. Leaving you wondering again, what if? What if I had acted? Is this then my fault?

The Book of Fire is a quiet book with a fiery soul. Irini tells it in the aftermath of the fire, in the midst of rebuilding their lives, as her husband, Tasso, struggles with depression and the damage to his hands and her daughter, Chara, deals with an injury and tries to make sense of it all. She copes with the difficult bits by telling us the past in a fairy tale, in that once upon a Harry Lime, interweaving stories of her father and her great-grandfather, of their movements to and from this little forest in Greece that she now calls home.

Lefteri does very well in writing about loss and love, and also interweaving in the histories of the people and the places in the novel. This feels a little lighter than The Beekeeper of Aleppo, maybe because the scope feels a little smaller, the stakes a little lower. It's a beautiful read, all the same.

Note: I received a digital ARC of this book from Bonnier Books UK via NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

The Book of Fire is a strong and emotional book that focuses on a family that have to go through loss because of fire and how the members of the family deal with the pain that follows the tragedy that hit the island they were living in. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, the writing style, the story all make it a must read.

I loved this book. It is a terribly sad story but told with an uplifting sense of family.

This novel tells the story of Irini, Tasso and their daughter Chana. It is set in Greece, where their small village, set in an ancient forest, is engulfed by fire. They run for their lives, down to the sea, where they float and desperately try to keep their heads above water until they can be rescued.

This book would be an emotional read at any time. But to read it whilst the news is reporting wildfires raging through Rhodes and Corfu added stark images to what is written on the page. It made me consider the losses experienced by the families on these islands. This is purely coincidental of course, but I think it made the book more real.

I loved the way Irini recounts her family story to Chana. I liked the repetition, because this is what we do with children, it is partly how they learn. And I loved the smattering of cockney rhyming slang and the reason for this - 'once upon a harry lime'. Lovely. It gave the book such personality.
I also loved the sense of place - meze, halloumi, olives, Maria's kafenon, the pine trees all add to the picture of Greece in your mind. But the thing I liked the most about the forest was the old chestnut tree. Coming back to this one tree again and again reminded me of The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, which had a similar theme of a storyline built around a tree.

I could go on and on, there is so much that is good about this book. Don't be put of by the sad story, there are happy, uplifting moments throughout which balance the sadness somehow.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. It is a book I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend.

This was an absolutely fantastic book which could, at times, be harrowing. You could feel the pain of all the people involved. There were parts filled with happiness that lifted the spirits.
With what is currently happening in Rhodes and Corfu this story hit very close to home and was very relavent. Watching the news about wildfires then reading a work of fiction felt strange but made the book even more enjoyable.

It’s beautifully written and relevant as we see heatwaves and wildfire happening around the world. This book is a love letter to the nature and call to protect. It also sensitively suggests that most people who are capitalistic and causing damage to the earth probably don’t mean to cause a natural catastrophe that leads to burning down the entire forest killing wildlife and people. Still, there is no change to the fact that they do. The story looks at how one fire, a simple mistake by a man, affected the eco system of the nature but also families, and one family in particular. The author’s beautiful prose adds to the grief and desperation. It was poignant and heartbreaking. The story develops very slowly, could have been a just little bit faster, but all in all, it is a very good book. Definitely recommend if you liked her books.

A beautifully written story about a family whose lives are affected by a devastating wild fire in Greece. We follow the story of Irini, her husband, Tasso, and her daughter, Chara, as they try to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of the fire. The story is interspersed with Irini’s memoir which beautifully, and painfully, describes her emotions throughout this life changing tragedy. The author’s vivid descriptions of the forest, both before and after the fire, help the reader to get a real sense of the loss which these devastating fires bring about. A passionate and emotive story which drew me in from the very first page. Stunning!

This is a story within a story.
We follow a strong female character as she tackles grief, helplessness and guilt. The guilt she feels about the man who started the fire, helplessness regarding her husband and grief over the forest they've lost.
This story also tells an important story of how greed mixed with global warming can lead to devastating events. Especially the more people refuse to listen and change before it too late.
This was beautifully written. Perfectly paced. Hard to read at times.

Synopsis————————————This morning, I met the man who started the fire. He did something terrible, but then, so have I. I left him. I left him and now he may be dead.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful village that held a million stories of love and loss and peace and war, and it was swallowed up by a fire that blazed up to the sky. The fire ran all the way down to the sea where it met with its reflection.

A family from two nations, England and Greece, live a simple life in a tiny Greek village: Irini, Tasso and their daughter, lovely, sweet Chara, whose name means joy. Their life goes up in flames in a single day when one man starts a fire out of greed and indifference. Many are killed, homes are destroyed, and the region's natural beauty wiped out.

My thoughts
This story is told in two narratives that of Irini,Tasso and Chara in the current time and also Irini writing a memoir about the past (but not so past ).
The fire had raged through the beautiful village / forest and destroyed all plant and life including sadly human life too leaving its charred remains.
Tasso was badly damaged from the fire he
was emotionally troubled .
Chara and her mother suffered during the fire , the escape, Chara was subsequently hurt they survived but others did not.
Mr Monk the one who started the fire was found dead by Irini.
An investigation is also part of the narrative.
There were warm moments throughout not only with human interaction but that of a dog and a jackal.
This is a wonderful story about human spirit , the perseverance to survive such devastating circumstances and that of redemption and acceptance.