Year on Fire by Julie Buxbaum

The Quick Cut: Four teens deal with changing circumstances as their junior year of high school begins. A Real Review: Thank you to Delacorte Press for providing the ARC for an honest review. High school tends to be a memorable time for all of us. Not necessarily because it's the most exciting or enjoyable, but because we shape the people we become during those formative teenage years. Are you the person you want to be or are you denying your true nature? This is an important question in this story centered around 4 teens in LA. Twins Immie and Arch have been friends with Paige for a long time, but that friendship is changed when a new boy named Ro comes to their high school from London. Between his arrival and a suspicious fire, it seems like they don't know each other as well as they thought. Will this year bring them closer together as friends or pull them apart? I tend to have a love/hate relationship with this particular author. Either I adore her writing or I just don't click with it at all. When it comes to this book, I seem to fall in the second category. There's nothing wrong with the story theoretically, but I also didn't connect to the story or the characters in a meaningful way. This book is meant to be a coming of age story. All four main characters have their own struggles and how they choose to deal with them will change what their future looks like. The concept itself is great, but 4 main characters is at least one too many. I wanted to get to know the characters and invest in their journeys but I didn't have enough time to reach that level with any of them. The story also is so focused on dealing with current circumstances that you don't really get to know them on a very deep level. The closest to get there is probably Ro, but that's because he's also dealing with his family's problems and where that takes him. An intriguing concept that needed more focus. My rating: 3 out of 5