Will End In Fire by Nicole Bokat

 

It starts with a disaster.  Ellie Stone leaves her brother Josh alone in their parents house and starts the drive back to New York City.  When she realizes she has left something she needs, she turns the car around and drives back.  When she arrives, the house is aflame and Josh is seriously burned. Josh was always the golden boy of their family, a natural athlete around whom their parents' attention was devoted.  But Josh had issues as he got older and became addicted to drugs.  He had been through rehab and was clean at the moment but their parents had asked Ellie to come home that weekend as they were out of town and they didn't know what would happen if Josh were left alone.

Now Ellie's world spins out of control.  She is wracked with guilt for leaving and then when the police investigate the fire, afraid that she would be blamed for starting it.  It could have been started by a cigarette and while Ellie remembers putting her last one out, she doesn't really trust her memory.  Josh had been fighting with his girlfriend, Audrey, on the phone that night.  Had she come over?  Had Josh started the fire to kill himself?

Her parents are crushed and depressed.  Ellie can't concentrate and loses her job as an investigative reporter  Without a job, she worries about making rent.  The only person who seems to care about how Ellie is handling things is Drew, Josh's childhood best friend.  Eventually, Ellie and Drew start a relationship and she moves in with him.  Can Ellie turn her life back around?  Will the mystery of what happened that night be solved?

Although some might consider this a mystery, I thought it was an exquisite rendering of young people at this time.  I have family members in that age group so I'm familiar with the mind set and the author has captured it perfectly.  The angst of graduating into a tight job market and working low end entry jobs while struggling with overwhelming student debts, the reluctance to form lasting attachments and the resulting often meaningless affairs, the sense that there is nothing but a disastrous world hurtling towards its end, all of these are here.  The book is also set in the time of the covid shutdown with all the fear and uncertainty that the isolation created, especially in young people who often lost their jobs or struggled to finish their education online.  The mystery of the night of the fire is slowly revealed and there are several twists and turns that surprise the reader  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.