If this book wasn’t an ARC, I would have DNF’d it. But I pushed through, and honestly, I don’t think preserving my review score on Netgalley was worth it.

As the book entered the end, I was so excited to be done with it, give the book a 2.5 rating on Storygraph, slap out a review, and move onto greener pastures. 

Then I read the final chapter, and that 2.5 plummeted to a 1.5.

The final chapter undoes all of the character development scraped out in the second half of the book.

Laura and her sister Amy end up in almost the exact same place they were in the beginning of the book (Laura private, unable to share her trauma, and not speaking up for herself; Amy selfish, unthinking, self-serving, and obsessed with advancing her own career without caring how it will hurt her sister).

What the book focuses on–the abuse of children in Hollywood–is important. However, the book’s approach and execution of it is unfocused, and ends without addressing the root causes of that trauma (both in Laura’s specific case and the wider causes of capitalism and historical lack of protection for child workers). The conclusion of the story undoes not only all of the character growth but also leaves a huge plot element,

Laura’s childhood trauma from her mother,

completely unresolved.

Speaking of unfocused, the plot was unfocused, too, with a much bigger page count than it needed. New elements and characters get introduced in and out, without ultimately meaning anything after they (predictably) get slashed. Burn the Negative was so much longer than it needed to be; if some of the filler was cut, this book would be so much shorter (and so much better for it).

Speaking of filler, Laura is constantly questioning herself (What should she do? Is this real? Who can she trust?) to the point where it becomes grating, in part because her questions are so obvious that putting them on the page feels patronizing. The surrounding text already shows how Laura is feeling. We don’t need to be spoonfed it.

The book also has a cute gimmick of putting scraps of news articles, internet posts, and movie paraphernalia in front of each chapter. This gimmick is interesting, but doesn’t work. The best example is the very first, a screenshot of a fake meme about The Guesthouse. 

Not to sound like an internet weirdo, but this meme is so painfully un-meme-able that it was painful to read. It's not funny, witty, clever, or using a recognizable meme format. It doesn’t feel like a real meme, which in turn makes the world of the book itself begin on an untrustworthy foot.

To top it all off, the prose was boring. Yawn-inducingly so.

And, look, I don’t need purple prose or sentences so complex they should come with their own instruction manual to enjoy reading. But I do need the words on the page to be interesting. If other elements like thematics and character aren’t interesting, the prose needs to pick up the slack.

A book needs more than a decently interesting premise. Unfortunatey, that's all Burn the Negative has.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The general reception for Burn the Negative seems to be pretty high. I could not imagine why, but maybe it’s just my personal taste. Maybe you’ll like it more, but honestly, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone. Don’t bother.

Thank you to Putnam for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley. If you are interested in Burn the Negative, it releases July 11. 

If possible, support indie bookshops by purchasing the novel from your local brick and mortar or from Bookshop.org!