4 Weeks of Summer - The Secret Fire

If, like me, you mourned over the end of CJ Daugherty's Night School series (which ended earlier this summer), the news of this new two book series must have caught your attention. And I was very VERY lucky to get an ARC earlier this month and read it very quickly (am writing this on Tuesday 11th August as part of my 4 Weeks of Summer).

And what is more exciting is that CJ co-wrote this with French author, Carina Rozenfeld. An author I have never heard of, seeing as I am a quite dumb Brit and I don't believe Carina is published in the UK. To my knowledge, this is a the first time that two authors wrote a book together who don't speak the same native language - very intriguing.

Taylor is a girl from England. Sacha is the boy from Paris. They have nothing in common nor do they know each other. Until Taylor's French teacher and Sacha's English teacher force them together for online tutoring. But there's more to it than that. Both Taylor's and Sacha's fates are entwined by a curse. A curse that must be lifted before Sacha's next birthday - which is in around eight weeks time.

But first, they have to meet...

Ok, I am going to say this now. I really liked the Night School series. But this is better.

I sense that the legion of Night School fans are marching to my house with pitchforks and lit torches. But hear me out.

I like slow burning thrillers. Night School slowly burned with foreshadowing and twists. The Secret Fire, on the other hand, grabs you by the neck and you have to run with it. There is no time to foreshadowing in this book. And because of this pacing (because of the short timeframe of the curse and the fact this is a duology), you find yourself speeding through the pages. I read a few pages on and off for a few days, before I sat down and read this book for a few hours. I found, within three hours, I had read nearly three quarters of the book. This is rare that I speed through a book, so the fact I did is always a good thing.

I like the fact that we have an English author and a French author writing this series together. While the story is in English, there is a feel that both CJ and Carina know what they are doing and what they are talking about.

If I had to pick one fault, it's the fact I wish we go some more background on some characters, which I sense is going to be quite important in the next book. For example, while I'm not the biggest fan of Louisa, but we got (what I felt was) very little info on her and I think she's going to be huge in book 2.

But I had such a fun addictive time reading this. Can't wait for book 2!