Review: Fire with Fire by Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian

Title: Fire with Fire (Burn for Burn #2)
Author: Jenny Han & Siobhan Vivian
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
Release date: September 3rd 2013
Pages: 528
Genre: Young Adult
Source: BEA - I received an advance copy of this book at Book Expo America in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!
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Lillia, Kat, and Mary had the perfect plan. Work together in secret to take down the people who wronged them. But things didn’t exactly go the way they’d hoped at the Homecoming Dance.
Not even close.
For now, it looks like they got away with it. All they have to do is move on and pick up the pieces, forget there ever was a pact. But it’s not easy, not when Reeve is still a total jerk and Rennie’s meaner than she ever was before.
And then there’s sweet little Mary…she knows there’s something seriously wrong with her. If she can’t control her anger, she’s sure that someone will get hurt even worse than Reeve was. Mary understands now that it’s not just that Reeve bullied her—it’s that he made her love him.
Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, burn for a burn. A broken heart for a broken heart. The girls are up to the task. They’ll make Reeve fall in love with Lillia and then they will crush him. It’s the only way he’ll learn.
It seems once a fire is lit, the only thing you can do is let it burn...

My rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Burn for Burn was such a fun read, and Fire with Fire is just as entertaining. These books are perfect guilty pleasure reading - there's nothing deep or meaningful about them, but they're just so much fun to breeze through.

Both Jenny Han and Siobhan Vivian have writing styles that I always enjoy. They write books that are always entertaining, simple as that. Both writing styles flow really nicely and make the pages turn quickly, even though this book is so long. Their styles work really well together. The characters they have created in this series are intriguing: no, they're not the most complex characters I've read about, but their stories are engrossing, and that's what counts. None of them are characters I can entirely agree with, but they're relatable nonetheless, and I enjoyed reading about them.

The story, though, I didn't enjoy as much in Fire with Fire as I did in Burn for Burn. In comparison, I feel like the sequel was lacking a certain drive. In Burn for Burn, the girls were brought together by their revenge plan, which pushed the plot throughout the novel. At the start of Fire with Fire, the girls have nothing of the sort to keep them together, so I didn't really see the point of the novel of at first. They do develop another revenge plan over the course of the novel, but it didn't seem as strong as the one in the first book. I wished the other girls' revenge plans that were mentioned in the first book had been elaborated on more in the sequel, instead of continuing on with the one that was already started in Burn for Burn.

In Burn for Burn, I was pleasantly surprised that the supernatural aspect didn't play too important a role in the story. That is still the case for most of Fire with Fire, up until the very end. And the ending... I really don't know what to make of that. The way it's left at the end of Fire with Fire, I don't think it makes all that much sense, to be honest. But I'm assuming the third book in the series, Ashes to Ashes, will elaborate on that storyline and hopefully make it all start to make sense.

Despite these smaller issues with the story, Fire with Fire is most definitely a fun read. If you're looking for a quick, entertaining read that doesn't require much thinking on your part, you should definitely give this series a try!