Hi friends, happy Monday! I hope you’re all well. Today I’m posting my review of Stephanie Oakes novel, The Arsonist.

The Arsonist by: Stephanie Oakes: Molly Mavity has not had the best upbringing, led to believe her mother killed herself, while her father is set to be executed for his crimes. But Molly doesn’t believe her mother is truly dead. Pepper Al-Yusef has dropped out of school, in order to graduate he must write essays in all his subjects. Then there’s Ava Dreyman, a woman who fought during the Cold War in East Germany, leaving behind a diary, that was published. All three of their lives are connected but not in the ways they originally thought. Told in three points of view, this novel took its reader on quite a journey, or quest, as the characters called it. The plot was fast-paced and mysterious enough to keep the reader invested. There was always so much happening that all we wanted was to know how it was all connected. The first two points of view made sense and we could see how they were related, but the third point of view was a complete mystery and missing puzzle piece. This was a long novel, but it went by really quickly; it was full of backstory, which was needed, in order for us to put it all together. At times, the plot felt believable, there were moments throughout that the reader doubted the reality of it all; like who would anonymously give two teenagers plane tickets to half-way across the world in order to solve some big mystery, it didn’t feel like a plausible storyline. The way this was told was unique in a sense, it was all through letters, diary entries and essays, but all of the entries read like prose. They would start as the letter/diary/essay, and then move into more of a prose-like entry, so that it felt like a novel. It worked for the sake of telling this story because if done in pure letter format, the reader thinks everything would have been lost as this plot could get a bit confusing to follow along with at times. The characters were interesting and developed well. Oakes did a good job of giving everyone a voice, but her secondary characters lacked any substance. They felt very one dimensional and only to serve the purpose to move the plot along, and in some cases even that felt sort of farfetched. As for the main characters, they had passion, which is what fueled all of the plots along. In the end, this was really captivating and held some historical elements to it that had the reader googling facts on the Berlin Wall.