- Available in: Hardcover, eBook, Audiobook
- Published: March 1, 2018
There’s more than one way to stoke the flames of revenge…
Charlotte Rowe spent the first seven years of her life in the hands of the only parents she knew—a pair of serial killers who murdered her mother and tried to shape Charlotte in their own twisted image. If only the nightmare had ended when she was rescued. Instead, her real father exploited her tabloid-ready story for fame and profit—until Charlotte finally broke free from her ghoulish past and fled. Just when she thinks she has buried her personal hell forever, Charlotte is swept into a frightening new ordeal. Secretly dosed with an experimental drug, she’s endowed with a shocking new power—but pursued by a treacherous corporation desperate to control her.
Except from now on, if anybody is going to control Charlotte, it’s going to be Charlotte herself. She’s determined to use the extraordinary ability she now possesses to fight the kind of evil that shattered her life—by drawing a serial killer out from the shadows to face the righteous fury of a victim turned avenger.
Booklist | Starred Review
by Emily Whitmore
February 15, 2018
A stellar and gripping opening to the Burning Girl Series introduces the tough, smart Trina Pierce, aka Charlotte Rowe, who survived a childhood of murder and exploitation to discover there might be another way to fight back. After serial killers murder her mother, they take Charlotte in and raise her in their worldview. Luckily, she is rescued before she actually kills anyone. Her father then writes books about her, which are then made into movies, and he pushes her into the spotlight. Charlotte breaks free of her father and finds some peace with her grandmother, but after her grandmother dies, Charlotte seeks a new life where no one knows about her past. Her one friend in this new life talks her into trying a pill to help ease her anxiety; instead, the pill takes her fear and desire for survival and turns it into brute strength. The creator of the pill sees it as the answer to the problems of domestic abuse, assault, and rape, and that Charlotte is particularly suited to test it. Readers will be eager for the next installment in Rice’s Ramses the Damned, with Anne Rice, 2017, science-fiction take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2008).
“A stellar and gripping opening to the Burning Girl Series introduces the tough, smart Trina Pierce, aka Charlotte Rowe, who survived a childhood of murder and exploitation to discover there might be another way to fight back…Readers will be eager for the next installment in Rice’s science-fiction take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” —Booklist (starred review)