‘Does a slag kiss boys? Because I have and I probably will again. But so have lots of you. You can call me a prude and you can call me a whore, but really you’re just calling me a girl. I am a girl. But those other things are yours. They’re in your minds, not mine.’

I like books that mix a contemporary story with a historical one, especially when the stories take place in the same place but different time periods and yet influence each other. So when I read about The Burning by Laura Bates (I have no idea where I heard about it, sorry), I knew I had to read it. It tells the story of Anna Clark, who’s just moved to a small village in Scotland from a city in England to start over—she is trying to start a new life after a boy posted the naked pictures he’d manipulated her into taking for him. The historical story is of Maggie, a village girl who is accused of witchcraft after the wealthy man she accused of rape is drowned at sea.

There are many things I loved about this book. I especially appreciate its willingness to go there—to the many horrible ways that people can manipulate, both the people they are in relationships with and media itself. How social media creates an identity that sometimes can never go away, even if it is based on nothing but technology and malice. I loved the friendships that Anna finds in her new home, and the realizations she has about her old friends, and the way her relationship with her mom evolves. I love the ways she finds to take back her power.

I also really enjoyed Maggie’s story, and I enjoyed learning more about witch hunts in Scotland…there were so many women killed who had no power to save themselves. Women being accused of witchcraft is a topic that has interested me since eighth grade, when I wrote a research paper on it and have been fascinated ever since, but I didn't know much about this time or place. 

So this is a hard review for me to write. I enjoyed all of those pieces, but I was frustrated with how the pieces were put together. Anna and Maggie interact in a sort of supernatural way, via a necklace Anna finds. To me, this felt clunky and inauthentic to the tone of the story. The themes of the two stories click; the way that girls are still up against impossible choices hasn’t changed much in the last 400 years. Anna’s friend Lish explains it as girls being like marshmallows you’re trying to roast, and you can never get it right. Either too cold or burned. “Like girls, right? You’re too cold and frigid and not giving guys what they want . . . until you do, and it’s too much, and you get burned.” Just as Maggie lets her guard down with the wealthy man who eventually causes her death.

I totally see the connection.

But it still didn’t mesh for me, the way the two stories interact. Which really makes me sad because I am here for all of it, for the witches and for the witch trials and for the layering of stories and the layering of time in stories, for one person's story reaching back or forward through time to touch someone else's. But the two just didn't fit together well. Like two patterns that, while beautiful on their own, simply don't go together.

Also: does Great Britain not have laws against online bullying? No one, not one single character, ever suggests calling the police and prosecuting the boy who started this whole thing. He is never held responsible for any of it. Although there is a pretty great scene near the end where Anna’s mom finally stands up for her daughter, I was still annoyed and frustrated with this.

But, all of that aside, I am still glad I read The Burning, and I’m glad it’s a book that exists in the world, because it puts into the world this story, this thing that can happen to almost anyone and that in some form or another has been happening forever.