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If you think enough time has passed – and you’re emotionally fortified enough – to revisit the fraught days of lockdown, then you’re probably ready to read The Burn. This “nerve-shredding psychological thriller” follows a group of friends on an off-grid road trip in a dystopian near-future, where the world is on fire and no one is safe. My friends at Hachette Australia were kind enough to send me a copy for review.
The year is 2030, and Australia has spent five months in an “airlock”, with everyone forced indoors as the country is ravaged by bush fires. When the lockdown finally lifts, 30-something social media manager Carmen receives a message from her childhood friend Eleni, begging her to join their friends on a celebratory road trip up the NSW coast. Carmen and Eleni will be joined by Eleni’s boyfriend Dan, and their long-time pal Rhett.
Little do they all realise that Dan has spent airlock immersed in an online world of alpha males, conspiracy theories, and ideological extremists – and the getaway he has planned for them all is not exactly what they had in mind.
The Burn also unfolds through flashbacks, from 2025-2029, revealing more of Carmen’s family history and why her relationship with her sister, Anna, seems so strange.
I won’t deny that it drags a little bit in the middle, when the travel party overnights in a cheap coastal motel before heading inland to the off-grid cabins. I found myself a little impatient, wanting them to get moving. But then, the second half of The Burn is genuinely terrifying, in more ways than one. My knuckles were white from gripping the pages.
Ultimately, I read The Burn as a story about social contagion, and how ideas spread – the good, and the bad.
Read The Burn on audiobook via Libro.fm here. (affiliate link)
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