Hello, my name is Simon and today I will be telling you about a book I didn't like but I think a lot of people would like. Controlled Burn is a book about fire and getting over fears.

First of all, what is the plot of Controlled Burn? Well, the main character, Maia, who is 12 years old, has her house burned down. She pulls her little sister, Amelia, from that fire. So Maia is considered a hero but she had a candle in her room and she thinks that it caused the fire. So she feels guilty for most of the book. Because of the fire, her sister gets some severe burns so as her sister heals, her parents send her to her grandparents in Minnesota.

Over the time she is there, she gets over fears like heights, swimming, and the biggest of all, fires. As she does this she keeps herself busy by helping her nine-year-old neighbor Griffin with his Boy Scout badges going on trips with her grandma, and teaching the dog that lives in her grandparents' backyard, Big Bear, but most of all she tries to build up the courage to climb the fire tower.

I think a good age for this book is 9-13. It has good character development but is slow-paced.

So in conclusion I think this is a good book to read if you need to get over fears or want a chill read. Thank you. ( )

Trigger warnings: Fire, emesis, hospitalisation, near-death experiences, physical injury, death of a brother, blood depiction, animal death, coma, contagion
Note that I bought this book and now I own it.

7/10, the library I normally go to does not have this yet and probably won't get it until next year since they got their last batch and my thoughts on this book is that it's alright and I would be happy if the library got more works from this author in the future and there were many positives about this. Where do I begin? It starts with the main character Maia whose surname I don't know yet and everything looks normal for the first few pages until the book hit me like a truck and for some reason that hasn't been explained the house caught fire and she saves her sister Amelia and I honestly thought she was older than her until I was disproven I guess. Maia's parents sent her away to a town called Thistledew which by the way has a population of 500 give or take a few and she spends most of the book there and I liked a few things about that, one I liked Maia as a character as she's dealing with an immense amount of guilt and she keeps wanting to rewrite the past and thinks about the fact that it could've gone better and it could've gone a lot worse. Two I liked the character development and I understand that Maia had some fears in the past but after the fire they just intensified from there however in the end she overcomes them experiencing character development and last of all were the supporting characters since the author wrote them well and they were enjoyable to read. Maia spends some part of her life healing from the incident and she was almost cut off from the rest of the world but at least her parents were still there her grandparents were supportive and Amelia eventually got through eventually ending this on a high note. Wow. That was great. That fire information was interesting also. ( )