Part romance, part family drama, part snapshot of NYC in the summer of 1977.

Nora is about to turn 18 and is trying to find her place in the world where she's scared of things beyond her control like a killer on the loose in NYC but also scared of things close to home like her brother who is hanging with the wrong crowd and is becoming a physical threat to her and her mother.

This is a YA that I wouldn't have picked up if it didn't come in a Book Riot box but I'm really glad I read it.


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Well written with a fascinating historical backdrop. ( )

It's the summer of 1977 in New York: the Ramones play CBGB's, people dance to disco all night, an oppressive heatwave settles over the city, the Son of Sam serial killer is at large, and buildings keep burning. Nora is a high school senior, about to graduate into this mess, and, she hopes, out of her family apartment, where she lives with her mother (who refuses to face reality) and younger brother Hector (who is out of control and abusive). Nora knows that Hector starts fires, and that he deals drugs, but her mother refuses to face facts, and their father has started over with a new wife and son, calling only on holidays. Nora has her lifelong best friend Kathleen MacInerny, whose father is a firefighter, but she doesn't tell Kathleen what it's really like at home, and she keeps her distance from handsome new coworker Pablo, too, fearing he won't understand and will judge her. (Pablo's family is from Colombia; Nora's is from Cuba.) Finally, a night of blackout, looting, and even more fires convinces Nora she has to take action; her neighbor, a Black woman called Stiller, encourages her.

Nora feels trapped in large and small ways, but in the end she gets a new beginning, thanks in part to help from teachers, neighbors, her boss, and Kathleen's family.

Quotes

It's no use talking to her about real life, though. She just doesn't participate in it. (31)

Safety precaution, huh? Interesting. Then why is it that having the cops everywhere makes me feel so scared? (122)

And then I wonder: Does the shooter have a mother, too? Does she know he's a monster? Is she afraid to say so and turn him in? (178)

I wonder - if a liar like me can be a true friend? (211)

"But you can also take a stand, even when you're scared. If you think you're powerless, you are." (Stiller to Nora, 230)

How do you rebuild people? How do you help them trust one another again? It seems so much harder than fixing buildings. (263)

What hotline is there for someone like me? How do I turn in my own flesh and blood when it means that everything will be blown apart and I'll lose whatever family I have left? (267)

Maybe the things that scare us seem more powerful than they truly are when we keep them secret. (287)

Until right now, I never considered that maybe Mima couldn't talk about the sad things in her life any more than I could talk about the sad things in mine. (295) ( )

This one was intriguing and I enjoyed reading it, but ultimately found it to be anticlimactic. I enjoyed the characters - Medina did a great job of getting you invested. And setting it during the Summer of Sam was a nice plot point. But ultimately, I was let down with all the build up. ( )

Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina is a 2016 Candlewick Press publication.

This book has been on and off my TBR list for a long time. The main reason I waffled on it was the YA label attached to it, but I kept coming back to it because of the era of time the story is set in, and the serial killer theme running in the background.

The story is set in New York in 1977. That summer was insane- boiling hot with blackouts and the infamous 'Son of Sam' serial killer terrorizing the city. It is against this backdrop that seventeen-year-old Nora Lopez navigates her last year of high school, living with a highly dysfunctional family. With her parents now divorced, Nora’s mother, a Cuban immigrant, makes all males into authority figures, even her own son, Hector, who has turned to drug dealing and theft, turning violent towards his own family.

Nora’s father is too busy with his new family to check in and needs to be reminded to send child support.

Meanwhile, Nora spends time with her best friend, begins dating a nice guy, holds down a part-time job and applies to get into college, all while looking out for Hector, and scrounging for her meals, as her mother faces cutbacks at work.

As Hector increasingly spirals out of control, Nora struggles to survive in the gritty, dog eat dog environment of a city in the grips of violence and terror.

While I lived far from New York in 1977, this book reminded me of the news segments I watched which followed the tension of those times. Son of Sam was a truly terrifying killer and had the entire city on edge. But that’s not all that was going on back then and the author did a great job of recreating that atmosphere. I also got a kick out the brand names and music mentioned in the story. Anyone else remember Sassoon jeans?

The story is not really about Son of Sam- for the record. It’s a story of a teenage girl on the cusp of adulthood, who must work to keep herself from falling into a vicious cycle. She must stand up for herself, against those who would rather keep her from succeeding, and fight to make it out of a toxic environment to have a better life for herself. I’m glad I ultimately decided to give the book a chance. While it is a YA novel to the extent that teenage Nora is the main character, it is really a book I feel is just as much, if not more so, for adults. The author still takes pains to keep the book in the right lane without sacrificing the dark and gritty tones.

Overall, this was a good book, with well-drawn characterizations and a positive, inspirational ending.

3.5 rounded up ( )