An NPR Best Book of the Year  •  A Buzzfeed Best Book of the Year "Like lightning in a bottle, Robin Wasserman’s Girls on Fire captures girlhood friendship in all its shattering intensity. A captivating, terrifying novel, and one you won’t forget.” —Megan Abbott On Halloween, 1991, a popular high school basketball star ventures into the woods near Battle Creek, Pennsylvania, and disappears. Three days later, he’s found with a bullet in his head and a gun in his hand—a discovery that sends tremors through this conservative community, already unnerved by growing rumors of Satanic worship in the region. In the wake of this incident, bright but lonely Hannah Dexter is befriended by Lacey Champlain, a dark-eyed, Cobain-worshiping bad influence in lip gloss and Doc Martens. The charismatic, seductive Lacey forges a fast, intimate bond with the impressionable Dex, making her over in her own image and unleashing a fierce defiance that neither girl expected. But as Lacey gradually lures Dex away from her safe life into a feverish spiral of obsession, rebellion, and ever greater risk, an unwelcome figure appears on the horizon—and Lacey’s secret history collides with Dex’s worst nightmare. By turns a shocking story of love and violence and an addictive portrait of the intoxication of female friendship, set against the unsettled backdrop of a town gripped by moral panic, Girls on Fire is an unflinching and unforgettable snapshot of girlhood: girls lost and found, girls strong and weak, girls who burn bright and brighter—and some who flicker away. An Amazon Best Book of May 2016: Much will be made of the fact that Robin Wasserman has previously written only Young Adult novels; the heroines (if you can call messed up, Kurt Cobain-obsessed, violent Hannah and Lacey that) of her first adult novel, Girls on Fire , are teenaged high school nonentities who set out to get revenge on the popular kids they’re convinced despise them. But make no mistake: Hannah Dexter (also known as Dex, because Lacey thinks that makes her seem tougher) and her friends are involved in some pretty high stakes, grown up (and messed up) stuff, from booze and drugs (of course) to dangerous interactions with sometimes violent older men (ditto) to a climactic scene that even those of us who were blasé about those two previous examples didn’t see coming. Written in language that can turn from incandescent to overblown, this thrilling novel juxtaposes some pretty terrible behavior with the ordinary goings-on in a completely ordinary town – which makes it seem all the more realistic. It’s almost embarrassing how firmly it grabbed me, and how grateful it made me both that I don’t have any teenage daughters, and that I no longer am one. —Sara Nelson “As intense as adolescence and as dark as a dream.... Girls on Fire is a mystery and a tangled love triangle and a sharp, ruthless thriller, and it’s satisfying and troubling on all these levels.” - Briallen Hopper, Los Angeles Review of Books “Deliciously digestible.... [ Girls on Fire has] an undeniably dark, voyeuristic appeal: we get to watch universal emotions manifest with extreme outward ferocity.” - Keziah Weir, Elle “This spellbinding story sent literal shivers up and down our spines.” - Refinery 29 “A book that crackles with the kind of energy that only teenagers can conjure.... It is about being nowhere and feeling like you’re going nowhere, and, maybe most importantly, it is about society’s fear of teenage girls.... All of these themes are explored through a Lynchian lens, a skewed take on small town America in all its hypocritical glory.” - Jason Diamond, Lit Hub “’She was making fun of me, or she wasn’t. She was like me, or she wasn’t,’ says Hannah, spidey senses already tingling, after her first extended hang-out with Lacey. It’s one of several sharp, spot-on lines about the frailty of teen friendships that Wasserman employs throughout the book.... [Wasserman proves her] own black-magic mettle by conjuring up an era where ill-informed paranoia (and just plain ding-dongness) turned some of the quietest corners of America into fear factories, full of deep-rooted distrust and misspent rage.” - Brian Raferty, Wired “An enveloping page-turner.” - Associated Press “Thrilling.... [an] intriguing mix of dark literary sophistication and unadulterated teenaged angst…impressive storytelling abilities and flights of dazzling lyrical prose.” - Shane Sexton, Daily News “Excellent.... drives to its savage, surprising and unnerving conclusion.” - Miami Hearld “The kind of book I wanted to tear through, but found so intense that I needed to take breathers. It captures the darkest side of girlhood in a way no other book or movie I’ve come across has. ” - Rookie “An intense whirlwind of love, violence, and obsession in a small town.” - Redbook “Part murder mystery, part love story, this page-turner explores the dark side of the all-consuming friendship between a wide-eyed good girl and a gru