Girls on fire, book review. (Robin Wasserman)

Oh boy!

When I read the blurb on this one, I thought, okay, sound like this could get messy.

Rarely do I purchase a book, take it home and start reading it the same day; normally because I'm in the middle of reading something else, but not this time. 
Having just finished Stephen King's Revival, (see blog post 14th July) I was about to start a selection of short stories, but got sidetracked by 'Girls on Fire', diving in the moment I got home. (Well, I actually read the first few pages whilst sitting in my car, and I hadn't done that since I purchaser 'The Book Thief' by Marcus Zusak). 
So, to the characters. 
We have the loner, Dex, the beautiful prom queen, Nikki and we have the outsider, (read: bad influence) Lacey. 
This book is told mainly in the first person by Dex (real name Hannah Dexter), and Lacey. 
This is a story of teenage anger, peer pressure, drugs alcohol, Nirvana and sex, and things certainly start to burn quickly; alcohol is consumed in large quantities, drugs are smoked, sex is mostly consensual and the music is turned up to eleven. 
After the suicide of a well liked, well respected and very talented high school boy, Craig (who happened to be dating Nikki), Dex and Lacey are thrown together. 
The story runs on two timelines, the present, told by Dex, and the year before, told by Lacey, which (spoiler alert) gradually reveals how she had been having an affair with Nikki and her talented high school boyfriend. 
Lacey's voice speaks mostly from the past in almost apologetic reflection to Dex, as if she is writing a journal, and I though this worked well. 
The climax is sort of what I was expecting, but I don't think it was written with the intention of being a big secret, (Lacey gives too many clues as we journey through the book for that), but the very very end was a bit of a let down.
I suppose you can only have so much kindle for a fire, and when it's gone it's gone. Oh well!

Does size matter?

I've read a silly amount of books this year and I'm not finished yet. I reckon, that by the end of 2014 I will have read about twenty five books, ranging in genres from horror and romance, through crime, classic and war. I've read fiction and non fiction, new authors and tried a tested ones, stand alone books and series, but does size matter?
Justin Cronin's 'The Passage' is sublime as is Marcus Zusak's 'The Book Thief' and both are long, compared to 'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' which is fabulous, and 'Fahrenheit 451' which is both strange and compelling in equal measure, especially with Sam Weber's accompanied artwork in the Folio edition, and both these books are under two hundred pages. 

This year aside, I've read Stephen King's 'The Stand', which, at just over fourteen hundred pages, is the longest book I have ever read. 
'It' and 'The Lord of the Rings' both top a thousand pages and on the opposite end of the scale, H.G.Wells' 'War of the Worlds, and Richard Matherson's, 'I am Legend' which are up there in my top ten all time favourites, only support a few hundred pages between them. 
So I suppose I've answered my own question then.
Size does matter.
It matter in as much as a book can be short, long or anywhere in between, but as long as it is the right length to tell the story, it's going to be just fine. 
Inspiration for the day goes to all those editors out there who manipulate the books we read so they are, just the right length.