![]() She exposes their conflicted feelings about their love for each other as well as the exhaustion from the weight of the expectations they bear as Black teenagers. Woodfolk’s second-person free verse and rich language imbue both characters and their relationship with vivid, vulnerable life. With the day of the fire as an anchor, readers follow the girls back and forth in time and witness them becoming best friends and partners in crime, then slowly but fully-though the narrator’s partner can’t bring herself to admit it-falling in love. The narrator retraces the history of an intimate friendship with someone referred to only as “you” across the novel’s nonlinear structure, creating a portrait of a defining relationship. ![]() ![]() ![]() In Nothing Burns as Bright as You, Ashley Woodfolk ( When You Were Everything, The Beauty That Remains) plumbs the depths of female friendship, first love and the grief that often comes with navigating-and losing-both. Over the course of a single day, the fire sets off a twisting chain of events and unravels a complex relationship that flickers between best friendship and so much more. To commemorate their “dumpster fire” of a year ending, two teenage girls light a fire in their school’s garbage dumpster. ![]()
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