Burn Down, Rise Up: Stranger Things in the Bronx

 

Today I’m writing about Burn Down, Rise Up by Vincent Tirado. I’m not sure how I even found out about this book. It might have been one of those, if you like x you’ll like y, kind of deals. I truly couldn’t tell you.

Still, the blurb says that for more than a year, the Bronx has been plagued by sudden disappearances that no one can explain. Fifteen-year-old Raquel does her best to ignore them. After all, the police only look for the white kids. But when her crush Charlize’s cousin goes missing, Raquel starts to pay attention – especially when her own mom comes down with a mysterious illness that seems linked to the disappearances. Raquel and Charlize team up to investigate, but they soon discover that everything is tied to a terrifying urban legend called the Echo Game. The game is rumoured to trap people in a sinister world underneath the city, and the rules are based on a particularly dark chapter in New York’s past. If the friends want to save their home and everyone they love, they will have to play the game and destroy the evil at its heart – or die trying.

We open on a prologue with this guy, Cisco, who is Charlize’s cousin who mentions that he broke the rules of this game and has the rot coursing through him. He makes his way to the hospital just to run away and call Charlize, telling her to help him and bring a weapon while he’s hearing this skittering, because there’s a creature after him. Then it hops over to the first chapter when Raquel and Aaron are getting on the subway and heading to school, Raquel overhears someone mention to their friend that they shouldn’t get on the train when it gets dark because something is taking people. Raquel also mentions to the reader about how a group of people disappeared at once, and then every month (like clockwork) one or two people end up going missing. Charlize also happens to be the love of Aaron’s life, although she doesn’t know that, and she and Raquel used to have, in Raquel’s words, “a weird relationship”, where wherever Charlize was, Raquel mysteriously found herself as well. She then gets picked up from school by her father as her mother is now in hospital in a medically induced coma with this infection that Cisco gave her and Raquel basically starts seeing things. Wild stuff.

I really liked the relationship Raquel had with her friends. I say friends, there’s Aaron, her bestie, then Charlize and Mario – they’re really the only other two of consequence. Charlize is obviously her crush, and Mario is Aaron’s best friend. So he’s basically just a mutual friend. The thing I liked between these was that, ignoring Charlize, I really enjoyed the crusty parts of the relationships. Like, they’re not all just nicey nice. I got the vibe that Raquel straight up wasn’t a fan of Mario, which can often happen with friends of friends. I was glad that they didn’t make us see that every relationship was a straight up 10/10 even if sometimes I wish that Raquel would have spent a little more time with both Charlize and Mario. I do feel like with Mario what we saw more or less made sense, he annoyed her from the get-go and every other interaction they had was sort of just mired in that annoyance. Even though Raquel and Charlize were meant to be a thing, I felt like not much ever really came from it in the story. I do understand that there was something more important going on, but I’m just greedy and wanted some actual pay off. Then again, I’m not blind to the fact that the way their relationship was in the end of the book made sense.

One thing I’ve previously had issues with in books is when they just spring a tonal/genre shift on the readers, like when a book is grounded in reality and then just shifts wildly paranormal or supernatural with no warning. I was so glad when this book was giving hints of paranormal and supernatural pretty much from the off, because when I picked up on those seeds, I was fine then knowing that if we decided to go more paranormal for explanations of everything going on, at least it was set up. These paranormal bits were seeping in from the start, and it wasn’t just one of those things that the characters had no seeming connection to before it actually all started. Like I said, it felt properly set up – to me at least.

There’s this thing called the Echo Game that was very internet challenge vibes. You know those videos that are all like “Don’t call xyz at 3am”? It came off very much like one of those. But you know they had to go play the Echo Game – also, they talked to this girl from London who, in her Echo Game, experienced the Blitz, like in WW2. So this is where my point of tonal shift comes back to relevancy. This book does tonal shift once Raquel and Charlize start playing the Echo Game. And, obviously, for the sake of drama in the book, they had to break the rules of the game. But even then, I felt like the game itself was kind of a means to an end in this book. The concept of this other world luring people into it was really interesting, and it kind of felt like the Echo Game was the explanation, and I kind of wish there had been more to the game. Like, why did the people who played the game have to do what they did to start. And who was the one that discovered it in the first place?

On the other hand, I quite liked the Echo as a place. For Raquel, the Echo was basically hell Bronx – so very much like in Stranger Things with the upside down being the hell version of wherever that show is set. Another point I liked was that it seemed to be stuck in time, the Echo was, I don’t remember if it was created, but like born from a particularly bad time in a certain place’s history.

I definitely did think there were a couple of instances where there were reveals of important information that read a bit odd (to me). I’m not going to say what they are specifically, but in the context of the book, it was when Raquel would either be talking to her father or one of her father’s friends, she’d ask about something, and then they would conveniently give her the exact piece of information she needed and nothing else. And that’s why I felt a little odd, because there was only that information. It was a conversation that didn’t fully feel like a conversation. I wish that with these few bits, the characters would have wandered a little bit more. There was one instance where Raquel wakes up in the night screaming when she’s being haunted by the Echo and her dad comes in the room to make sure she’s okay. She then ends up asking him if this one specific phrase means anything, and he does what I’ve just said, gives her one very specific, convenient answer, and we sort of just ignore the fact that she’s just woken up screaming. I wanted the book to know that it was okay for it to have wandered around a little bit.

Anyway, there were my thoughts, you’re welcome. Did they always make sense? Maybe. But I had thoughts (unfortunately) and now they’re here on the page. I will say, I’m definitely trying to challenge myself by reading more genres that just queer romance and I’m very glad I read this, even if I didn’t feel 100% into it at times. It’s not bad by any means, I just, like I said, didn’t always feel into it.

Okay bye!