Book Summary and Reviews of Radiant Heat by Sarah-Jane Collins

Radiant Heat by Sarah-Jane Collins

Radiant Heat

by Sarah-Jane Collins

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  • Published:
  • Jan 2024, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

When a catastrophic wildfire suddenly rips through a woman's hometown, she thinks she is lucky to have survived ... until she finds a dead woman in her driveway, clutching a piece of paper with her name on it... .

The blaze came out of nowhere one summer afternoon, a wall of fire fed by blustering wind. Yet, somehow, Alison is alive. She rode out the fire on the damp tiles of her bathroom, her entire body swaddled in a wet woolen blanket. As flames crackled around her, the bitter char of eucalyptus settled in the back of her throat, each breath more desperate than the last.

The wildfire that devastated the Victoria countryside Alison calls home sets in motion a chain of events that threatens to obliterate the carefully constructed life she is living. When Alison emerges from her sheltering place, she spots a soot-covered cherry red car in her driveway, and in it, a dead woman. Alison has never met Simone Arnold in her life ... or so she thinks. So what is she doing here?

As Alison searches for answers across Australia's scorched bushlands, she soon learns that the fire isn't the only threat she's facing... .

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
  1. Alison seems to be carrying a lot of guilt about things outside of her control. Why do you think she is so affected by Simone? Is it really about their shared past, or is something else also going on?
  2. Alison dismisses Billy's feelings for her once and for all by telling him he needs to love someone "enough, but not too much." What do you think she means by this? And why do you think it's so important to her?
  3. Place and landscape are very much characters in this book, with Alison's quest taking her thousands of miles from home and back again. Does the setting of Radiant Heat add something to the narrative, and if so, what do you think it brings?
  4. Alison seems to constantly be making the wrong decision or acting ...
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Reviews

Media Reviews

"The claustrophobic atmosphere of a raging wildfire is handled well. Fans of Jane Harper's Australian novels will want to try this debut featuring an unreliable narrator." —Library Journal (starred review)

"Tonally inconsistent and difficult to follow due to flashbacks, this thriller sets up too many subplots to be entirely engaging." —Kirkus Reviews

"Nimbly balancing character study and straight-up mystery, Collins is patient with her reveals, but never at the expense of the book's steady momentum. This is a writer to watch." —Publishers Weekly

"A vivid, emotionally intense, and satisfyingly cerebral psychological thriller in the manner of Tana French or Gillian Flynn, Collins' sharp and probing debut, with an added environmental message, serves up a complex narrative of exposure and retribution." —Booklist

"A sense of blooming dread, and the deft, finely painted lines of an artist at work. This close and claustrophobic mystery captures something important about disaster – the way it can crest a hill and we find ourselves woefully unprepared. A finely observed and utterly compulsive read." —Hayley Scrivenor, bestselling author of Dirt Creek

"Gripping from the first page, this tale of destruction, survival, and mysteries uncovered in the ashes kept me up late into the night." —Kate Alice Marshall, author of What Lies in the Woods

"Collins writes with incredible pace and precision, knowing exactly when to bring tension to a roiling boil and when to lower it to a suspenseful simmer. Radiant Heat will hook you with its lively prose and thrilling premise, but it's Collins' unflinching portrayal of a woman in grief and rage that'll make it difficult to forget this complex debut." —Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl

This information about Radiant Heat was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own reviewwrite your own review

Elizabeth@Silver's Reviews

Elizabeth@Silver's Reviews - A bit slow, but turns out good
Escaping a raging Australian bush fire wasn’t the only horrendous thing Allison had to endure in her life.

Something else from her past was waiting.

When she felt it was safe to leave her home, she found a dead woman sitting in her driveway with Allison‘s address written on a slip of paper.

Allison has no idea who this woman is, but it is the address of where Allison used to live.

We follow Allison as she tries to figure out what meaning this has, and she constantly feels someone is watching her.

Did she really know this woman? What is going on?

How are Allison and this woman connected?

We find out as Allison relives the past and lets us know what’s going on currently.

Her abusive boyfriend is trying to find her because he said she has something that he wants.

Allison knows nothing about what he could want, is frightened, runs, and tries to solve this on her own without giving all the information to the police.

RADIANT HEAT was somewhat confusing because of all the back-and-forth in time right in the same paragraph or chapter, but the writing was very good and the tension, the intrigue, and the underlying fact that something was going on that I needed to know kept me reading, even though it took until about 50 to pull you in.

It is worth the wait, but be aware there is domestic violence. 4/5

Thank you to the publisher for a copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

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Author Information

Sarah-Jane Collins

Sarah-Jane Collins is a writer, editor, and journalist from Meanjin (Brisbane), Australia, who moved to New York by way of Gadigal land (Sydney) and Narrm (Melbourne). Her work has appeared in the Age, the Sydney Morning Herald, Meanjin, Overland, and others. She has an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her fiction has won the Overland Fair Australia Prize and been short-listed for other awards. Although New York is home now, she misses the beaches of Australia, but not the spiders.

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