When Sarah’s only friend in her graduate program is found dead of an alleged heroin overdose, she is forced back into the orbit of the man in their department who assaulted her. A hurtling ride of a novel—darkly funny and propulsive.

At a PhD program in southern California, Sarah and her best friend Nathan spend their time working on their theses, getting high, and keeping track of the poor air quality due to nearby forest fires. No one believes Sarah when she reports a fellow student for raping her at a party—“he’s such a good guy!”—and the Title IX office simply files away the information, just like the police. Nathan is the only person who cares.

When Sarah finds him dead of an overdose from a drug he’s always avoided, she knows something isn’t right. She starts investigating his death as a murder, and as the pieces fall into place, she notices a disturbing pattern in the other student deaths on campus.

As a girl, Sarah grew up in the forests of Maine, following her father on hunts, learning how to stalk prey and kill but only when necessary. Now, she must confront a different type of killing—and decide if it can be justified.

Notes on Surviving the Fire is a story about vengeance, the insidious nature of rape culture and ultimately, a woman’s journey to come back to herself.

I received an advance galley of this book courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley. All thoughts are my own.

Have you ever read a book that had you simultaneously wanting to tear through the pages but also set it aside because it was almost too much? This was that type of book for me. It is an unflinching exploration of trauma, survival, and grief, all at the hands of the patriarchy. It’s gritty, raw, and unapologetic, and not for the faint-hearted. Even though I didn’t care for the reveal/twist at the end (it felt out of place), I ended up completely captivated by this book.

The story begins with Sarah, a graduate student in a PhD program in Southern California, doing her best to live her life while simultaneously dealing with some pretty awful trauma. Sarah was sexually assaulted by another student in her area of study, and when she reported it to the authorities and the university, it was documented and then pretty much swept under the rug. The only person who believes and supports her is Nathan, her best friend and fellow grad student. When Nathan is found dead from a heroin overdose, Sarah immediately suspects foul play. Nathan had always stayed away from hard drugs, so his death doesn’t add up. Driven by grief, fury, and a determination to uncover the truth, Sarah begins investigating what she believes is a murder.

The more Sarah digs, the more she begins to believe that Nathan’s death could be part of a larger pattern: other students on campus have mysteriously died under suspicious circumstances. Is it the stress of college, or is something more at play? Murphy uses Sarah’s investigation to paint a harrowing picture of rape culture and the ways institutions bury evidence to protect perpetrators.

The book plays out during a pretty brutal fire season in Southern California. Everything around Sarah is literally burning, which further illustrates how everything in her life seems to be going up in flames – both literally and figuratively. Another thing that really struck me in the book was how Sarah’s isolation is further emphasized through her refusal to fully name most of the people around her. Instead, she gives them nicknames, a method of detachment that basically underscores her trauma.

The book is very well-written. Murphy’s prose is both jarring and mesmerizing, fluctuating between curt, direct statements and long, wandering reflections that mirror Sarah’s fractured mental state. The result is a narrative voice that feels intimate and brutally honest. I seriously felt like I was living in Sarah’s head, which made the book very intense. Sarah’s thoughts are often fragmented and contradictory, but this disjointedness is crucial to the authenticity of her voice. Trauma does not lend itself to linear narratives, and Murphy captures this complexity effortlessly.

While I loved a lot of this novel, it’s not without its flaws. Toward the end, there is a significant twist that reveals the true motive of one of the key characters. While Murphy does lay some groundwork for this revelation, it feels somewhat out of place, almost like it belongs in a different book. The twist disrupts the carefully constructed tone of the story and seems really out of place. Sarah’s journey to uncover what actually happened to Nathan and reclaim her agency is already compelling without this plot development, and the twist kind of took me out of the book a bit. It wasn’t enough to completely ruin things for me; it just seemed unnecessary.

Despite the random reveal, I found this to be a powerful, gut-wrenching read. Murphy refuses to sanitize or soften Sarah’s story, allowing the full weight of her trauma and rage to take center stage. While it is a story about vengeance, it’s also about healing and the slow, painful process of coming back to oneself after being fractured by violence. For readers who aren’t afraid of gritty books filled with trauma and rage, I would highly recommend this one. Just be sure to check the trigger warnings. There are several.