From Dust, a Flame is an emotional story about family, trauma, and honoring the past. It’s a book that ripped out my emotional heart strings. I loved how Podos examines protection and love. How we think we are protecting the ones we love, but how our love feels on the inside. Keep reading this book review to see my full thoughts.
Summary
Hannah’s whole life has been spent in motion. Her mother has kept her and her brother, Gabe, on the road for as long as she can remember, leaving a trail of rental homes and faded relationships behind them. No roots, no family but one another, and no explanations.
All of that changes on Hannah’s seventeenth birthday when she wakes up transformed, a pair of golden eyes with knife-slit pupils blinking back at her from the mirror—the first of many such impossible mutations. Promising that she knows someone who can help, her mother leaves Hannah and Gabe behind to find a cure. But as the days turn to weeks and their mother doesn’t return, they realize it’s up to them to find the truth.
What they discover is a family they never knew, and a history more tragic and fantastical than Hannah could have dreamed—one that stretches back to her grandmother’s childhood in Prague under the Nazi occupation, and beyond, into the realm of Jewish mysticism and legend. As the past comes crashing into the present, Hannah must hurry to unearth their family’s secrets—and confront her own hidden legacy in order to break the curse and save the people she loves most, as well as herself.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
I’ve been excited for From Dust, a Flame since I heard about it. Rebecca is one of my favorite authors so this has been highly anticipated for a while. First of all, I love a driven academically focused MC and Hannah definitely is! She gave me some major flashbacks to me as a teen. Secondly, I adored the sibling relationship she had with Gabe. The ways their relationship unfolds and the secrets and ways that each of them know each other. All the promises one makes, the unsaid silences, and the ways they know how to hurt each other.
But From Dust, a Flame is about family. It’s about unraveling the secrets and mysteries of the past. All the ways we try to protect our loved ones from harsh truths, jagged memories, and past trauma. So each subsequent generation undergoes a quest to uncover the roots of their tree. To figure out the mistakes of their parents and the ways they pass down to each other. With chapters from the past, Podos weaves a story about family and the echoes of the past. How they ripple towards us and move us in the currents without even knowing.
(Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links. For more information you can look at the Policy page. If you’re uncomfortable with that, know you can look up the book on any of the sites below to avoid the link)
Unraveling family drama is my favorite and in From Dust, a Flame the past only becomes even more important. Additionally, Podos explores themes of love. From Dust, a Flame asks us what the point of love is when loss, distance, or time threatens. The past comes to call and all the characters of From Dust, a Flame can do is try to be prepared. It’s a story that not only proves the existence of magical evil, but also magical good. We cannot remain protected forever and the promises we make out of desperation will catch up to us.
If you’re a fan of YA fantasy, stories about family, and unraveling the past, this is for you! Find From Dust, a Flame on Goodreads, Amazon, Indiebound, Bookshop.org & The Book Depository.