While We Were Burning

February 12, 2024
Koffi’s lukewarm debut shortchanges its worthy themes. Elizabeth Smith and her husband, David, have recently moved to the posh Memphis, Tenn., neighborhood of Harbor Town. Shy, self-loathing Elizabeth resents David’s easy social skills; the only person she could possibly consider a friend is her neighbor, Patricia. After running out of excuses, Elizabeth finally accepts one of Patricia’s regular invitations to go for an early morning jog, only to discover the woman’s lifeless body dangling from a nearby lamppost on the appointed morning. Though police and neighbors believe the death was a suicide, Elizabeth, who saw no signs of depression in Patricia, is convinced it was murder. The situation causes her already-dicey mental state to deteriorate, and David suggests she hire a personal assistant. Into the couple’s life strides beautiful, intelligent Brianna Thompson, who initially seems like a dream employee. Her sunny disposition belies her ulterior motives, however, and her Blackness chafes against the pearly-white privilege of Elizabeth and David’s milieu. Koffi toggles between Elizabeth and Brianna’s perspectives, gradually doling out information about the checkered pasts that have delivered them into each other’s lives. Themes of suburban ennui, casual racism, and mental health struggles are well explored, but Koffi’s character development is anemic, and the central investigation feels rote. This disappoints.

February 15, 2024
Elizabeth is emotionally destroyed when a neighborhood friend is found dead in their affluent, largely white suburb and she is the only one who suspects foul play. Her husband encourages her to hire a personal assistant when he sees her unable to regain her footing, even with medication. Enter Brianna, a strikingly beautiful Black woman who, unbeknown to Elizabeth, is mourning her teenage son's death at the hands of police in Elizabeth's neighborhood. Brianna carefully and seamlessly becomes exactly what Elizabeth needs her to be: stalwart, understanding, a comfort, and a friend. But as their narratives alternate, neither woman is as guileless as the other initially believes, and both have motives and scars masked by their practiced fa�ades. While the premise is gripping, and debut author Koffi's characters are electric with passions, the execution leaves many open threads while the soap-operatic dialogue aims for melodrama over depth. Best for collections with an unflagging demand for domestic thrillers.

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March 1, 2024
In a wealthy Memphis suburb, a Black boy's death is avenged. Koffi's debut features a first-person narrator, Elizabeth Smith, who is perceived as crazy by her husband and employer because she thinks the death of her neighbor, Patricia Fitzgerald--found hanging from a lamp post after a Halloween party--was murder rather than suicide. When anxiety medication doesn't solve the problem, her husband and therapist decide she should hire a personal assistant to help her stay on course. Through a listserv, Elizabeth meets Brianna Thompson, a beautiful Black woman who seems perfect for the job. But we learn early on that Brianna has found her way into Elizabeth's privileged white life for a reason--a reason that involves the murder of her son, Jay, by the police in Elizabeth and Patricia's neighborhood, the upscale Harbor Town section of Memphis. While underdeveloped characters and settings make it difficult to fully invest in the story, it's clear that Elizabeth's foundering marriage and Brianna's righteous grief and rage are on a collision course. The element that drives the book is its fury about racism, which is threaded into comparisons of Nashville and Memphis, the history of the learning center where Elizabeth works, a Harbor Town message board, and of course the main plot, a ripped-from-the-headlines 911 call that led to Jay's shooting. This aspect of the book is potent, but lack of character development remains a problem. A surprise visit from Elizabeth's mother, Dawn, is probably meant to fill in some backstory for Elizabeth, but the strokes are so broad that it almost comes off as parody. "I always knew how you would turn out," her mother says. "I always knew that you'd fall in love and have a beautiful life. And I always knew that they'd find you dead with a bottle of pills in your hand." A few paragraphs later, Dawn asks, "Now, what does it say about you if people keep killing themselves just to get away from you?" "You're fucking evil," Elizabeth replies. "That's what you fucking are." A politically aware thriller from a passionate rookie author.

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March 1, 2024

Putnam wanted debuter Koffi's twisty uplit social thriller badly enough to offer a preempt. Race, class, and revenge intersect in Memphis as two women search for answers. Elizabeth, a white woman, wants to know why her best friend is dead. Brianna, a Black woman working for Elizabeth, wants to know why the police killed her son. Prepub Alert.

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