📘 After We Burned by Marieke Nijkamp
A haunting, tangled chorus of grief, guilt, and truth.
PRE-READING THOUGHTS
I've read a few of Nijkamp’s books before and always appreciate how they handle trauma and identity with nuance. I went in expecting a slow burn mystery with emotional weight, but I was especially curious how the multiple POV structure would handle the layers of truth.
POST-READING
As I thought...
Nijkamp nails the emotional undercurrents—this is a grief story, a mystery, and a portrait of isolation all at once. The fragmented narrative and shifting perspectives felt true to how collective trauma is experienced: uneven, contradictory, and deeply personal.
It surprised me by...
How much of this story is not about Eden, but about everything around her—what people projected, what they ignored, what they justified. There’s a slow unravelling that makes you question each narrator’s reliability, but it’s not about catching a lie—it’s about facing what’s been willfully unspoken. This isn't just a "whodunit," it's a "what did we let happen?"
🎵 MUSIC PAIRING
Featured Song: “bury a friend” – Billie Eilish
Vibe Album: Immunity – Clairo
Artist Recommendation: Mitski (for the ache that lives between silence and screaming)
🌀 VIBE CHECK
🎨 Colour Palette: smoke grey, scorched orange, bruise purple
🎬 Soundtrack: quiet hallway footsteps, crackling fire, whispered confessions
🍂 Season: late autumn—when everything is brittle and threatening to snap
🫧 Mood: haunted, heavy, fragile
🌫 Scent: ash and rain on cement
🔮 TAROT PULL
Five of Cups – Grief and regret echo throughout this novel, but there’s also a quiet plea: don’t look away from what’s left behind. The pain is real—but so is the chance to face it.