The madness of jeremy Brandenburg

From a librarian's desk, this fits readers who like civic-ethics stories and slow, observant narration. Book clubs could chew on responsibility, gossip, and how communities assign blame when evidence is thin.

Content notes for selectors and parents: arson aftermath, public shaming, mental health stigma, references to medication, confrontations with local authorities, and talk-radio hostility. The prose skews reflective and the tempo is measured, so I would shelve for 14-plus and hand-sell with a pacing caveat.

Bracken feels mapped with care: limestone steps, clipped hedges, the elevator's ash echo, and a mill that hums at midnight. The atmosphere matters more than incidents, and when the town decides what mercy it can afford, you can almost smell cooling casseroles and hear tires crunching gravel. The tradeoff is stakes that feel muted until very late, but if you read for place and mood, this delivers steady weather.

As a character study this feels half-lit. Mira's voice can be tender and observant, yet it also corrals the cast at arm's length so Jeremy remains a silhouette of brilliance and volatility rather than a full human. The father's quiet courage is compelling until the scenes begin to treat him as emblem more than man. Sheriff Boylan and the radio barker come across like instruments of theme, useful for pressure but lacking the friction of surprise. I never felt conversations skid or spark in ways that changed my understanding of anyone.

I walked away exasperated. The book keeps promising a blaze of revelation, then wanders into fog. Paragraph after paragraph leans on ornamental phrasing until scenes wobble, and the structure buckles under detours that feel like filler rather than momentum.

Filtering everything through an eleven-year-old should be electrifying. Instead the lens blurs key beats after the elevator fire, while talk-radio tirades sprawl over pages without modulation. The red bike, the rattling pills, the notebook of equations show up like stage dressing more than living detail.

Pacing turns punitive. We circle the same suspicions, the same chilly smiles at church, the same rumors on the county building stairs, and the chapters keep swelling as if bigger automatically means deeper. I kept checking the time and groaning.

The character work feels pinned under thesis statements. Jeremy is presented as a symbol first and a person second, Mira's father slides toward saintly, and the sheriff reads broad. Dialogue clunks when it should crackle, and scenes stall right when sparks should catch.

I wanted clarity, not a haze of Important Statements. Tighten the line edits, cut the sermonizing broadcasts, let Mira and her father share more unguarded minutes in the mill, and maybe the heart of this story would actually beat. As is, it thuds.

A small-town blaze widens into suspicion and committee meetings but the pacing drifts even as back-fence whispers leave a sting.