Little Fires Everywhere: Reese's Book Club

by Celeste Ng

The #1 New York Times bestseller • Named a Best Book of the Year by People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more

“To say I love this book is an understatement. It’s a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears.” —Reese Witherspoon

From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts comes a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned—from the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren—an enigmatic artist and single mother—who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenaged daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past and a disregard for the status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends of the Richardsons attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town—and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides.  Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at unexpected and devastating costs.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood—and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Named a Best Book of the Year by: People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more

• ISBN10: 0735224293
• ISBN13: 9780735224292
• Publish Date: 12 September 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: The Penguin Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 352
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780735224292

Reviews

Breathless

[layawaydragon]

Took me forever to finally finish and almost quit with 100 pages let to go because of the stupid decision miscommunication BS but I'm glad I stuck it out. Ending isn't as satisfying without a conclusion but worth it.

[Jamie]

So good! I loved how the families overlapped and were intertwined. I wouldn't mind reading a sequel to this if it ever happened.

[kiracanread]

Little Fires Everywhere is my first experience of Celeste Ng's work, and I'm definitely interested to read some more of their works. This book is quite slow going, and hard to get into to begin with, although as soon as the action really started, it was hard to put this book down.

[ibeforem]

This is a slow burn of a story full of complex characters.

First is Elena Richardson. Elena is the "perfect" suburban mom of 4, with the successful husband and big house in the suburbs. But Elena struggles with her relationship with her youngest daughter, Izzy, who can't help but fall short of Elena's rigid expectations of her.

On the other side is Mia Warren, the free spirit artist who is renting an apartment from the Richardsons. Mia and her daughter Pearl have criss-crossed the country following Mia's muse, but are hoping to settle in idyllic Shaker Heights for longer than normal, now that Pearl is in high school.

But this book isn't just about Elena and Mia, though they drive the overarching story. It's about Lexi and her boyfriend, who is anxious to have sex. It's about Moody and his unrequited love for Pearl. It's about Pearl struggling to fit in and find her place and learn how to settle. And it's about what happens when a birth mother shows up before an adoption is finalized.

The adoption portion of the story can be difficult for some to read, because it's a complicated question. If a mother gives up a child, can she show up and take her back? What if the child has been in her new home for most of her life? Who gets to be "mother"?

Many people will speak about this book as though Mia is the light and Elena is the dark, but I didn't see it that way. In my opinion, Mia is the most problematic and selfish character in the book, yet we're supposed to forgive her her flaws because she's The Artist.

I thought this was a worthwhile read, and I finished it just in time for the show to come out on Hulu. So far, I think the show is a good interpretation, so if you like the book, you'll like that too.

[Jyc]

★★★ // this was interesting for the most part and i found myself moved by some of the little stories here—especially Mia’s backstory. but it also felt cold, devoid of a spark that could have totally grabbed my attention. perhaps because it takes on too many side stories that it fails to fully capture character moments. perhaps because i wanted it to really tell us a story about motherhood. even though it did a pretty good job stirring a debate on the subject, i suppose it would have been more gripping if it involved the primary characters instead of a reflection on other people’s lives in the story.

”Mia held her for a moment, buried her nose in the part of Pearl’s hair. Every time she did this, she was comforted by how Pearl smelled exactly the same. She smelled, Mia thought suddenly, of home, as if home had never been a place, but had always been this little person whom she’d carried alongside her.”

[clementine]

I'm surprised to feel so lukewarm about this book after enjoying Everything I Never Told You and seeing so many rave reviews. I found the middle section about Mia's youth the most interesting, but I failed to fully connect with the bulk of the novel. I found the idea of a supposedly idyllic suburbia hiding dysfunction overdone, and most of the characters were flimsy and lacked believable motivation. There were some interesting themes, especially regarding motherhood and who is able to access it and embody it appropriately. A strength was the compassionate exploration of how often "neglectful" parents are actually parents who lack resources but not love. However, the story felt a little disjointed to me - I love a good multi-arc narrative that ties together satisfyingly, but the threads of this story just did not feel as tightly-woven as they could have been. It felt like there were several separate novels happening, and while some of the details sprinkled into the story earlier did become relevant later on in a fairly gratifying way, something felt a little messy to me. I particularly wished there had been more attention paid to Izzy, who seemed like an interesting character: rebellious and hard on the outside, but very emotional and vulnerable just under the surface. Because she plays such a pivotal role in the narrative - particularly the way it's framed at the beginning of the novel - I hoped for a more robust exploration of who she truly was. There were certain things that felt far-fetched, which took me out of the world of the novel. The constant use of fire metaphors was kind of clever and kind of annoyingly conspicuous.

There are some interesting things to chew over here, but ultimately I found this a lot more shallow than Everything I Never Told You. I don't feel like this will be one I return to, even in thought.

[mrs_mander_reads]

A great read. Compelling and relevant story line.

[Laurie]

Review posted on https://lauriesbookshelf.comIt has been a while back that I stumbled on Little Fires Everywhere on Goodreads and my attention was immediately drawn to it. However, I waited to read this book until now. But, was the story just as intriguing as the synopsis?





First impression
When I started reading, I immediately had questions. Why has there been a fire? Who were all these people and what did they do to deserve all this? After this prologue, the actual story began.

A never-ending story
The thing that followed however, could be best described as a complete report of all the things that happened. To me, it felt like someone was telling the stories of Mia and the Richardson family. This way of storytelling made te book feel like a report instead of a story you could easily be a part of. Therefore, this book felt a little like dragging on and somewhat boring.

The characters
Because of the distant way of storytelling, you can't say a lot about the characters. However, I was not a fan of mrs. Richardson. She was too controlling.

The plot
In my opinion, the plot could have been more interesting. OK, it was interesting, but it could have been better. It was somewhere in the middle for me. I would have liked it better if we followed a few POV's instead of this reporting style.

Conclusion
Little Fires Everywhere was an OK book. It was not bad, but not amazing either. The reporting style of writing made the story feel very distant, which made it quite impossible to feel a connection to neither the plot, nor the characters. It was a nice read for in between, but not a book I would easily recommend.This review was originally posted on Laurie's Bookshelf

[lauriesbookshelf]

Review posted on https://lauriesbookshelf.comIt has been a while back that I stumbled on Little Fires Everywhere on Goodreads and my attention was immediately drawn to it. However, I waited to read this book until now. But, was the story just as intriguing as the synopsis?





First impression
When I started reading, I immediately had questions. Why has there been a fire? Who were all these people and what did they do to deserve all this? After this prologue, the actual story began.

A never-ending story
The thing that followed however, could be best described as a complete report of all the things that happened. To me, it felt like someone was telling the stories of Mia and the Richardson family. This way of storytelling made te book feel like a report instead of a story you could easily be a part of. Therefore, this book felt a little like dragging on and somewhat boring.

The characters
Because of the distant way of storytelling, you can't say a lot about the characters. However, I was not a fan of mrs. Richardson. She was too controlling.

The plot
In my opinion, the plot could have been more interesting. OK, it was interesting, but it could have been better. It was somewhere in the middle for me. I would have liked it better if we followed a few POV's instead of this reporting style.

Conclusion
Little Fires Everywhere was an OK book. It was not bad, but not amazing either. The reporting style of writing made the story feel very distant, which made it quite impossible to feel a connection to neither the plot, nor the characters. It was a nice read for in between, but not a book I would easily recommend.This review was originally posted on Laurie's Bookshelf