Author: Celeste Ng
# of Pages: 338 (ebook)
Genre: Adult, Contemporary
Rating: ★★★☆☆
Synopsis: 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.
Review: "But the problem with rules, he reflected, was that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time there were simply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on." -p.269
Ever since it won a Goodreads Choice Award back in 2017, I've been meaning to read this book. I finally got my hands on a copy, but I don't think it was exactly worth the wait.
Little Fires Everywhere is DEFINITELY a contemporary book. The story ultimately compares and contrasts the lives of the rich and the poor, exposing how even in the most peaceful and planned suburbia, life isn't always as perfect as its residents make it seem.
My main takeaways are that a "fair" system isn't always fair in reality to marginalized groups, relationships (between lovers, parent and child, etc.) can be complex, and people are not always as they seem (e.g. rich people are fake nice). Although these are interesting topics, the book was incredibly slow moving, very much a slice-of-life type. What made this book lose two stars was how predictable everything was. The plot dragged to get to a revelation that the reader had many pages back, which made me struggle to finish the book. It seemed to me that Ng concentrated more on crafting her characters' inner thoughts almost poetically than telling an engaging story. While some people might love this, it's just not the style for me.
Overall an okay book. I would tentatively recommend this book, but it was definitely not one of my favorites.
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