A very well written family drama by Celeste Ng. I like that her books heavily focus on the characters because I enjoy character studies very much. Even though it is only the second book I've read of Celeste Ng, she is becoming one of my trusted authors very fast.

For me, this novel deeply touches the heart of what it means to be a mother. From the wanting, to choosing not to be, from the taking, and all the ways that being a mother isn't about where you are from or what you have but how you love. Little Fires Everywhere hit me in the heart and the gut and I loved loved loved it - another fabulous book by Celeste Ng. Can't wait until she writes another. Another great ARC courtesy of Net Galley.

The life of the Richardson family is that of the perfect family. Perfect home, children and careers. In the perfect upper crest community of Shaker
Heights. Then their small bungalow some blocks away is rented to elusive single mother Mia and her daughter Pearl. Secrets, jealousy, revenge all contribute to affect and permanently change the lives of all involved.
Another excellent read by this author. Highly recommended!

Students have been reading Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You for their summer reading assignment and her newest, LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, will be in our library soon. Shaped by multiple narrators and filled with suspense, this new title received starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal AND Publishers Weekly. The setting is the late 1990's in an insular suburban community near Cleveland, Ohio called Shaker Heights where "there were rules, many rules, about what you could and could not do." And the secrets abound, particularly amongst two sets of family members: Mia Warren and her teenage daughter, Pearl, newcomers who rent from society matron and investigative reporter wannabe, Elena Richardson. Elena and her lawyer husband have four teenage children: sons named Trip and Moody (both of whom are attracted to Pearl) and daughters Lexie and Izzy (both of whom turn to Mia as a confidante).

This is a book about dysfunctional family life and motherhood, about questionable decisions made for good reasons, about hasty assumptions, about privilege and getting what you want, about trust and betrayal, and about the many secrets we keep. Overall, readers (including teens) will find much to consider and debate, including the pros and cons of adoption for a baby with Asian heritage, the consequences of an abortion and premarital sex, and pressure from peers and parents. One character even explicitly reflects on the problem with rules: "they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things. When, in fact, most of the time they 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." LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE is highly recommended.

I read Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You a while back and enjoyed her writing style and most of all the sensitivity and the insightfulness when portraying her characters and crafting her story. This second book is no exception and once again I found myself immersed in Celeste's storytelling and her interesting cast of characters set in Shaker Heights, Cleveland.

The Richardsons is an upper class family consists of six members. William Richardson works as a lawyer and his wife, Eleanor, is a journalist with one of the local papers. Shaker Heights has its own history and for all Eleanor knows her family roots are there. One can say Shaker Heights is a well-planned suburb and the Richardsons are quite happy with the community there until Mia Warren and her teenaged daughter, Pearl, enter into their lives.

Mia, a single mother, is an artist and together with her daughter they travel from places to places until Shaker Heights becomes their latest resting place. They rent a house from the Richardsons and soon the four Richardson children are drawn to this enigmatic mother-daughter pair. Pearl soon quickly adapts to their new environment and has found friendship in Moody, the third child of the Richardsons family. Mia remains quiet and reserved until a coworker at a part-time place where she works confides in her about her baby daughter, May Ling Chow, whom she left at a fire station out of desperation due to her poverty condition, decides to have her baby back but an old friend of the Richardsons, the McCullough couple (the wife had had a few pregnancies but couldn't keep her babies) has decided to adopt the homeless baby and soon Eleanor and Mia find themselves on opposing sides as the custody battle divides the once peaceful community. As if that is not enough, Eleanor is determined to unravel Mia's past but that obsession will soon come with a price.

Once again, Celeste Ng has delivered a taut and an insightful piece of work centering around secrets, identity and the ferocity pull of maternal love. The story begins with a slow start, basically the introduction of the Richardsons and Shaker Heights but towards the middle the reader will embrace the change of direction and momentum as lots of things happened quickly. The characterisation is the huge draw of the story and I found myself invested in Mia's story and why Eleanor Richardson is relentless in pursuing Mia's mysterious past despite of consequences there might be. Celeste Ng has portrayed a multiple aspects of the role of a mother which is both moving and thought-provoking and although I liked her previous novel, I've to say I liked this one better.

Little Fires Everywhere was one of the books coming out in 2017 that I was most looking forward to! And did Celeste Ng deliver. She certainly did.

The beginning of the book starts innocently enough, describing the families and how Mrs. Richardson likes to keep her life nice and tidy, and do small generosities here and there. How Pearl is looking forward and anxious about her future in Shaker Heights, and such. It took me a few pages to really get into the book, as the start is rather slow and can feel like too many characters to tell apart, but then it starts to become engrossing to the point where you are really invested in the background stories, thoughts and lives of all the main characters.

As their lives get entangled, the magic of Celeste Ng's writing starts: the entwining of all the characters brings friction that builds up and up, the the story then starts to read like a snowball: small and quiet, and suddenly it's so big and coming fast at you. She has a unique talent for giving depth to characters, invoking empathy and portraying how "good people" can be racist and sexist, too.

As much as she was an annoying and frustrating character, Mrs. Richardson surely is the one this book is about - she is a journalist stuck in an boring job, with four lovely children, a handsome husband and a good reputation in Shaker Heights, where she grew up in and where she wants to stay all her life. She's proud of the community where people "are equals" and "see no race". Her character serves to expose the hypocrisy of privileged people, who try to get rid of the guilt they feel for the privilege they know they have by doing small charity actions - while keeping score of all "generous" and "selfless" acts she does, like choosing the right family to rent her second apartment to - a good family who just needs, as she calls it, a little boost.

I could go on and on about that, but I'll stop here.

[MILD SPOILER] The May Ling/Mirabelle part was absolutely heart-breaking and while really painful to read, it was a very essential part of the story and raises questions about empathy, fairness, second chances and being a poor, Chinese woman with a child and no safety net in a racist, sexist society.

While the book evolves slowly, it starts picking up pace and, by the last 20% of the book, the story has become a whirlwind of messiness and consequences, in a wonderful way! I was basically mentally screaming at the characters by then.

I was bothered by the loose ends the book leaves and, while I believe Celeste chose to do it so in order to imitate life in the sense that you have an uncertainty about the future and never get all the answers you want, I really wanted to get all the answers. But I do respect the way she chose to do that, despite my complaints. [END OF MILD SPOILER]

I loved that the book takes time to explore people's motives, back stories and thought processes, but sometimes it felt a little too much for some characters that I didn't care for enough to be that invested in. Apart from that, I loved everything about this book, from the writing style so vivid and emotional, to the characters, into whose skin was easy to slip to see the story through their eyes. It's a gorgeous book and I highly recommend it!

Veredict: Celest Ng ended the game with this book and I am not sure I'll ever be ok again. The story of all characters is explored in a beautiful way and the painful humanity of Little Fires Everywhere will make you think a lot about life, fairness vs. unfairness, privilege, hypocrisy etc. It's set in the 1980s and reads like a contemporary, so if you like contemporaries and stories about families and community, I highly recommend it!

Lots to think about -- would make for a great book group discussion.

I absolutely loved Ng's first novel, "Everything I Never Told You", so I was excited and hopeful when I learned she had written another book.

Once again, Ng has created a beautiful, poignant, heartbreaking, and heartfelt story. Ng has a talent for truly understanding the intricacies of how people work, why they do the things they do, and how these unseen motivations and emotions from different people influence and play off one another. I felt totally immersed in the lives and minds of these characters, and once I started the book I sped through it in a day.

True to the title, we see the little fires everywhere, the secrets that everyone keeps. Ng establishes each character and their world view before putting them in a situation that directly challenges that view. The story brilliantly unfolds as we watch tensions build, as each character's small act has larger consequences, as these little fires slowly grow and blend into a raging blaze that will change the lives of everyone involved, forever.

Celeste Ng has some of the most beautiful prose of anyone I've ever read. It's not so poetic that it's distracting, but subtle, graceful, and powerful. She captures tender moments and feelings like a snowflake in cupped hands, admiring the beauty of it before it melts away.

While a major plot line concerns the adoption of a Chinese-American baby by close friends of Mrs. Richardson, that is not the main focus of the book. Instead, it serves as a way to discuss the various themes intricately woven throughout the story: motherhood, nurture verses nature, right verses wrong, how bad things happen to good people, how planning out everything doesn't prevent against things going wrong. Ng juxtaposes current events with similar things that happened in the background of characters. She also shows two totally different viewpoints, though neither one is "correct". She shows the good and the bad that comes with each choice.

Overall, an exquisite and enthralling read. This would be a fantastic book club pick. Highly recommend!

I could not put this book down! Ng really captured suburban life & I was fascinated by every character. If you enjoyed Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, you should definitely pick this up.

I can predict this title will receive a lot of love. Because Celeste Ng has created a very intriguing story full of drama, complex characters and a wide range of emotions and themes. The first thing that stands out is the writing style, which is excellent and helps set the right atmosphere for this story. Little Fires Everywhere kind of starts with the ending and then slowly shows you how everything gets to that point, unraveling secrets, lies and learning more about the main characters, their history and the town the story is set in. Shaker Heights makes for a very interesting setting and only reinforces the contrast between the successful and rich Richardson family and both Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl. This clash is the basis for a well developed and intriguing story not only about the relationship between both families but also about how they react to a different situation that will affect both. Celeste Ng is very good at developing her characters and making them feel realistic with all their flaws and other signs of their humanity. I personally struggled a bit to connect to them, but that might have just been me not agreeing with some of the choices the characters make. It's probably one of the reasons I didn't LOVE love Little Fires Everywhere, even though I still can't put my finger exactly on the why. There is no doubt that this book is an excellent read though and fans of her books and the genre in general will be in for a treat.

I really enjoyed this. It was a worthy follow up to Everything I Never Told You. The theme of adoption and parenthood, particularly transracial adoptions, felt very timely. I've read a lot of essays about transracial adoption in the last year, and this novel did a good job dealing with the issues while nit making any of the involved characters villainous. I understood where everyone was coming from, which is part of what made the conflict so effective. I also liked the way the novel dealt with abortion - humanely. All the characters felt vibrant and real. The conflicts felt personal and understandable and human.

Just like Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You, she has you hooked from the beginning until the end. She gives you the completed puzzle at the beginning and introduces how each of the character and plot pieces fit into that puzzle in a thorough manner. Love this book and how it shows how you don't really know everyone completely; looks can be deceiving from the outside.

I wish Celeste Ng would write faster and more, I need more of her books right away! I loved this one, it had the same style and pace as Everything I never told you and that book is amazing as well. The topic of this one may be disturbing for some people, which I understand and that's why I couldn't rate this book with 5 stars, the ending was in conflict with my moral standing and my feelings throughout the book.

Story follows two families, a single mother and her daughter and a wealthy family in the suburbs. Their lives intertwine and than you can choose sides in the battle and enjoy your reading. There is abortion, adoption, poor vs. rich mother, Asian vs. American. I loved how many issues Celeste Ng touched here, but the outcome was so unsatisfying for me that I ended up frustrated with the book. Beside that, everything was excellent, a great author to follow!

I LOVED Celeste Ng's previous book EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU. I thought that it was a taut mystery that also effectively portrayed family strife and teenage angst, as well as issues of race, feminism, and the American Dream. I decided to try my luck at getting an ARC of her upcoming novel, LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, not expecting to receive anything. But then, to my surprise, NetGalley generously sent one my way, and I ate it all up in one day. Yep, Ng has done it again.

Once again Ng does a great job of bringing up lots of social issues that are just as relevant today as they were in the mid 90s. I also loved the various tangles that she slowly pieced together in this book, between multiple characters and all of their backstories. While I didn't really find many of the characters likeable, I did find them all realistic and compelling in their various ways. The setting was the mid 90s, but it very well could have been today with the situations and societal views were presented, showing that not much has really changed in a lot of ways in the past twenty years. I think that the one character who could have used a bit more fleshing out was Izzy, as while we got multiple sides and motivations to many of the characters, even those who were pretty unlikable, Izzy seemed absolved of all that, presented as merely misunderstood instead of a bit more layered and fallible. I have no problem with her being misunderstood by those around her, but I would have liked her to see her learn some things about herself like a few of the other characters did. I really liked the journeys and motivation shifts that the characters went through in this book, and it all came together to make an engrossing novel.

I definitely recommend this book to literary fiction fans, and cannot wait to see what Celeste Ng brings us next!

I requested this book through Netgalley prior to its hardcover release because while I have not read Ng's first book, I saw the positive reviews and lengthy library holds lists, which indicates to me that the author may be one for me to check out.
Little Fires Everywhere does not disappoint...it's a story about relationships...relationships between parents and children, between siblings, between males and females. I found myself loving every chapter of the book, and looking forward to, yet dreading the end.
I can't wait until this book is published and I can recommend it to my book club as a discussion book, because I think the themes will lend themselves to a good discussion.
*I received a free galley of this book via Netgalley

This tells the story of a mother and her daughter moving to a new neighborhood in the suburbs of Cleveland, the secrets they keep and their relationship with a well renowned family from that place. Things get complicated in that peaceful place when a couple wants to adopt an abandoned Chinese baby whose mother is trying to get back.

This discusses topics like adoption, motherhood family, prejudices, secrets and identity. Some of you might have seen that it took me a month to read this book and I will explain why in a bit but I want you to know that this is a wonderful book that's so well written and that makes common and boring topics interesting. The reality is that this book isn't for me. I can see all the good things that it has and honestly there were some moments that I really enjoyed but in general the entire topics of motherhood, adoption, family and these relationships in the suburbs don't interest me at all. I'm not going to lie, as there were moments I found incredibly compelling, there were some that I found extremely boring.

What kept me reading was Celeste Ng's writing. Like I said, she has the ability to talk about mundane topics and tell a linear story that later dissolve into a lot of little backstories of the different characters we get to meet throughout this book and makes them so fascinating. I really liked how flawed these characters were and the fact that the author didn't present them in a better or worse light, she just showed actions and let us make our own conclusions about the situations and in a way, it involves you in this community and makes you an spectator and it tries to make you think about what you would do in those situations and how you would act being a neighbor from that place, how you would judge or help or which side would you be. This talked about a few controversial topics like abortion and the prejudice a lot of people have until it happens to them or someone close to them. This is a constant here: the questioning of the things, ideas and "morals" they were sure about. Even though it's hard to understand some of these characters actions, learning more about their stories opens you mind and makes you understand why they are the way they are.

What I enjoyed the most was the fight for the custody of May-Ling and all the things behind it. The fact is that it was a fight where both of the sides wanted the best for her even though they didn't know what that was. Is it economic stability or her identity? I mean, it seems like an obvious answer but it's not that easy when you have a lot of different factors surrounding it. Honestly, in issues of parenthood, I have no idea what I'm talking about or how would I act because I have zero maternal instincts, whatever that is or desires to have children. But I thought the discussions on poverty and reproductive and paternity rights were super interesting from a feminist point of view. The characters and situations were super well constructed and all the moments and the different plot points were incredibly thought provoking. What I didn't like that much was that the ending because the resolution was kind of predictable. I figured out what would happen by the middle of the book and all the things that happened to get there felt too long for me. In general, it was an incredible book but it was definitely not for me but if you enjoy these topics, you're going to love this.

Loved this book! Interesting and hard to put down. Will look for more from this author. Thank you.

My Quick Summary:

This story is about a family living in a community where outside appearances are important, and it focuses on two families: the Richardsons and the Warrens.  Mia and her teenage daughter, Pearl, move into a house owned by the Richardsons.  They lead a different life, moving from place to place, whereas the Richardsons have established themselves in their community.

Pearl, being around the same age as the Richardson children, befriends them, but then events happening around and to them start pulling the two families closer or farther apart in more ways than one.

What I liked:

-I really like how Ng paints the characters.  I thought I had them pegged, but then the story turns painting them in a new light, so my first impression of a character wasn't what I thought it was.  There's a tiny fold that I would peel back, discovering something more intriguing.

-The fluidity from one character to the next was perfect.  And this is what I really enjoyed from her other book, Everything I Never Told You.  There's this simplistic way where she randomly speckles the current story with what the characters will think and feel in the future.

-The emphasis on not judging based on appearances.  There are things we want to believe about someone or something, but aren't necessarily true.  The story changes with each character, showing division through opinion and justifying what one feels is right.

-The underlying truth of the bond between parent and child, or even family members in general.  This was hugely expressed in the story.  It is a connection like no other.

I'm a little sad that the story didn't go on longer.  The characters were so well-written that I wanted to know more and see what happens later on down the road.  With that said, I'll leave you with one of my favorite passages from the book:

"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 linke you stood on."



*I received an advanced reader's copy via Netgalley for an honest review.

I enjoyed Celeste Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You, to the point that I tracked her down online and asked her questions about the characters. She took the time to answer, which cemented me as a fan! I am glad to say I was not disappointed in her sophomore offering. Little Fires Everywhere is another thoughtful, character-driven novel from Ng.

Like Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere opens with the revealing of something explosive: the Richardsons’ house is burning down and everyone knows who did it, but not why she did it. The rest of the novel then skips back in time and explores the events leading up to the fire, and how everyone got into this hot mess (pun intended!).

Mia Warren and her teenage daughter, Pearl, move into the Richardsons’ rent home that is let at a very reasonable rate, which is Mrs. Richardson’s way of feeling benevolent. The Richardsons themselves have four high school age children - Trip, Lexie, Moody, and Izzy (all nicknames, though we never get to learn what the boys’ real names are). Pearl and Moody hit it off immediately and become fast friends. This is the igniting flame that eventually leads to the raging inferno that levels the Richardson home. Fire is a constant theme in the book, with sparks crackling through the pages.

Another theme that is examined is the longing after things we don’t or can’t have. Pearl as an only child envying the large Richardson family, Izzy as a misunderstood child finding solace with Mia, infertile couples wanting babies, etc. At the very heart of Little Fires Everywhere, though, is family. Ng sifts through thorny aspects of family life - abandonment, adoption, surrogacy, estrangement - and asks difficult questions. Does a child belong with their biological parents? Do they belong with who raised them? Do they belong to who understands and loves them?

I felt like I was reading a Liane Moriarty book at times, and I mean that in the best way possible, as I relish Moriarty’s novels. Both are excellent at creating characters that feel fleshed out and real, and each offers in-depth explorations of family dynamics and inner lives. I especially love watching cause and effect play out in Ng’s writing, how decisions ripple out and affect everything, deliberately and accidentally, purposefully and unknowingly. I will definitely read future books by Ng.

I received this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

An amazing second novel by Celeste Ng. Finished it in about 2 days, I was hooked from the very beginning. Touching on extremely relevant topics such as race, class, motherhood, abortion... And at its heart, questioning whether life is best lived by following the rules precisely, or if rules were made to be broken. Every character had flaws, and yet I found myself understanding them and relating to their decisions. Definitely a must-read.