This book follows Jenny, a married white woman from Port George who takes it upon herself to investigate (albeit misguidedly) the disappearance of her neighbour, Rachelle.
I couldn't quite get into the book as I was reading it, as much as I liked the writing style and being in the head of someone as unlikeable as Jenny, I found some passages to be a bit too on the nose. The continuous descriptions of Rachelle's backyard and her poverty and her juxtaposition to Beth, another missing woman, while trying to drive the point home, felt as if the author didn't fully trust the reader to understand the full meaning behind Rachelle's disappearance.
Overall, even though the premise was quite intriguing and i liked the style of Haddad's writing, the book left me a bit conflicted.

This book was so good. I always love finding Arab authors and doing my best to support them. This book exceeded my expectations!

I heard some fairly troubling things across a variety of sources about this author and her intent around telling this story, so I have chosen to take this off my reading list. From a well-reasoned review on the Brooklyn Rail: "This savior complex is messy at best and deeply problematic at worst." If you'd like to read the full review — https://brooklynrail.org/2025/05/books/lauren-haddad-fireweed/

Thanks to Astra House for the opportunity to read; I'm sorry that I'll be passing this one by.

Lauren Haddad's Fireweed is a complex character study of a woman whose worldview is on the cusp of cracking open. Prepared to be challenged.

In Prince George, BC, Canada, young housewife Jenny Hayes shares a fence with the only First Nations woman in the neighborhood, Rachelle, and her two little girls. When Rachelle disappears shortly after a young white woman named Beth Tremblay does, only Beth’s face and name are plastered on billboards and given air time. Jenny takes it upon herself to investigate in a most haphazard way. She stumbles through police encounters, asks people living on the Rez all the wrong questions and ultimately faces the complicated motive behind her “investigation”.

There are a number of interesting and unusual characters in this book and in the beginning I liked Jenny even though she came across as rather naive. She does a lot of driving around the Prince George area trying to locate her neighbour Rachelle and then looking for Rachelle's sister Rhoda. It's amazing that she didn't get hurt or killed. By the time I was 3/4 of the way into the book I was quickly losing interest in the story and getting a little bored with Jenny's rambling thoughts. My experience is that indigenous people are quite proprietary about certain terms and are offended when they're used by non-native persons and Jenny's guilty of tossing those terms around. Also, Rachelle and Rhoda seem highly unlikely names of native women but maybe I'm wrong. I have to agree with the many reviewers who commented that the author doesn't seem an appropriate person to try and tell this story.

Thank you to Astra Publishing House, via Netgalley, for approving my request to read an advance copy of this novel. All opinions expressed are my own.
Publication Date: April 29, 2025

Unfortunately, I did not finish this book and as such will not be leaving a review! Thank you for sharing the advanced review copy with me.

I really enjoyed this one. it was a little slow at first, like I was waiting for the shoe to drop. I ended up appreciating the pacing by the end.

I did not finish this novel. Unfortunately, Haddad's attempt at bringing "awareness" and "justice" to the MMIW movement totally missed the mark and came off deeply problematic. The lack of care giving to the Indigenous characters in this novel is disheartening. There is no need to use slurs. I hope to see publishers prioritize more indigenous stories from indigenous authors in the future. Many thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

I was really looking forward to this book but it’s one of the most disappointing ones so far…Unfortunately this is a white savior story and so it was an automatic DNF… Maybe next time we can get a story from an actual Indigenous author.

Fireweed was a captivating read. As someone who can be hesitant with taking on a new author, I was blownaway by the attention to detail and thestorytelling utilized by Haddad. I recommend for anyone who is in a reading slump, and wants to feel something rea.

Jenny, a young white woman in Prince George, B.C., forms an unlikely friendship with her neighbour, Rochelle, who is Indigenous and the mother of two young children. I say unlikely, because the white people in Jenny’s social circle to not, as a rule, hang out with their Indigenous neighbours. But when Rochelle goes missing, Jenny must push back against systemic racism within the RCMP to try and get them to pursue Rochelle’s case. She learns, for the first time, that all missing women are not treated equally.

I have SUPER mixed feelings about this book! I absolutely loved the writing style. It was intimate and conversational while still providing so much rich detail. There was a really strong sense of place here. I feel like I got to know the setting and many of the characters really well.

That said, I’m not sure this was the right story for this writer, who does not, based on her bio, seem to be Indigenous. I applaud her for not trying to write from an Indigenous perspective, and I think there’s definitely a place for stories about white women overcoming their own prejudices, but missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls continue to be a major issue in Canada, and I’m not sure a story where a white woman experiences character growth through her neighbour’s disappearance is the right framing at this current time.

There was also some clumsy handling of Indigenous identity in general. The main character repeatedly refers to people with one white parent and one Indigenous parent as “Métis,” and this is never corrected, which leads me to wonder if the author knows the definition of this term. (For the record, Métis people are a distinct group of people descended from intermarriage between French settlers and Indigenous people. They have their own culture, history, and traditions. Being ethnically half-white and half-Indigenous does not necessarily mean you are Métis).

I would eagerly read a different book by this writer, because I adore her writing style and think she’s very talented. But this specific book misses the mark.

Thanks to Netgalley and Astra Publishing House for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Ohhhh the potential this had... It has so many important themes and topics discussed but unfortunately barely scratched the surface of it all.
There was also a shocking amount of plot holes and inconsistencies throughout that it really felt like I was reading a first draft.
I hope the publishing date for this is reconsidered as it still needs to be revised several times.

3.75 stars rounding to 4. This was a bit more character-driven than I went in expecting; the blurb had me thinking I was getting a little bit more of a mystery. The social commentary was exactly what I was expecting — the depiction of the casual racism and divide between white and First Nations Canadians was spot-on. I found Jenny to be a great example of a flawed, sympathetic protagonist — her naïveté and the upbringing she was raised in lead to her own racism coming through at many points, usually immediately combatted by her challenging her own biases. I also loved that this amateur sleuth protagonist is exactly that — she has NO idea what she’s doing, she’s out of her element, but she desperately wishes to be helpful.

Dinged a star because I just felt like I might have liked just a few more threads to be tied up by the end. I get the idea that even in real life, sometimes you’ll just never know everything, but I would have been a little more satisfied with a bit more resolution.

Fireweed is an intriguing debut by Lauren haddad. Billed as a thriller, the novel is more of a quiet character study of our main character, Jenny. Jenny has lived in prince george Canada and is alone a lot of the time as her husband travels for work. Jenny , a white woman, is taken a back by disappearances of female first peoples that go unsolved that she often sees on the news and in her true crime watching and listening and believes someone should do something more to find these girls, Jenny begins to strike up a friendship with her neighbor, Rachelle, a first people and is excited by the prospect of this new friendship. However, Rachelle goes missing and Jenny uses this as an opportunity to try to push those in power to find her.

I found the setting of Canada fascinating for this story as this isn’t often one that is the background for novels on missing non-white women. I also learned about Canada’s first people’s through this as well. Jenny is an interesting voice but unlikeable-perhaps on purpose. This is not really a thriller in the traditional even through it does have some elements. This is more of a quiet character driven reflection. with socially conscious themes. I did expect something more of a psychologically thriller based on some of the description and billings but that was more on me as a reader and not on the author.

I would rate this more 3.5 stars than a straight forward 3 star and haddad definitely has potential with strong writing.

Thanks to the publisher for providing this arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

This unnerving thriller broaches an important topic and I was excited to read it, but overall it missed the mark for me. The plot lacked fluidity and I felt the overall message was diluted. This is a thought-provoking thriller that many people will enjoy.

I found this difficult to read, plodding and clunky. I appreciated the idea, but the execution didn't work for me. I understand the intent in using Jenny as a mirror for the reader, but she comes across as completely lacking in self-awareness, juvenile in her thoughts and actions, and the story takes too long to move into the disappearance of Rachelle.

Missing and Murdered

The ongoing disappearance and murder of Indigenous women and girls in Canada and the United States, often described as a genocide, has persisted for decades. These cases frequently receive little to no attention or investigation. In “Fireweed” Lauren Hadden is looking to shine a light on this atrocity.

Living in Prince George, Canada, Jenny Hayes, who identifies as "white trash," harbors disdain for most everyone, including her demanding mother, privileged social circle, and even her husband. She does develop a strong curiosity about her neighbor Rachelle, an Indigenous widow with two young children whose late husband was white. Despite Jenny's crude, stereotype-laden perspective, shaped by her family and social circle's prejudiced views of Indigenous people as “uncivilized” and “savages,” Rachelle becomes a subject of intense fascination for her, observed from her backyard. Jenny is an incredibly nosy neighbor, constantly snooping, peeking, and keeping tabs on everything Rachelle does.

A twenty-four-year-old blonde, blue-eyed white girl, Beth Tremblay has disappeared, and it is the lead story on every station. Her picture is posted everywhere, there are bumper stickers, there is a reward out, and the whole community is galvanized. This just did not happen to girls like her.

One day Rachelle disappears– she fails to pick up her girls from the day care center. Jenny is the only one who seems to take notice. She investigates, tries to make the Mounties take this seriously, but the report is not even written up. A friend suggests Rachelle is just a casualty suffered by the prostitutes who work highway 16, the so-called “Highway of Tears.”

Our “White Savior,” Jenny may seem to be good-intentioned, but she just wears us out. She is loaded up with prejudices, she is borderline obsessive with Rachelle, and she makes a series of baffling decisions that leaves you scratching your head. There is a puzzling passage where she second-guesses her ancestry as an explanation for her connection with Rachelle, “...as if other hands were at the wheel.” Her husband, no prize human being, makes a comment to her that she should not ever forgive– and she lets that pass. Ultimately, the narrative lacks compelling characters to connect with.

It seems crucial that such a significant story be narrated by Native voices. We never see Rachelle, we see a caricature through Jenny’s eyes. There are inherent limitations to the perspective of a naive white woman who makes the story about herself.

The National Week of Action for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls runs each year from May 5 to May 9.

Thank you to Astra Publishing House and NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I picked up Fireweed thinking this would be a story about seeking justice for Indigenous women. It is not. This is a white savior story about a bored housewife who just needs a baby to make her life meaningful. It's offensive in many ways. Rachelle is an Indigenous woman who goes missing, yes, but this story is about Jenny, her family, her trashy friends, and not a single person cares what happens to Rachelle. That storyline in fact drops off entirely after Jenny panics that maybe she is secretly half Indigenous herself! The horror! The social suicide! Would her husband even still love her?!
I'm extremely disappointed in this novel in both plot and writing. It is vaguely lewd (sometimes not so vaguely). There are also multiple descriptions of sexual assault. I do not recommend this one.
Thanks to NetGalley and Astra Publishing for this ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for this e-arc in exchange for my honest opinion!

Fireweed sets up with an incredibly important premise: white suburban housewife, Jenny, begins investigating the disappearance of her Indigenous neighbor, Rachelle, when it fails to gain any real attention from the public or authorities. The novel positions itself as an exploration of missing and murdered Indigenous women which is an urgent, heartbreaking crisis that is still ongoing today. Unfortunately, I don't believe the story truly met these important plot points and fell flat.

Rather than focusing on the injustice and the systems that allow Indigenous women to disappear without consequence, the narrative became centered almost entirely around Jenny's personal experience with her neighbor. The story felt less like a search for the truth and more like a drawn out character study of a white woman slowly realizing her own prejudice. While this self reflection can be valuable in some contexts, it felt misaligned here and veered too far into white savior territory for me. I wanted a book that centered Indigenous voices, experiences, and resilience, not just one that used those experiences to facilitate the growth of a white protagonist.

In the end, I had to DNF Fireweed at 60% because it didn’t feel like the right vessel for the story it seemed to want to tell.

I initially thought Jenny’s life was a mess, and that she allowed so many people around her, like Fi, her mother, to manipulate her emotions. After a while I started to wonder if Jenny was just bored, a bit of a coward and lacked any self confidence in her hollow life. Her boredom was slightly lessened when Jenny became invested in the disappearance of Beth Tremblay, and her neighbour Rachelle along Highway 16. Beth is a white woman plastered all over the media. Rachelle's disappearance is swept under the carpet.

This novel was hard to categorise. Jenny's detective stills were left wanting, possibly because I was never sure if her motives and because she was either ignorant or uneducated. It does give rise to several themes such as racism, class and social status, gender roles and stereotypes and the social impact of living in a remote community. And I wondered if part of the writing of this book was to highlight how small indigenous and First Nations perspectives are marginalised both in literature, and at the forefront of campaigns to protect women.