#BlogTour: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng @littlebrownuk @pronounced_ing

Little Fires Everywhere was published by Little Brown Book Group on the 9th November 2017. My thanks to the Author and the Publisher for the review copy and the invitation to be a a part of the blog tour.

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours 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 principal is playing by the rules.

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

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

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of long-held secrets and the ferocious pull of motherhood-and the danger of believing that planning and following the rules can avert disaster, or heartbreak.

My Thoughts:

Little Fires Everywhere is set in Shaker Heights, a suburb in Cleveland, Ohio. Shaker Heights is a place where everything has to be perfect, there are lots of rules to conform to. You are only allowed to paint your house certain colours for example. The idea being that utopia is created by as much planning as possible, I detested the idea of such uniformity. 

In this novel there are those that revel in the conformity, namely the Richardsons. However one day Mia and her daughter Pearl arrive, they are different in every way from the Richardsons. Mia has a past, is an artist and along with Pearl they have lead something of a nomadic existence to date. Mia has decided that it is time to put some roots down for Pearl. Mia and Pearl rent a place from Mrs Richardson. 

There is an court battle surrounding an adoption, which only serves to divide the community further. There are so many strands to this story, it is intricate and delicate and I struggled to settle into it at first. Once I did though it took my breath away. 

There are many themes in this book; motherhood, race and class divisions, family tensions. They are also secrets involved and there are people that think they are better because of their bank balance. I enjoyed the exploration of the way that people can be judged by others by what they have and haven't got. 

Little Fires Everywhere is such an accomplishment on the part of the author. The wonderful interwoven and nuanced plot, and beautiful writing serve to display what a gifted story teller she is. I have no doubt in my mind that this will be the best seller that it is poised to be.

About the Author:

Celeste Ng grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Shaker Heights, Ohio. She attended Harvard University and earned an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, won the Hopwood Award, the Massachusetts Book Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and the American Library Association's Alex Award. She is a 2016 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, and she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Please do have a look at some of the other stops on the blog tour.