REVIEW: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”

Little Fires Everywhere is the ultimate book about motherhood. Whether it’s a mother who’s lost a child, a mother who can’t get pregnant, a mother who decides she’s not ready for motherhood, a mother who doesn’t have as much to offer her child as the next mother, or all of them in between, the theme is very apparent. The book showed all the lengths a mother will go to to protect her children.

Mia Warren and Elena Richardson interpret their roles as mothers differently. One offers love in lieu of possessions and the other offers a safe haven in the town she grew up in. Elena is the ideal suburban mom, making sure her kids do not experience any type of pain and discomfort, shielding her children from real world problems. Mia Warren comes in and shatters that facade she’s worked so hard to maintain. But were Elena’s kids shielded from those problems or was Elena shielding herself from the truth? Mia is her reminder that no matter what, your life can never be perfect.

While I liked the story line, I felt the plot moved at a slow pace. I was finding myself counting how many pages I had left in the chapter. There were some surprising twists, and my heart was left with a dull ache after reading the book. Even though it was fiction, I felt like screaming out, “BUT IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!”

All in all, I give the book 3/5 stars. The slow pace made me struggle to finish it and for that it’s a lower star rating.