Reviewed by L. Chapman, September 2022
Little Fires Everywhere is a realistic fiction novel written by Celeste Ng. The novel is set in the 90’s in Shaker Heights, a suburb in Ohio which is incredibly manicured and affluent. Shaker Heights’ friendly facade quickly falls after Mia and Pearl Warren move in and disrupt the city’s flawed harmony. Mia and Pearl move into Elena Richardson’s other house that she rents out. This results in Pearl becoming friends with one of the Richardson’s kids, Moody, who introduces Pearl to his other siblings and she quickly becomes close friends with all of them. Later in the story, a pivotal event unreasonably gives Elena a reason to look into Mia’s past due to Elena being suspicious of Mia and her motives.
This novel is especially engrossing as the very first chapter shows how the story ends, which is with the Richardson’s house engulfed in flames and one of their children missing, whom they suspect of starting the fire. It’s so interesting to see two extremely different families grow extremely close and implode due to the intricacies of someone else’s life, and how those complexities intertwine with the past. By the end of the book, Ng artfully shapes Mia and Elena to become two sides of the same coin through the circumstances they endure. If you wish for a tense and riveting story with many plotlines culminating at the end, Little Fires Everywhere is the way to go!