Here's why Ratna suggests Little Fires Everywhere...
I was craving more Celeste Ng after Everything I Never Told You, and she certainly delivered with this suspenseful look at the secret lives of teenagers—and their morally ambiguous parents—in an affluent Ohio town. Ng has a gift for crafting stories you just can't put down and characters you feel like you already know. Cannot wait for the Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon TV adaptation of this one!
About the book
Little Fires Everywhere
by Celeste Ng
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 principle 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.--Goodreads.com
"...an utterly engrossing, often heartbreaking, deeply empathetic experience..." --New York Times Book Review
"Delectable and engrossing...A complex and compulsively readable suburban saga..." --Boston Globe
About the reader
Ratna Kamath, English
This is Ratna's first summer read recommendation!