Little Fires Everywhere

"In Shaker Heights there was a plan for everything."

2.5/5⭐

The overwhelming feeling of this story was that it was fine. Just fine.

It starts off with a bang—the first chapter giving a glimpse of the dramatic end of the book—but after that the excitement drops precipitously and never fully recovers.

This is a good beach read: easy to get through quickly, well-crafted writing, and an interesting enough plot to keep the pages turning.

But overall, it left me feeling like I was in shallow water. The author brings up some interesting topics about motherhood, the weight of secrets, and identity, but it only scratches the surface, never daring to go deeper.

If you are looking for something that does everything this book tries to do, but 10x better, deeper, and more beautifully, read Bear Town by Frederik Backman.

One thing I really enjoyed about this story was that each character had a unique ratio of good and bad traits that made it difficult—especially in the tough moral situations this book often presented—to know who exactly who was the ‘good guy.’

I think there was a missed opportunity to embrace those moral grey areas, presenting the reader with tough choices and no good answers; but instead, I felt like the author was trying to tell me who to root for and who to judge. I wish she would have trusted the reader to wrestle with the moral ambiguity and come to their own conclusions.

All in all: nothing great, nothing terrible.

Some underline-worthy quotes:

“She had learned that when people were bent on doing something they believed was a good deed, it was usually impossible to dissuade them.”

“Everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you.”

“Anger is fear’s bodyguard.”