Tag: contemporary

Book Review | Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Posted April 16, 2025 by Haze in Book Reviews / 1 Comment

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 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 old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town – and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia’s past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost . . .


For the Reading Challenge(s):
2025 52 Book Club Reading Challenge (Prompt #TBD)


The Reason

I watched the tv adaptation a few years ago and loved it and always meant to read the book eventually.

The Quotes

“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.”

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

“I’ll tell you a secret. A lot of times, parents are not the best at seeing their children clearly.”

“Where do we follow the rules, and where do we justify breaking them? Do our pasts determine what we deserve in the future? And is it ever possible to leave your past behind?”

The Narrator(s)

Jennifer Lim. It was absolutely perfect.

My Thoughts

I feel like a lot of my love for this book might have been carried over from my love for the tv adaptation. I remember a lot of key moments in the show and the vibrancy of the actors who play the characters and pictured some of the scenes as I was reading the book. This rarely happens with me but in this instance I think the show was just so good that it stayed with me, and dare I say, I think the show was better than the book. But not by much because the book was really good too.

Reading the book served to make the differences in class and privilege among the characters a lot more jarring to me. Their internal thought processes and justifications, their reasons for doing the things they did, made such a stark contrast when put into words in the book.

There have been some criticisms about the book trying to bias us towards certain characters that may or may not necessarily be right in their own actions, but I personally feel like that’s missing the point. It’s not about who’s right or wrong, all the characters did/have done questionable things, but rather, it’s about privilege. The ones who have money and privilege have more options, more connections, more ways to get themselves out of trouble, and more grace from public opinion. The poor don’t have the luxury of better options, nor grace from public opinion. They are maligned for “making bad choices” when “good choices” are just not available to them.

I love that this story highlights that, but I also think that people who have privilege may not recognize this aspect of the story because they don’t always recognize their own privilege. It’s written so subtly and masterfully, the characters are so complex and their thought processes feel so true to life, it’s just an amazing book and I loved it.

My Rating

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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Book Review | The Switch by Beth O’Leary

Posted January 19, 2024 by Haze in Book Reviews / 4 Comments

The Switch by Beth O’Leary

When overachiever Leena Cotton is ordered to take a two-month sabbatical after blowing a big presentation at work, she escapes to her grandmother Eileen’s house for some overdue rest. Eileen is newly single and about to turn eighty. She’d like a second chance at love, but her tiny Yorkshire village doesn’t offer many eligible gentlemen.

Once Leena learns of Eileen’s romantic predicament, she proposes a solution: a two-month swap. Eileen can live in London and look for love. Meanwhile Leena will look after everything in rural Yorkshire. But with gossiping neighbours and difficult family dynamics to navigate up north, and trendy London flatmates and online dating to contend with in the city, stepping into one another’s shoes proves more difficult than either of them expected.

Leena learns that a long-distance relationship isn’t as romantic as she hoped it would be, and then there is the annoyingly perfect – and distractingly handsome – school teacher, who keeps showing up to outdo her efforts to impress the local villagers. Back in London, Eileen is a huge hit with her new neighbours, but is her perfect match nearer home than she first thought?


For the Reading Challenge(s):
2024 Audiobook Challenge
2024 Library Love Challenge


The Reason

I’m a fan of Beth O’Leary’s other books, and this one had been on my TBR for a while.

The Quotes

“You were healing. You’re still healing. You’ll maybe always be healing. And that’s OK. It’ll just be part of what makes you you.”

“If you’re holding someone close enough, you can be the shoulder and the crier.”

“Is it really an adventure if you don’t make at least one ill-advised decision?”

“I think part of what had made me so angry with my mum was the fact that I felt she should have been looking after me, not the other way around. But Mum couldn’t be my shoulder to cry on, not when she was bent double with grief herself. That’s the messy thing about family tragedy, I guess. Your best support network goes under in an instant.”

My Thoughts

I enjoyed the story, and I loved watching Leena and Eileen navigate their new circumstances, even if it was only temporarily for each of them. It was fun to see Eileen using online dating platforms, and I loved that we saw romance and sexual adventure happen for her. I loved how welcoming Leena’s friends were to Eileen, but I don’t really feel the same about many of Eileen’s friends towards Leena. I liked the idea and the potential of this story, but unfortunately, I don’t like the actual story very much.

My biggest issue, I think, is that I really, really, dislike meddlers and busybodies. I feel like the story wants to be a found family story, which everyone knows I love, but it falls short in execution. I’m not opposed to loved ones being busybodies out of concern, but the way it happens in this book is so much overstepping. I also feel like found family are people that become family because they prove themselves to be there for you and vice versa. In this book, it was more like they were there because of proximity. There was nothing substantial about Leena’s and Eileen’s relationship to many of the people involved. Some of them, yes, like Arnold, and Letitia, but a lot of the Neighborhood Watch were people that were just there.

It’s still a good story in itself, just not something I’d love.

My Feels

Another issue for me is more personal, and maybe it’s not fair, but this is about my feels for the book, after all. I did not like that Leena’s mother wasn’t there for her. I did not like that Eileen cared about her daughter’s feelings more than she cared about her granddaughter’s feelings. I don’t think that Eileen should have prioritized Leena over Marian, but I don’t think she should’ve prioritized Marian over Leena either.

“I think part of what had made me so angry with my mum was the fact that I felt she should have been looking after me, not the other way around. But Mum couldn’t be my shoulder to cry on, not when she was bent double with grief herself. That’s the messy thing about family tragedy, I guess. Your best support network goes under in an instant.”

The above quote feels personal for me, and I feel like O’Leary is trying to talk about the fact that sometimes you don’t get the support you need because the other person is also going through grief, and I get that, but I don’t get how it excuses Marian in this case. If you can’t look after your daughter because of your own grief, fine, but why do you think you’re entitled to her support then? Why does she have to look after you if she’s going through her own grief?

And why is Eileen getting angry at Leena for trying to have an honest conversation with her mom? Why is it okay to let Leena suffer for Marian’s avoidance? It makes me so angry!

My Rating

3/5 stars. I enjoyed the book, just not as much as I would’ve liked.

Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?

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