Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

I was excited to read Little Fires Everywhere for the Kewaunee Library book club, but not excited that sadly, the meeting fell during my vacation and I wasn’t able to discuss the book.

Mia Warren is a young traveling artist that spends her life moving place to place with her young daughter Pearl.  Mia and Pearl find a perfect place to live with low rent in Shaker Heights (near Cleveland).  Elena Richardson believes in subsidizing the arts and besides providing low rent, she also hires Mia part time for housekeeping.  As they settle in, Pearl befriends the Richardson children, Moody, Trip, Lexie, and Izzy. As the children to through the turmoil of high school, their lives, loves, and lies become interwoven.  Will anyone have a happy ending?

Mr. Richardson is a lawyer helping out Elena’s friends the McCulloughs.  They were trying to adopt a young Chinese orphan that was left at a fire station that they named Mirabelle.  Before the adoption can be completed, her birth mother, Bebe, a friend of Mia’s, appears.  Bebe wants her daughter Ming Lee back.  This case impacts all of those around them in various ways.  Where will the baby end up and what ripples does this cause impacting all other characters?

I enjoyed this book.  It was different with an intriguing plot.  I really liked how it showed how different people and choices that you make in your life can make a serious impact and change your path.  I may not have liked or agreed with all of the characters, but I thought they were very interesting.  I also enjoyed that the novel was set in the 90’s when I was a high school student myself.  The novel opened up interesting questions on what does define a family.  I wish I could have discussed it with someone!

Favorite Quotes:

“She had been brought up to follow rules, to believe that the proper functioning of the world depended upon her compliance, and follow them – and believe – she did.”

“To a parent, your child wasn’t just a person:  Your child was a place, a king of Narnia, a vast eternal place where the present you were living and the pasty you remembered and the future you longed for all existed at once.”

“But the problem with rules, he reflected, is that they implied a right way and a wrong way to do things.  When, in fact, most of the time there were dimply ways, none of them quite wrong or quite right, and nothing to tell you for sure which side of the line you stood on.”

Overall, Little Fires Everywhere intrigued me with its central question of what makes a family and the impact seemingly small choices can have on your family.

Book Source:  The Kewaunee Public Library. Thank-you!

The Oysterville Sewing Circle by Susan Wiggs (TLC Book Tour)

Caroline Shelby left her home of Oysterville Washington with big dreams of becoming a successful fashion designer in New York City.  Now ten years later, she has returned home with her designs stolen, her dreams crushed, and her best friend’s two kids, six-year-old Flick, and five-year-old Addie in tow.  What happened to their mother and why is Caroline now their guardian?

 Will Jenson is a Navy Seal who has returned to Oysterville where he had spent so many happy summers as a youth with his Grandparents.  Honorably discharged because of a wound, he is now a high school teacher and married to Caroline’s former best friend, Sierra.  What is the history of Caroline, Sierra, and Will?  Why does Caroline have feelings every time she is around Will?

 As Caroline attempts to rebuild her life, she realizes that domestic violence has touched many that she has known in her own home town.  She starts the Oysterville Sewing circle with her sisters for those women to find a place where they can build some solidarity.

I enjoyed this novel.  There were a lot of different story threads that were occurring at different points in time, and I liked how Wiggs expertly wove them together to get a full three-dimensional story.  I enjoyed how the novel explored domestic abuse, and loss. I loved how the women rallied together and were able to help and support each other.  I also liked how the book pointed out that domestic abuse can happen in all walks of life.  Caroline’s creativity and the look into the fashion industry were also fascinating to me.

Favorite Quotes:

“It’s terrible in a really . . . . special way.  You look at this person and realize she’s just gone.  An empty shell.”

Overall, The Oysterville Sewing Circle is an intriguing saga the covers love, loss, abuse, and fashion.  It’s a great summer read!

Book Source:  Advance Reader’s Edition for Review from William Morrow as part of the TLC Book Tour.  Thank-you!!  For more stops on the tour, check out this link.

About The Oysterville Sewing Circle

• Hardcover: 384 pages • Publisher: William Morrow; First Edition edition (August 13, 2019)

“Stitched together with love, this is a story just waiting for your favorite reading chair. With her signature style and skill, Susan Wiggs delivers an intricate patchwork of old wounds and new beginnings, romance and the healing power of friendship, wrapped in a lovely little community that’s hiding a few secrets of its own.” — Lisa Wingate, New York Times Bestselling author of Before We Were Yours

The #1 New York Times bestselling author brings us her most ambitious and provocative work yet—a searing and timely novel that explores the most volatile issue of our time—domestic violence.

 At the break of dawn, Caroline Shelby rolls into Oysterville, Washington, a tiny hamlet at the edge of the raging Pacific.

She’s come home.

Home to a place she thought she’d left forever, home of her heart and memories, but not her future. Ten years ago, Caroline launched a career in the glamorous fashion world of Manhattan. But her success in New York imploded on a wave of scandal and tragedy, forcing her to flee to the only safe place she knows.

And in the backseat of Caroline’s car are two children who were orphaned in a single chilling moment—five-year-old Addie and six-year-old Flick. She’s now their legal guardian—a role she’s not sure she’s ready for.

But the Oysterville she left behind has changed. Her siblings have their own complicated lives and her aging parents are hoping to pass on their thriving seafood restaurant to the next generation. And there’s Will Jensen, a decorated Navy SEAL who’s also returned home after being wounded overseas. Will and Caroline were forever friends as children, with the promise of something more . . . until he fell in love with Sierra, Caroline’s best friend and the most beautiful girl in town. With her modeling jobs drying up, Sierra, too, is on the cusp of reinventing herself.

Caroline returns to her favorite place: the sewing shop owned by Mrs. Lindy Bloom, the woman who inspired her and taught her to sew. There she discovers that even in an idyllic beach town, there are women living with the deepest of secrets. Thus begins the Oysterville Sewing Circle—where women can join forces to support each other through the troubles they keep hidden.

 Yet just as Caroline regains her creativity and fighting spirit, and the children begin to heal from their loss, an unexpected challenge tests her courage and her heart. This time, though, Caroline is not going to run away. She’s going to stand and fight for everything—and everyone—she loves. , and .

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Photo by Yvonne Wong

About Susan Wiggs

Susan Wiggs's life is all about family, friends…and fiction. She lives at the water's edge on an island in Puget Sound, and in good weather, she commutes to her writers' group in a 21-foot motorboat. She’s been featured in the national media, including NPR, PRI, and USA Today, has given programs for the US Embassies in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and is a popular speaker locally, nationally, internationally, and on the high seas.

From the very start, her writings have illuminated the everyday dramas of ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances. Her books celebrate the power of love, the timeless bonds of family and the fascinating nuances of human nature. Today, she is an international best-selling, award-winning author, with millions of copies of her books in print in numerous countries and languages. According to Publishers Weekly, Wiggs writes with "refreshingly honest emotion," and the Salem Statesman Journal adds that she is "one of our best observers of stories of the heart [who] knows how to capture emotion on virtually every page of every book." Booklist characterizes her books as "real and true and unforgettable."

 Her novels have appeared in the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestseller List, and have captured readers’ hearts around the globe with translations into more than 20 languages and 30 countries. She is a three-time winner of the RITA Award,. Her recent novel, The Apple Orchard, is currently being made into a film, and The Lakeshore Chronicles has been optioned for adaptation into a series.

The author is a former teacher, a Harvard graduate, an avid hiker, an amateur photographer, a good skier and terrible golfer, yet her favorite form of exercise is curling up with a good book. She lives on an island in Puget Sound, where she divides her time between sleeping and waking. Visit her website at www.SusanWiggs.com, and connect with Susan on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

After the Flood by Kassandra Montag

Myra is a young mother searching for her daughter in a dystopian future.  A six -year flood has resulted in her home in Nebraska being flooded out.  Pregnant Myra, her young daughter Row, and her husband, Jacob planned to sail away on a boat that her grandfather is building in the attic of their flooded home.  Then one day, Jacob leaves on a motorboat with young Row without Myra.  Myra and her grandfather set sail with Myra giving birth to her daughter Pearl along the way.  Life reverts to basic survival and Myra has one goal in mind, to find Row.  Seven years later with her grandfather dead, Myra finally gets a glimmer of hope that Row is yet alive.  Will Myra put Pearl’s life at stake in order to find Row?

I read After the Flood as a “book set in the future” for my summer library reading challenge.  I am a fan of dystopian novels and movies.  After the Flood is told in the first person from Myra’s point of view.  Myra is a strong character and a great heroine for this novel.  I loved her perseverance and her ability to cope with trying situations.  What I loved the most about her was her fierce motherly love and her imperfections.  She doubted herself and had her trying moments, but overall, she did what she thought was best.  It had great moments of action as well.  I would love to see this as a movie.

I am a water resources engineer so I did have some problems with some of the explanation of the flooding.  Climate change will cause our coastal areas to end up under water, but the earth will not crack open and spew out water to flood the entire planet.  These were phrased as rumors that Myra had heard so I was able to forgive it and move on.  I had to not think about it too much.

Favorite Quotes:

“Children think we make them, but we don’t.  They exist somewhere else, before us, before time.  They come into the world and make us.  They make us by breaking us first.”

“I don’t know how to talk to Pearl about what lay beneath us. Farms that fed the nation.  Small houses built on quiet residential streets for the post-World War II baby boom.  Moments of history between walls.  The whole story of how we moved through time, marking the earth with our needs.”

“I know I sound idealistic.  But you have to risk idealism to have hope.”

“Maybe we all were born with trust and then lost it.  Maybe we all had to find it again before we left.”

Overall, After the Flood is an intriguing dystopian novel interwoven with the story of a mother’s love.  I greatly enjoyed it.

Book Source:  Advance Reader’s Edition for Review from William Morrow.  Thank-you!!