Little Fires Everywhere

I first saw a clip of Little Fires Everywhere, the new Amazon Prime series, on Gogglebox quite a few weeks ago now. It had me wanting to see more but I don't subscribe to Prime so when I saw the book, by Celeste Ng, for sale I decided to read it instead.

"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..."

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, though it wasn't quite what I'd been expecting after the clips from the series that I'd seen on Gogglebox. It has made me want to subscribe to Amazon Prime just so that I can watch the series though, I think I'll be doing that very soon.