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  • Little Fires Everywhere

  • Written by: Celeste Ng
  • Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
  • Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (1,696 ratings)

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Little Fires Everywhere

Written by: Celeste Ng
Narrated by: Jennifer Lim
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Publisher's Summary

A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick

The runaway New York Times best seller! 

Named a Best Book of the Year by: 

People, The Washington Post, Bustle, Esquire, Southern Living, The Daily Beast, GQ, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Audible, Goodreads, Library Reads, Book of the Month, Paste, Kirkus Reviews, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and many more! 

"I read Little Fires Everywhere in a single, breathless sitting." (Jodi Picoult)

“To say I love this book is an understatement. It’s a deep psychological mystery about the power of motherhood, the intensity of teenage love, and the danger of perfection. It moved me to tears.” (Reese Witherspoon)

“I am loving Little Fires Everywhere. Maybe my favorite novel I've read this year.” (John Green)

From the best-selling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. 

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is planned - from the layout of the winding roads to the colors 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 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 status quo that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community. 

When old family friends of the Richardsons 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 unexpected and devastating costs. 

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood - and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster. 

Perfect for book clubs! Visit celesteng.com for discussion guides and more.

©2017 Celeste Ng (P)2017 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

"Witty, wise, and tender. It's a marvel." (Paula Hawkins, New York Times best-selling author of The Girl on the Train and Into the Water)

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What listeners say about Little Fires Everywhere

Average Customer Ratings
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Just drags on and on

It's not a bad story, a thought provoking concept and a plethora of symbolism, but they're diluted by the fact that the story just keeps hitting you over the head with them over and over again.
A lot of the novel is drawn out a lot more than it needs to be, so much so that it just gets boring. The story doesn't even start to get interesting until a quarter of the way through, and it has one of the least satisfying endings I've come across.

If you like overly dramatic stories about philosophical discussions towards motherhood, go for it, but if not, save your money for something else, because you'll get bored pretty quick. Not sure why this is so highly rated, but oh well. At least the reader was good.

17 people found this helpful

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it's like Jerry springer in a novel

worst book ever. no writing style took 10 chapters to setup the main story and the ending is shit. like an episode of Jerry springer strached 21 chapters. do not buy. I want my money back. Bad Asian accent(I am Asian).

7 people found this helpful

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Did not enjoy.

I found the book too slow. I got to chapter 7 and had to return it for a refund.

3 people found this helpful

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Beautiful

Celeste Ng captures the deep relationships people have, with each other and with their own families. Worth every min!

2 people found this helpful

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awesome listen!

narrator was excellent!! loved the story and will definetly get other books by author ! loved it !

1 person found this helpful

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Great Book!

I loved listening to this book. Was drawn to it after watching one episode of the HBO series. Jennifer did an amazing job narrating and drawing the listener into the very words written. My first book by Celeste and lets just say it won't be my last.

1 person found this helpful

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Great Book

Makes you think about how you perceive the world around you. Highly recommend the read

1 person found this helpful

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Beautiful, complex and heartbreaking.

This is a story about the lies we tell ourselves and the elements of life that are most important. It weaves the complexity of ethnicity, socioeconomic class and gender into a story that we can all relate to on some level. How do we view ourselves? How do we view each other? It's very timely in this unsettling time. The prose of this book blend so much that it is difficult to put into short text. Celest Ng has truly mastered the craft of writing with such depth and honesty. She begs the reader to really define their truth or in the least, acknowledge the skewed lens many of us might see the world.

1 person found this helpful

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Very mediocre

I was expecting a way more interesting story. Many parts were about teenage life which was not mature enough for my taste.

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Not bad

The start for me was a bit 'dry' but story became more interesting as it developed. Most of my bookclub peers found it hard to keep up with the so many characters and names- if it wasn't because I have watched the TV show before and was picturing them as i read, I'd have struggled with that as well.

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  • M. Ryder
  • 2017-10-05

Boring and Drawn Out!!!

Kept falling asleep while listening, but was determined to finish it, especially due to all the hype over this audiobook. The story never got any better, and the ending was ridiculous! Really wish I could understand why there are so many great reviews. What are people seeing, that I just don't? As for the narration, J.L. did a pretty good job of performing each of the characters, though she did not use different voices or inflections for them. She basically used the same voice during the whole story. Sadly, I would definitely recommend passing this one up, and not wasting your time on it. 👎🏼

701 people found this helpful

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  • Sara
  • 2017-10-09

Let Me Stop You Right There

To me, this book was written by an author who believes that her listeners are as thick as two planks. Further, the tone of the narrator adds to the unbelievably slick and condescending flavor of the whole package. Everything is so slowly drawn out and hammered down that there is no room for any personal thought or feelings the reader might dare to have. I'm bored. Are we there yet?

519 people found this helpful

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  • jaycon
  • 2019-08-06

"Little Whiny People Everywhere"

I also am not entirely sure what this book was about. What are the take home points? What is the moral of the story? Truly, the only thing I was certain of is that Celeste Ng has made enemies out of the entire population of Shaker Heights, Ohio!

Throughout the book I found myself not warming up to any of the characters. I think I know which ones I was SUPPOSED to like -- or at least the ones I was supposed to have sympathy for -- but, jeez, they all just seemed so very hard to like.

But I think what really got in the way of my enjoyment of the book the most was the narrater. As listeners we rely so much on the narrater's interpretation of the characters. But I was finding myself re-saying sentences of the book in my head in a different way than the narrater to see if a different prosody would work better for me. There were so many times when she would read a character's dialogue, for example, as though the character were whining, but that just didn't seem to fit -- it didn't make sense given what was happening in the book. When I re-said those lines in my head in a less whiny, more desperate way, it all seemed to make more sense to me. Lim makes ALL of the characters whiny, hence my renaming of the book -- "Little Whiny People Everywhere."

243 people found this helpful

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  • Robin
  • 2017-10-17

little epiphanies everywhere

Another thoughtful and thought-provoking book by Celeste Ng. I loved her first book, and didn't imagine that this one could be as good, but it is. This is a sensitive and nuanced look at motherhood, social class and race. She does not let her characters or her plot off with easy answers, or with good guys and bad guys. Even though each character seems to be somewhat of a "type" initially, as the narrative deepens we see how multifaceted each participant in this story is and I found myself feeling more and more empathy for each of them as the story developed. Lovely and evocative book that I didn't want to end. I listened to this as an audiobook (from Audible) and thought the narrator was perfect.

151 people found this helpful

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  • D. Bouchard
  • 2018-07-21

Scattered story

This book should be renamed ‘small scattered stories’. There were some decent characters and an attempt at the end to pull it all together but it was unsuccessful.

116 people found this helpful

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  • Wendi
  • 2017-09-14

I Actually Pre-Ordered This.. Never Again

I was really looking forward to 'Little Fires Everywhere' by Celeste Ng. The day my pre-order was available I immediately downloaded and started to listen. I listened for two hours and I thought 'there has to be more than this.'

I listened for another three hours. The book is about a neighbourhood and kids' pranks and a woman's job and how some people pay bills. Okay, maybe there is some deep symbolism I am missing. However, I don't care. This book is boring, tedious, and I dare to say it's a YA book- however the YA audience would find it boring too.

I am returning this dud. Even the narrator sounds like a little child. The characters are disjointed, the plot is all over the place and the whole book pretty much sucks. Urgh.

Audible, I will need this credit back.

-Wendi

112 people found this helpful

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  • Amazon Customer
  • 2018-06-25

I kept Waiting for it to get good...it never did.

I don't really understand the point of this book. It followed many different characters which I have found I am not a fan of. I like books that follow a main character but regardless of that, this book I found, didn't really have a point. I was bored throughout the book but finished it hoping it would get better or all the story lines would somehow come to this awesome ending...I was sadly disappointed. It was predictable and didn't leave me wanting more. I would pass on this one.

110 people found this helpful

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  • APersonWhoBuysStuff
  • 2018-09-17

meh, not worth the hype

This book starts out as a very promising drama but abruptly becomes tedious almost exactly half way through. I stuck with it for as long as I could but it just kept getting more and more eye-roll worthy and....honestly, tedious is just the best word for it.
Everyone I know was raving about this book, but it just didn't hit the mark for me. If you like suburban drama, I guess this book is for you? Narration is okay.

100 people found this helpful

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  • Bonny
  • 2017-09-17

Conformity vs. thinking for yourself

Celeste Ng covers a lot of ground in Little Fires Everywhere - conformity vs. thinking for yourself, motherhood, relationships, secrets, lies, culture, ethnicity, creativity, economic safety vs. barely getting by, family dynamics, and privilege. There really are little fires everywhere, both literal and figurative. Like Everything I Never Told You, this story opens at the end and then the author tells an engrossing tale to explain how it all unfolded. Ng has an extraordinary ability to make the reader consider a story from different perspectives through her well-developed and complicated characters. Even the setting of Shaker Heights, planned, manicured, and with rules for everything, contributes to the narrative.

Some of the parts that I found most exceptional were the descriptions of Mia Warren's art. The character captured so much in her photographs, and Ng captured so much in her writing about them. I'm going to be thinking about this book and those photographs for quite a while.

90 people found this helpful

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  • Andria
  • 2019-02-20

I’m surprised this had such good reviews

The story line was OK at best. It was an easy read because it was
sort of teenybopper. I listened to it in my car during my drives but by the end of the book was extremely disappointed with the ending. The end was so anti-climactic, insignificant, and left the readers with a bunch of loose ends. The book was not at all thought provoking and was just a random story to be told that ended on the mild note. Would not read from this author again.

89 people found this helpful

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  • Piernagorda
  • 2020-07-17

Don't understand the hype

What even is this book about? It feels like the author would have liked to do a series with this. She tried to explore many subjects but really just brushed over them.
The result is the telling of a random moment in the life of random people. The fire was not even a big deal. Disappointing.