CCReads – March Book Recap
Sorry that this post is a few days late – the first week of April was a proverbial sh*t show and I couldn’t get my act together to finish this post up! But hopefully the tardiness on my part helped give you a few more days to finish up Little Fires Everywhere – CCReads’ pick for March. A few people recommended this book and, after loving Celeste Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You, I thought I should give her second novel a whirl. And boy, was I glad I did. Little Fires Everywhere intricately weaves a story of commingling families from different socioeconomic backgrounds, secrets, and simmering racial tensions, and quite frankly I couldn’t get enough!
SPOILERS AHEAD – If you have not finished Little Fires Everywhere, skip ahead to the reveal of CCRead’s pick for April.
Like her first novel, Ng let’s the reader in on the ending first, and then proceeds to tell us how each of the characters got to that point. In Little Fires Everywhere, Ng tells the story in large part through multiple mother-daughter relationships. From biological mother-daughter relationships to adopted mother-daughter relationships to more pseudo mother-daughter relationships these women and girls do the heavy lifting in Ng’s story.
What I like about Ng’s writing is that she is able to tell a story in a way that makes the reader sympathetic to all of the various characters, despite their flaws. She effortlessly highlights all of our human tendencies – the good, bad, and ugly. And so I leave her stories unsure who my favorite character is because I can identify parts of myself with parts of each of her characters. For example, at first, I couldn’t get past what I viewed as Mia’s unnecessary baggage. But after we learned how she became pregnant with Pearl, why she became estranged from her family, and why she’s a girl “on the run”, I understood her and quite frankly, could see how she ended up how she did.
I also didn’t anticipate Lexie’s own brush with motherhood, and particularly was fascinated on how Ng was able to naturally soften up Mia as a character through her handling of that situation.
What were your thoughts? Any favorite characters?
CCReads’ – April Book Pick
And now… for April’s pick…The Great Alone, by Kristin Hannah. I recommended her book Nightingale back in February. I knew that when this new book was released, I had to read it. And it didn’t disappoint! The book follows a family attempting to help a troubled husband/father find a fresh start in the Alaskan “bush” country. Hannah knows how to pull on the heart strings! Can’t wait to meet you back here next month for a recap. Happy reading!
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