Finished: Little Fires Everywhere (Ng) A very good book that hooks you at the beginning with the family home of the Richardsons, the main characters, burning down and then flashing back to how it all reached that point. The Richardsons are the perfect family living the perfect life in Shaker Heights, an overly pre-planned suburb of Cleveland. Mr. Richardson is a lawyer and Mrs. Richardson is a town journalist. They have four teenage children Lexie, a senior in high school, Trip, a junior, Moody, a sophomore, and Izzy a freshman. They are kids who have never wanted for food, TVs, cars, etc. They aren't bad kids, just privileged and not overly insightful to other people's needs...except for Izzy. Izzy is the rebel of the family who is always arguing for the underdog at the family dinner table. She's been suspended from school a few times, but rather than sit her down and really talk about why, her overbearing mother just assumes the worst of her and is always at odds with her. Each of the members of the family is delved into pretty deeply, and we learn that they all have their motivations and insecurities, just like the rest of us. Mrs. Richardson is so hard on Izzy because she's afraid of losing her. After three easy births with her first three children, Mrs. Richardson faced the terrifying experience of Izzy being several weeks premature and battling several of the problems that go along with preemies. Izzy, though, grew up just fine with no residual affects. Her mother, though, turns her fear of losing Izzy into a harsh over-protectiveness and harsher expectations, more so than with any of her other kids. They can all feel it, and because of it, Izzy becomes more of the rebel and the loner, not really getting along with her siblings. Lexie and Trip are the popular good-looking ones of the bunch; and Moody is the smart, thoughtful one. He understands Izzy the most. The author writes very beautifully as we see what makes each of these characters tick. So...enters into their little Shaker Heights world the enigmatic Mia Warren...an artist who uses her photography, along with other materials that appeal to her, to create very moving, meaningful pieces of art. She's an Asian woman and a single mother of fifteen year old Pearl. Mia and Pearl have moved from city to city as long as Pearl can remember. Mia will get an idea for a project, and plant roots for awhile to see her vision come to life...and then when she's done, they will pack up their VW Rabbit and be on their way. As an early art school student, Mia met a very influential photography professor who, recognizing her raw talent, put her in touch with a gallery agent who occasionally sold pieces of Mia's artwork. This bit of money, plus what she made taking whatever job she could where they moved, kept Mia and Pearl scraping by. When they move to Shaker Heights, Mia tells Pearl that they will finally stay put just as Pearl is entering high school. Pearl meets Moody Richardson first, and they become fast friends. Pearl is smart, and shy, but shares his same love for poetry and sense of humor. They do homework together and walk back and forth to school together and have all the same classes. Of course, Moody falls hard for Pearl...but when he finally takes her home to meet his brother and sisters, Pearl falls hard for Trip! It's more than just a teenage romance story, though. We see how all the Richardson kids are drawn to Pearl for different reasons. They accept her as one of their friends, and she begins to spend all her afternoons there. Her crush on Trip doesn't become known for quite awhile. We also learn about Mia's past. Her big secret is that she agreed to be a surrogate mother for a couple in New York to pay her second year of art school. Her parents had refused to pay, thinking photography and art in general were stupid things to build a future on. About six months after becoming pregnant (by sperm in a turkey baster!!) with the couple's child, Mia realized she'd fallen in love with her baby and couldn't go through with it. It was the beginning of her packing up what little she owned and running away. It was also right when her beloved younger brother, the only person who didn't judge her...the person with whom she even had a secret language from childhood, died in a car accident while with a friend. It was his VW Beetle that she ended up taking and making her own. There are just layers and layers to the story that I can't do justice to with a recap. Anyway, as Pearl grows close to the three oldest Richardson children, Izzy discovers that she gets along well with Mia. She goes over to Mia's rental every day after school and helps her with her photo development. Mia just seems to "get" Izzy and is warm and understanding to her, much more than her own mother. It is also Mia who Lexie turns to after she has an abortion (which Pearl drives her to). No way could she face her own mother, or ever let her know she got pregnant. In the midst of all the goings on between the Richardsons and Mia and Pearl, Mrs. Richardson's best friend has just thrown a first birthday party for the little Asian baby girl that she and her husband will be adopting after years and years of trying to get pregnant. They've had little Mirabelle since she was two months old, since she was left on a winter evening on the doorstep of a firehouse. However, just as they are about to do their final adoption proceedings, Mia finds out that she actually works with the baby's biological mother at her afternoon job at the Chinese restaurant. And...the mother wants her baby back now that she's back on her feet. A custody battle ensues, and battle lines are drawn. Mr. Richardson becomes the lawyer for the friends who are adopting, and Mrs. Richardson, Lexie, Trip and Moody all feel that Mirabelle should be placed with the loving parents she's been with for the past year. Izzy, and Mia and Pearl all think that she should be able to go back to her biological mother. In the midst of all this, Pearl and Trip finally realize they have feelings for each other and begin their own secret and sexual relationship! All kinds of drama, and secrets, and misunderstandings come to a head that end up blowing up all the relationships. The friends of the Richardsons win the custody battle, but then the biological mother sneaks into their house and takes her daughter and head back to China. Moody finds out about Trip and Pearl and is very upset. Mrs. Richardson, in trying to find out if the biological mother had an abortion (a bit of a side story) finds instead the name of Pearl Warren in the list of young girls who had recent abortions at the clinic! Of course, Lexie was the one who had the abortion, but she used Pearl's name since her mother knew the director so well and she didn't want her to recognize her name. It's all a huge misunderstanding that leads Mrs. Richardson to accusing Moody of getting Pearl pregnant; Moody lashing out that it was Trip who was "screwing" her; Izzy hearing it all; Mrs. Richardson barging over to Mia's rental (which is owned by the Richardsons) and railing against Mia's inappropriate daughter, Pearl, when Mia knew it was actually Lexie who had the abortion; Mrs. Richardson telling Mia she'd done some digging and knew about how Mia had fled from the couple whose surrogate she was, keeping Pearl from her real father; Mrs. Richardson insisting that Mia and Pearl leave right then, thus ripping Mia away from Izzy's one person who understood her; Izzy confronting Lexie after she figured out is wasn't Pearl who had been in trouble, but her own sister; Mia telling Izzy that sometimes you just had to have a scorched earth policy, like burning everything down and starting over, to explain why they were leaving; and finally, Izzy taking that very literally, and waiting until everyone was out of the house, and setting little fires everywhere to burn down her family home and all it represented before taking off in a bus to try and find Mia and Pearl. That all sounds a bit convoluted, but it was so well written! And, it was so heart wrenching! There wasn't really a character that wasn't given depth and a background, so you could feel what they were feeling. A really good story and, having already read her other novel, as well as this one, I will definitely read more of Ng's books. :-)