Book Synopsis:
Grief is like an inside joke: you have to have been there to really get it.
The only things Cassandra knows about her family are the stories she’s heard in snatches over the years: about the aunt and cousin she never got to meet, about the man from the folded-up photograph in one of her aunt’s drawers, and of course about her cousin Chevy, and why he never speaks – but no one utters a word about them any more.
When a call from one of her sisters brings Cassandra news of Chevy’s death, she has to return home for the funeral. To Toronto and the big house on Florence Street, where her sisters are hiding more than themselves in their rooms, where the tension brewing between her mother and aunts has been decades in the making, and where sooner or later every secret, unspoken word and painful memory will find its way out into the open.
Moving between Toronto and Trinidad, Wild Fires is a vivid and compelling story exploring the ways we mourn and why we avoid the very things that can save us.
Wild Fires is available in ebook and hardback now. You can purchase your copy using the links below.
My Review:
Wild Fires is a beautifully written, emotional and moving book that is hard to believe is a debut novel.
Firstly I found it fascinating to get to know the family throughout the years and find out what had happened in their past. From the moment we first meet them you can sense the friction and resentment there is between them which immediately intrigued me as I love books that deal with family dynamics. There are some very sad stories involved which were very emotional to read about and made me really feel for the characters as their hurt is almost palpable some times.
This is a book primarily about grief however and I found it interesting to learn more about the subject and the different types of ways people can grieve. It was interesting to learn that the family’s actions were caused by grief and that they had somehow got stuck in their grief and couldn’t quite let go of all their pain. I wanted to go into the book and give them all a big hug and try to help them through everything.
The family are originally from Trinidad but emigrate to Canada and I loved the authors vivid descriptions of the two countries. It was especially interesting to learn more about Trinidad and they way of life there, particularly all the fabulous sounding food! I’d love to visit there one day and experience it all for myself.
The story does start off slow as the author sets the scene and lets the reader learn more about the family but I soon became immersed into the story. The story is told in multiple time lines as we learn more more about the families history which was a little confusing at the beginning but I soon got used to it. There are lots of characters to get used to but the author has cleverly included a family tree at the beginning of the book which was a great reference point to me as it helped me keep track of who was who. I’m now very interest to read more from this author in the future.
Huge thanks to Susanne from Harper Collins for inviting me onto the blog tour and for my copy of this book.
About The Author:
WILD FIRES is Sophie Jai’s debut novel. She was selected as a 2020 Writer-in-Residence and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford for WILD FIRES, and was longlisted for the 2019 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel. Jai was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She splits her time between Toronto and London.
Over The Rainbow Blog 