A bit of a slow burner for me but I ended up really enjoying it. 1940's Maine is a very different setting to what I usually read but it sparked something within my imagination as I pictured myself living during that time. The character growth of Grace and to see her triumph over tragedy was wonderful to see.

Grace Holland is in loveless marriage quite unassuming Gene and follows the aftermath of the fires in October 1947 that occurred after months of severe drought. Grace goes from being all quiet and gentle to brave and amazing.
I struggled with the characters and the story it just lacked something for me.

I don't normally like novels that have the word 'literary' anywhere near them, but I did enjoy this. Well, when I wasn't yelling at the poor woman to buck up and leave him, but then she ... became more interesting.
I thought it was well written, captured the period beautifully, and my only regret when it ended was wanting a happy ending for the nice doctor.

Not my favourite Anita Shreve, lots of things didn’t really add up. Loses everything in the fire but able to build a house and live well. Was the jewellery she found worth that much?
Story never really kicked in and it was a very disappointing ending.

Enjoyable if a bit predictable in places. The story was quite slow and I felt it could have had a better ending to bring the book alive.

I enjoyed this book and would recommend it. It’s not my usual genre to read but after reading it I was really glad I did.

I read this book at the same time we were suffering from an unprecedented bush fire season in Australia. So obviously the book was very relatable. It had a wonderful 1950's charm that led into a tense drama and how it portrayed the horror of the fire unfolding was a real page turner for me.

I do generally like most books by this author, my favourite being Pilot's Wife (I am an ex Air Stewardess).

Unfortunately, I read this book back in 2017 but completely forgot to upload a review on here, so can't remember exactly what I was going to say about it!

I've read several books by Anita Shreve and all have been very enjoyable. The Stars are Fire was another excellent book which i can recommend. I never knew of the 1947 Maine fire and out of curiosity, looked it up on the internet.

My thanks to Netgalley and the Publishers for my copy. This is my honest review, voluntarily given.

(Waiting for Amazon to Publish my review).

Love Anita Shreveport so was very keen to read this. Not disappointed and would recommend to other fans

I'm sorry to say this book wasn't for me. I was hoping to try a new author but it didn't work out that way.

As always, the writing is elegant. The Character Grace is someone you admire, and feel like you know. The relationship of mother / daughter is what gives strength to the character. When you find the strength to pick yourself up after tragedy and keep going and reinvent yourself, there is a power that comes with that. The author really captures the growth in Grace, which makes her so believable.

Another great book from the legendary Anita Shreve. Great characters as usual highlighting the female role in 1940’s society.

This is the first Anita Shreve I have read in some time and it is definitely not going to be my last. I was drawn in to the story from the very start. I really liked Anita's style of writing, it is very atmospheric and I found myself living through the drought, snow and the fire. I really enjoyed reading about the style of living on the US coastline during 1947 and the dynamics within the families. It was a time where men went out to work and women stayed at home looking after the children and keeping house, however I think that life in America was different to that within postwar UK.

I felt the story had a strong storyline, with characters who I sympathised with and I really felt for Claire, two young children and then pregnant with a third, which was conceived in violent circumstances. It is evident from the start that family life was not a happy place with Gene marrying Claire after loosing the love of his life.

After the fire, life changes for the neighbourhood and while Gene is lost Claire has the oppurtunity to stand up and make things better for her family. The mysterious pianist who Claire finds squatting in the home previously owned by her mother in law, is the sunshine in her life for a short time but when he leaves Claire continues to work hard and gains independence making a better life for her and her family. However this is short lived when the police turn up on her doorstep and Claire's fortunes change again and a difficult decision must be made.

I really enjoyed the story and I think that although the story is set in 1947 and in America it is still relevant today. Women across the world are living in fear, with husbands who take charge or monopolise their families, leaving women and children living in daily fear (of course many men are also living in abusive relationships), however stories like this show that these relationships can be escaped and people can have a life after their fear.

I think this is one of those books that could give many of its readers a positive message that things can improve and I hope that it is a book that is shared because it it a great story but also one that can give hope,

Thank you to the publishers, Little Brown, for inviting me onto this book tour in return for an honest review.

A very enjoyable novel about a woman in an unhappy marriage who experiences a terrible fire around her local area causing her to abandon her home with her children. Through Anita's writing I felt for Grace in her unhappy marriage and the aftermath of the fire and how she rebuilt her life. I enjoyed her relationship with her friend and the outcome of her marriage.

I love love love this book... Anita Shreve's books are always so well formed and one can't help but enjoy the characters. Grace and co are no different... she survives an horrific fire that destroys her neighbourhood and this is a tale of how she copes. I thoroughly recommend it!

Anita Shreve’s legions of fans won’t be disappointed by her latest thoughtful and sensitive read. Set shortly after the war, Grace is living quietly in a small coastal town with her husband and children. After a devastating fire which rampages through her community, Grace retreats to her husband’s late mother’s home (this is the house which has featured in several of Shreve’s books to date; it’s almost a character in itself) and starts to rebuild her life. Her husband, missing since the fire, eventually shows up and this novel observes how the couple relate to one another after such a traumatic experience. Anita Shreve excels at picking apart the minutiae of seemingly ordinary emotions and revealing vast emotional landscapes underneath.

As ever, Anita Shreeve depicts New England society with such immediacy and energy. In this novel the story follows Grace as she struggles to cope with two small children in a loveless marriage, supported by her mother and her best friend, Rosie. The novel appears to be a depiction of a housewife’s life of drudgery in a post WW2 society, so dependent on the weather in the days before domestic machinery becomes a given for most that, in the opening chapters, rain is a central concern as well as being a metaphor for Grace’s unhappy state. Female companionship is all-important in a world where women are unpaid slaves to their menfolk. So far, so recognisable. However, the novel really takes off when Shreeve portrays the way in which, after the rain, a huge fire spreads, threatening even those who live by the sea. This section of the novel was incredibly well described and I could really appreciate Grace and Rosie’s terror when faced with making impossible decisions about how to protect their children when the flames reach the seafront.
The second half of the novel is part Gothic horror – woman trapped with monster in isolated house – and part love story – woman falling for gentle, sensitive musician. Tension builds: we hope that Grace won’t be saddled with ‘duty’ forever but also recognise that a happier conclusion will take the novel into the realms of ‘Mills and Boon’. Shreeve is an accomplished writer. Her creation of character and place is always vivid and memorable. However, whether or not you like the novel may well depend on whether you prefer your endings grounded in reality or fairy tale.

I found the first few chapters hard going, but persevere it definitely gets better. It follows the life of young housewife and mother Grace. A terrible fire sees Grace lose everything including the child she is carrying. Not knowing where her husband is Grace has to take charge to support her young family. With a home and a new job things start to look up for Grace, but unfortunately not for long. Gene Grace's husband turns up after being badly burnt and in a coma for months. Poor Grace's life is turned around yet again. Read the book to find out how she copes.

The first one of Anita’s novels I read was in Canada in 2002 and All He Ever Wanted is still a great read – if you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you look it up. If you haven’t read anything by Anita Shreve yet, I think you’ll love #StarsAreFire and I’d like to thank Amelia from Little Brown for allowing me to take part in this blog tour and putting up with me sending her pics from sunny Crete when she was stuck in the office 🙂

Hot breath on Grace’s face. Claire is screaming, and Grace is on her feet. As she lifts her daughter, a wall of fire fills the window. Perhaps a quarter of a mile back, if even that. Where’s Gene? Didn’t he come home?

1947. Fires are racing along the coast of Maine after a summer-long drought, ravaging thousands of acres, causing unprecedented confusion and fear.

Five months pregnant, Grace Holland is left alone to protect her two toddlers when her difficult and unpredictable husband Gene joins the volunteers fighting to bring the fire under control. Along with her best friend, Rosie, and Rosie’s two young children, the women watch in horror as their houses go up in flames, then walk into the ocean as a last resort. They spend the night frantically trying to save their children. When dawn comes, they have miraculously survived, but their lives are forever changed: homeless, penniless, and left to face an uncertain future.

As Grace awaits news of her husband’s fate, she is thrust into a new world in which she must make a life on her own, beginning with absolutely nothing; she must find work, a home, a way to provide for her children. In the midst of devastating loss, Grace discovers glorious new freedoms – joys and triumphs she could never have expected her narrow life with Gene could contain – and her spirit soars. And then the unthinkable happens, and Grace’s bravery is tested as never before.

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If you haven’t read any of Anita Shreve’s page turning novels yet, this is a fantastic place to start. The fact that this novel was based on a true story was another factor which really drew me in as I love investigating around the books I’m reading. The long, hot summer of 1947 in Maine was a fascinating period that I knew nothing about prior to reading #StarsAreFire and Anita Shreve does an amazing job of transporting you back in time and reliving this traumatic event with Grace and her friend Rosie as they draw on every ounce of internal strength they have to rebuild their lives after the fires destroy everything they own,

The pairing of these two characters was very clever as we keep comparing them long before it occurs to Grace herself to draw comparisons about the state of her marriage with the much more passionate and fulfilled marriage that Rosie enjoys. Grace has been married to Gene from a very young age and his belittling of her and his cold, secretive and brusque nature is what she has come to accept as normal. One of the things I enjoyed most about this novel is the way we see Grace developing and flourishing despite the difficulties she has to endure.

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The metaphor of her rising, quite literally, from the ashes of her former life is a powerful one and this is a moving and engrossing read. Shreve keeps Grace faithfully within her 1940s context, providing much food for thought about marriage, independence and friendship for a 21st century readership.

I’m not generally a romance reader and I think that Anita Shreve is a writer who contains romance within her novels rather than make Grace’s whole journey about love, marriage and romance. The dramatic description of the fire and its immediate aftermath are the most striking part of this novel at first, but what remains after reading this novel is the grit and courage shown by Grace which enables her to make difficult decisions in her family’s best interests by the end of the novel.

I think that Shreve is just as skilful in writing about female relationships as she is about love and I thought Grace’s relationship with Rosie and her evolving relationship with Marjorie was another real strength of this novel. The journey for warring women to move towards accepting one another as human beings is a difficult one to paint without resorting to cliche and I feel that #StarsAreFire has managed it superbly. There’s no denying that Grace and Marjorie have a difficult relationship at the beginning of the novel, but the skilful and credible way that Shreve manages to describe their evolving appreciation of one another was another stand-out aspect of this novel for me.

Fans of Anita Shreve will love this and I hope that it also brings her new readers who love period fiction and strongly written female narratives. At the very end of her novel, Shreve suggests that we look up Wildfire Loose by Joyce Butler – which tells the true story of these fires – and this is the very next thing that I’m off to look up.