I read the first few chapters but didn't feel compelled to read further.

Thanks to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for the ARC, but it wasn't for me.

I received an E-ARC with a request for my honest review.

This book follows Cassandra as she learns of the death of a member of her family.

She travels back to Toronto where her family moved from Trinidad to see her family.

She has always been curious of her family’s history, and being in the house with her whole family, secrets and old tensions are brought to the surface.

What will Cassandra discover?

This book follows the secrets and mourning of a family, I must admit I found it a little hard to follow. I’m not sure if there were just too many characters for me personally.

It is full of secrets though and the tension between some of Cassandra’s aunties are shocking for Cassandra to discover.

Overall, a lovely debut from this author with a story of mourning and secrets.

What an intriguing novel full of family secrets, darkness and grudges. No one really know each other but they accept and love each other anyway. Isn't that the essence of many families? I could understand the main character who left home to live in another country. Who also comes from another country that the one she grew up in. This is very similar to my story and I loved the way cultures and beliefs are crossing paths along the story.

I enjoyed the dynamic between the characters which might remind a few people of their own family interactions.

I understand that Sophie Jai needed time to build the characters and the story but I thought that it was a little long at time. Thank you NetGalley for gifting a copy in return for an honest review.

From the get-go, Wild Fires was super confusing. The opening to the book reads as if you should already know the characters and starting off by talking about someone called Onions was a little strange. Not that there’s anything wrong with being called Onions, but it really did confuse me. This Onions character was talking about someone called Chevy which doesn’t seem as unusual and the names are explained a little further on, but what a way to start a book.

During the first few chapters, I had to keep checking that this wasn’t part of a series as I felt like I was missing something. It isn’t, this is actually Sophie Jai’s debut and I’m sad to say that I won’t be checking out any of her further releases.

General fiction is not a genre I read often and every time I pick one up I realise why. I tend to find them boring and I feel really bad saying that is what happened here. I got 35% into the book before finally packing it up, this was a ‘did not finish for me. Not sure if I was missing something, but honestly nothing happened in the entirety of this 35% and it took me a very long time to get to that point. Absolutely no disrespect to Sophie Jai, but the writing style just was not for me.

The pacing of Wild Fires was very off for me. The chapters often moved between past and present and it was difficult to tell what was happening when. Constantly calling back to the past meant that there was little to no story progression in the 35% I read. I really wanted to get to 50% to give Wild Fires a fair chance, but I just could not make it.

Genuinely, I have little to no actual opinions on this and I don’t feel like I can as nothing happened in the bit I did read. Due to not finishing the book and finding the pacing very slow, I will be rating Wild Fires one star. If you are into general fiction then you may like Wild Fires so please do not let my review put you off.

This isn't my ordinary type of preferred reading but I selected it on NetGalley as I liked the front cover and title. I enjoyed the storytelling of the older generation, especially how some of the characters received their names. However the whole part set in the Canadian home, with various family members disappearing throughout the time when Cassandra was there, didn't really interest me.

Although I have wide and eclectic reading tastes, I do particularly enjoy fantasy, sci-fi, mysteries, thrillers and horrors. I think I prefer these as I crave books which tell complete stories that grip and intrigue me. I don’t often DNF books that I start to read, but if I do it’s usually because they don’t seem to be going anywhere, I lack any impetus to continue reading them or I’m really lost as to what is happening.

I’m afraid to say that Wild Fires by Sophie Jai fit right into all three of those categories and I ended up DNFing it at 40%. Usually I start and finish a book of this length in less than a week but I had found myself not wanting to pick it up and it took me over a week to get to 40%. The plot was confusing, jumping between present day and the past with no real explanation of which timeline as which. I didn’t really understand who the characters were or how they related to each other, and the timeline shifts added to this difficulty. There’s a family tree at the start of the book but it wasn’t formatted well for my Kindle which made it unreadable, and you couldn’t really keep going back to it to use it as a reference.

My next issue was the plot itself which didn’t seem to be going anywhere. A man named Chevy has died and everyone in the family seemed very upset about it (to the point of shouting and fainting at his funeral), but I really didn’t understand who he was or how he fit into the picture. There’s a ‘legend’ of him outrunning a car when he was younger, but the driver just braked a lot and let him win so that wasn’t exactly a thrilling outcome. As I found myself struggling with it so much I had a look at a few other Goodreads reviews and one mentioned that you never actually find out what the family secret is, even at the very end and this was the last straw for me. A book that doesn’t tell a story is not the right fit for me, so I put it down.

Overall, Wild Fires is a confusing and slow story which doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Thank you to NetGalley & Harper Collins UK, Harper Fiction & The Borough Press for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for a (very) honest review.

A beautifully written debut novel about a family who are all mourning the death of parents sister and nephew but a deal with grief in different ways.
Cassandra returns to Toronto following the death of her cousin Chevy, but she finds that there is tension between her mother and aunts which has been carrying on for years.
The book is set between Trinidad and Toronto and this gave an interesting insight.

Thank you to Netgalley/publisher/author for an advanced copy of Wild Fires

The story follows Cassandra as she heads back to her family home in Canada after the passing of her cousin.

I love both locations this book is set in, Trinidad and Toronto, The language and cultures and general description of both places made me so invested with the story and the writing is beautiful.

There was a lot of grief and guilt between the family members and this was so well written into the story.

The book was pretty slow going at first and had quite a dark premise however it was beautifully written and I enjoyed it!

Wild Fires is about grief, loss, and generational trauma. It's beautifully written and just so incredibly well-crafted--there were some very hard-hitting lines that made me put the book down and just sit in it for a moment.

I normally struggle with keeping characters straight in my mind (when I saw the family tree at the beginning I was like, "oh no, I am going to have to flip back to this constantly because no way will I remember"). However, the characterization, pacing, and structure of Wild Fires is so well-done I really didn't have all that difficulty. I even remember all the character's names (a big win for me) because all of the family members were so well-realized. This genuinely reads like a non-fiction biography because the characters feel like people. I just. Ugh. It's so good.

And the prose? My brain is fried right now because end of term is coming up so I can't quite summarize the words to say how fucking good it is. Just. *chefs kiss*

It is a very sad, sometimes difficult book to get through. Because it does tackle grief and loss--not just when it comes to death, but when it comes to losing family members in other ways, along with losing family history and the damage trauma can cause to relationships.

The only criticism I would say is that there are two plot threads I was interested in that I wish we'd seen more of (Onion's character and the relationship between the main character and her roommate). Those two things not being there isn't a huge issue, just some aspects of the story that were interesting I would have liked to see developed/added in more.

A story of a family and they way they deal with grief. Very interesting exploration of mourning, and I loved the dual Toronto-Trinidad setting.

Unfortunately, I DNF'ed this book at 13%. This book is not my typical read, but the synopsis drew me in, and I was quite intrigued to get started. I loved the first paragraph: the way things were described. But then it stopped connecting, and it turned into these confused bits in my head, and I had to stop reading.

I'm sure this book will be loved, but unfortunately it wasn't for me.

Full of family drama, flashbacks, secrets, and mourning. It's how each member of a family deals with grief differently, some have been grieving for decades and other were born in to this unspoken grief. The air is heavy with it in the family home and the stories of why is revealed slowly through each flashback.
A good read.

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 follows Cassandra as she heads back to her home in Toronto in the wake of the death of her cousin, Chevy, and deals with the grief encompassing her entire extended family.

Set between Toronto and the family’s original home in Trinidad, the language and rich culture makes the story so immersive.

Sophie Jai does a beautiful job of building atmosphere with the grief, guilt and tensions between the various family members making for a highly charged environment.

This book is an exploration of perpetuating family dysfunction, jealousy, resentment and how these behaviours shape the next generation.

The pace of the narrative was pretty slow though and it took me some time to get into it. To reflect the words of another reviewer, it was very well-written but I’m not sure I enjoyed it as the subject was quite dark and intense.

Thank you Netgalley and HarperCollins UK for the eARC of this book.

This book was certainly a good one. It touched on the very relatable topic of grief in a way that was very interesting and also had a bit of mystery alongside it.

Whilst I certainly enjoyed this book, it wasn’t one of my favourites, I hate to say. I didn’t really understand the writing and the timeline was quite confusing which I think may have taken away from some of the enjoyment. I also found it very slow paced, which may have just been my own reading pace, but ultimately made the book feel slightly dragged out.

With that said tho, I still did really enjoy the book and would still certainly recommend it to people.
I found myself quite attached to the characters, and the complicated family relationship between the characters was one I was very invested in.

Overall I think this book will pique many peoples interests and they should certainly give it a go.

I loved reading this book! I found the writing to be very insightful and interesting. I was intrigued by the premise and I enjoyed reading it from start to finish.

Wild Fires by Sophie Jai is a story following Cassandra as she returns home after the death of her cousin. The book ends up being a raw and thoughtful dissection of a family torn apart by their grief and secrets that have been left unsaid for far too long.

Throughout the book, Jai alternates between present and past - switching between present Toronto and past Trinidad whilst also switching between the viewpoints of different family members. Jai’s examination of pain, grief, and regret and the way this effects the next generation is unparalleled.

Jai is also able to perfectly capture the absolutely gripping claustrophobia that comes with returning home to your family and this creates a constant tension that runs throughout the book. Whenever I’d put the book down, I felt like I’d been holding my breath the whole time I was reading - I believe this was Jai’s intention as it mimics the feelings of a number of the characters in the book.

The pacing of the story, however, did feel just a bit too slow at points. This is especially true for the first 50 pages or so where I did have to persevere to carry on reading. I think the book really excels in the latter half but it’s a shame that the first half feels like such a chore.

Overall, I did really enjoy this book and I found Jai’s writing style utterly beautiful and extremely quotable. I would definitely recommend this but with a warning that you may have to push yourself to get through the first half.

The story wound together beautifully and highlighted the ways in which grief affect is all differently. It highlights how pain and trauma can ripple through from generation to generation.

This book is a slow burner and is well written.

Thank you to HarperCollins and NetGalley for an ARC of this story in exchange for my honest review.

It is the death of her cousin Chevy that brings Cassandra from London back to Toronto where her family is based after having left Trinidad. But she not only returns to the funeral but to a whole history of her family that suddenly pops up again. Stories she had forgotten but now remembers, things which have always been unsaid despite that fact that everybody knew them and secrets that now surface in the big house in Florence Street where the tension is growing day by day. The sisters and aunts find themselves in an exceptional emotional state that cracks open unhealed wounds which add to the ones that have come with the death of Chevy.

Sophie Jai was herself born in Trinidad just like her protagonist and grew up in Toronto, “Wild Fires” is her first novel and was published in 2021. It centres around a family in grief, but also a family between two countries and also between the past and the present and things that have never been addressed between the members. Having been away for some time allows Cassandra a role a bit of an outsider and she sees things of her family she has never understood.

The author wonderfully interweaves the present story of the family gathering at the Toronto home to mourn the loss and Cassandra’s childhood recollections and well-known family stories. Thus, we get to know the deceased and his role in the family web. Like Chevy’s story, also the aspects that link but also separate the generations of sisters are uncovered thus exposing long avoided conflicts.

The novel raises the questions if you can ever flee from the family bonds and how to deal with what happened in the past and has never openly be spoken out loud and discussed. Sophie Jai finds the perfect words to express the nuances in the atmosphere and paces the plot according to the characters’ increasingly conflicting mood.

I liked how the characters and their story unfolds, yet, I would have preferred a more accelerated pace and at the beginning, I struggled to understand the connection between them which was a bit confusing.

3.5 stars

I'll be honest. Wild Fires is not usually the type of book I would pick up. It falls more into the literary fiction category and that is not usually a genre that I enjoy reading. But surprisingly, I ended up enjoying this for the most part. Sophie Jai's gorgeous prose weaves a picture of complex family dynamics, combined with grief, pain and secrets buried in the past. There's some stunningly beautiful quotes spread throughout the story as well, which made reading it all the more fun. Though I would say, the pacing of the story was a tad bit too slow for me. I felt as though the writing style (as beautiful as it is) was dragging down the story a little bit, at least in the first half, which made getting through it feel like a chore.

But overall, Wild Fires is a book that I'll recommend because of the way it portrays family dynamics and familial relationships.