A memoir dealing with the author growing up with an unsable mother and the effect it had on her
life and her relationships with family members, friends and members of the community. Looking
back to better understand her mother's actions in order to move forward in her own life,
#LoveisaBurningThing #NetGalley

Love is a Burning Thing is a memoir that covers Nina St. Pierre’s childhood and early adulthood being raised by a mother she ultimately realizes likely had schizophrenia. This led to a lifestyle often lived in poverty and often on the move, with a large amount of instability for Nina and her younger brother Chris. Readers of Jeanette Walls’ The Glass Castle will see a lot of similarities. I enjoyed Walls’ book more, perhaps because Jeanette found joy in parts of their life even as she eventually realized that many aspects of it weren’t healthy for a child. In the memoir, St. Pierre questions why she never realized what was different about her mother. A mother who self-immolated, who had delusions, who made her beliefs align with her reality. When a child is raised in that type of environment and knows nothing different, I would maintain it’s not their responsibility to identify and manage it, though it’s not really fair to a child to be that disconnected from what reality is for everyone else. St. Pierre does wander into research mode periodically as a means of explaining what she experienced growing up and what she learned about her mother. I understand this, but feel it would read better if it was purely her experience without professional assessments added in, or perhaps held until the end of the book. There always seems to be a place for memoirs of adults that had unstable childhoods because of poverty, discrimination or mental health issues in their parents. But because of this they have to be really well written and almost have a silver lining to them, and this just didn’t stand out in the crowd for me. A complimentary copy of this book was provided by the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

St. Pierre delves into her upbringing/relationship with her mother. While all she wanted was a normal life, she got instead a mother who was constantly looking for the latest spiritual practice to fulfill her life and and frequently moving from place to place as poverty was an ever present handicap. This stood in contrast to the fact that her father ( mother's ex-husband) was financially stable. Her summers with him were filled with comforts and experiences she never had with her mother (except for her dance classes).
As an adult St. Pierre realized her mother suffered from mental illness. While in college she had tried to commit suicide by setting herself on fire and years later a house she was living in was destroyed by fire.
St. Pierre speaks of her mother with an understanding and affection no doubt tempered by evolving maturity as she grew.
What could have been a very depressing book was given hope and understanding by the author's writing skill. More than once I was reminded of The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls: super dysfunctional parents and children overcoming great obstacles,

This was a heartwrenching memoir - Nina St. Pierre has lived through so much, and she bravely shares her story here. It is very well written. There are parts that are more educational - like parts about fire, for example, which I found myself skimming through to get back to her story.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

In this deeply vulnerable and vivid memoir, Nina St. Pierre takes readers through her life as she's tried to piece together and understand the woman that was her mother. As a child, Nina grew up with her younger brother Chris in northern California, moved from home to home by their mother. A decade before Nina's birth, her mother and her friend chose to set themselves on fire - and in the aftermath of her recovery, became a devout believer of Transcendental Meditation. It would continue to embed itself in her daily life, causing unfathomable repercussions for her family's lives in the years to come.

I was engrossed in this story from the very first page; Nina St. Pierre's writing style is enthralling and immersive, and she paints such descriptive settings and people with her prose. Although this is a memoir, the book is equally an exploration and dedication for her a mother: a complicated and multifaceted individual. We get to see the moments of her paranoia and delusions, when she weaves stories and conversations that never happened, but also her moments of love and dedication to her children, simply doing her best as a single mother to raise her two children. It's only in the years after her mother's unexpected passing that Nina is able to try and piece together the whys of her mother's actions, and brings to light the gaps in recognizing and treating mental illness even in the present day.

This is a weighty, and at times dark, read that doesn't follow the typical chronological timeline, but I appreciated the depth of emotion and additional research Nina St. Pierre included in her work.

This is Nina’s story. A very personal, and heartbreaking story.


Long before she was born, her mother set herself on fire. Instead of offering mental health help, the nurse told her about Transcendental Meditation. And she chased that her entire life. Until another fire.

Growing up with a single mother with a pretty bad mental illness, Nina and her brother were poor. Constantly moving. Looking for some kind of peace.


When they finally settle in one spot, nothing gets better. It isn’t until the second fire that change will come. And Nina will begin to untangle her mother’s life to find the truth.




NetGalley/ Penguin Group Dutton May 07, 2024

I requested this book on NetGalley out of my own personal interest in memoir and mental illness, and for me it was a very worthwhile read. I would be careful about who I recommended it to, however, as it both deals with difficult subject matter and is written in a way to reflect that difficulty. I found Nina St. Pierre’s writing to be both beautiful and moving, and her use of fragments an evocative stylistic choice that worked well to convey the realities of her mother’s mental illness and their family’s lifestyle.

wowwwww!!!! this book took my breath away. absolutely riveting and moving. i can't even begin to explain how highly i would recommend this book!!!

Love Is a Burning Thing by Nina St. Pierre fascinating memoir.
A beautiful and inspiring story that had me so interested and excited throughout.
I thought the writing was done very well and I’m looking forward to reading more in the future.

Thank You NetGalley and Dutton for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. Nina mom was not like most moms she had sone issues which followed her through life. I liked the many characters in this book.

I was fortunate enough to receive an ARC of Love is a Burning Thing through NetGalley. I devoured this memoir.
Nina St. Pierre's prose is vivid and evocative, drawing the reader into the heart of her tumultuous upbringing. I felt a lot of empathy for her and her family. And the way the author weaves the theme of fire throughout the narrative is nothing short of brilliant. It becomes more than just a physical element, symbolizing resilience, transformation, endings, and even the destructive aspects of hidden pain.
Love is a Burning Thing is a powerful look at family, poverty, mental health, and the search for self.

This story is about the life Nina had growing up with a mother that was unsettled in her own life with unnoticed mental health issues and took her kids on her rollercoaster life.
I enjoyed the story that Nina took us through and was amazed at not only everything she remembered and went though but how her and her brother came out of it.
I had a hard time staying focused on the story at times with how much other work was sited and how the story was written. Although I enjoyed the story the writing style was not for me. However, while reading you feel a lot of feeling towards her life and her mom and the situation. They emotion was there and very true, the ending was a nice tie up of the story and I appreciate Nina for being so valuable in telling the world her truth.

Thank you NetGalley, Penguin Group Dutton and the author for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This is a personal account of Nina’s life influenced greatly by her unsettled mother who moved her two kids often.

She begins by telling readers the dramatic story of her single mother, Anita, who spent six months in a burn center after setting herself on fire with a friend while enrolled in college at the University of Michigan. She had third degree burns and was only saved because a firefighter carried her out of the house in a blanket. Anita was immediately sent to the hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. That left me with a lot of unanswered questions: why?

Anita, a Catholic, was desperate for some type of therapy and gravitated towards spiritualism to raise her consciousness. She became a Transcendental Meditation teacher in the early 70s while on a visit to spread the word in Miami and met Nina’s father. They got married, had a beautiful daughter and then split up. Anita took Nina to San Francisco and moved again to a small northern town near Mount Shasta. Nina said it was where ranchers, hunters, New Age renegades and rednecks gathered. Many had drugs and guns. It sounded like the Wild West.

She gives the reader a clear sense of what it was like to be raised by a mother with unnoticeable mental health issues at the time. While Anita was very loving following the mantras of peace and kindness, they were very poor. They moved often which was difficult. Nina’s father, however, was always a phone call away.

It's a coming-of-age story where the reader feels the effects of various hardships in an unstable environment from day to day. While the chapters were well written, it’s depressing and starts to get wearisome until the very end when she pulls all the pieces together. I was amazed at all the details Nina remembered from her childhood. While in some ways, I felt sorry for her, she was always loved.

My thanks to Dutton and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book with an expected release date of May 7, 2024.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. The description had me intrigued from the moment I read it. The book itself was a bit confusing. The storyline was good but there were references that left me feeling a bit confused. The authors relationship with her mother was stressful to even read. The authors resilience and strength did shine throughout.

I loved the author's emphasis on fragments and fragmentation, the act of piecing together memories to make sense of things. It's difficult to write about a parental mental illness and childhood poverty. There's a swift pacing and beauty to the language here. Vivid writing that moves quickly, and I also felt moved by the writing on fire (and the larger metaphor there). From a fellow traveller with complicated family, I commend this debut memoir. Beautiful writing that pulls you in! This is the hard stuff to write about.

I was very fortunate to receive an advanced reader copy from NetGalley but all thoughts are unbiased and my own!

I really wanted to like this more, but I don’t this was a memoir that was for me.

The overall story and path of the author left me at loss for words. The author’s strength and resilience was incredible to read about. The dynamic with her mother was truly unbelievable.

However, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the amount of works/quotes referenced through the text. It felt very theory based and academic, I don’t really read memoirs to hear other’s opinions, I want to hear the authors! I don’t mind a quote or two but it was A LOT. I also struggled with this because the author would foreshadow something about her own life through quoting another author/researcher/academic, but it would be pages of another writer’s material before looping it back to her own story. Made it a bit hard to read for me.

The story was great and I really did enjoy reading about the author’s experience. The writing style just wasn’t for me, but that said the truths conveyed in the text were powerful.

Wanted to like this more.
Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.