Fireweed by Lauren Haddad is a captivating blend of emotion, mystery, and self-discovery. The novel follows characters caught in the complexities of grief and resilience, set against a vivid, almost poetic backdrop. Haddad's writing is evocative, painting rich emotional landscapes that draw the reader in from the start.

The strength of this book lies in its character development and the way it navigates loss and healing. The relationships feel raw and authentic, making the reader care deeply about the characters' journeys. However, some parts of the plot might feel a bit slow, as the story tends to linger in introspection. But the emotional depth compensates for the pacing, keeping you invested until the end.

Overall, Fireweed is a beautifully written novel that explores human connection, trauma, and growth with grace and nuance.

Rating: 4/5

A heartbreakingly tough read, but accurately human and so so very flawed. It hurts to get all the way through this narrative and see that it’s just a blip in the narrator’s life, a passing obsession but one that her privilege allows her try on and then abandon when her life trajectory picks back up. The mixed reviews reflect the profoundly mixed feelings this book evokes. With the exception of the prologue (which seems self-consciously worried that we won’t understand the premise of this flawed, unreliable narrator and so goes a bit over-the-top, to the point that it almost sounds like a different voice from the rest of the book), the book is really engaging with it's depth of characterization and the metaphor of the fireweed. It is gritty and raw and devastatingly offensive at times; the kind of book that makes you anxious about those readers who will encounter it without context or critical thinking, those who may take it a face value and find their prejudices underscored. But perhaps because it takes such risks, it is a hauntingly good novel. I could see this title making it's way onto literary syllabi in the future, where it could be properly contextualized alongside contemporary indigenous voices. Even though it is painful to look closely at the roots of the narrator's flawed motivations, this novel tells really important truths about slacktivism, romanticization of the indigenous "other," and the very particular danger of white women's fickle interest in native women and their children.

My thanks to Astra Publishing House for providing an advance digital copy for review.

Jenny is a housewife who always wanted to be a mom, living next door to an aboriginal widow with two young children. Her days are endlessly monotonous, and through the window, she watches the neighbour she has so many prejudices against living a simple and enjoyable life.

She takes it upon herself to try to befriend her, and when she disappears out of thin air, she springs into action. Her disappearance mirrors the one of a local caucasion woman who goes missing, yet Jenny finds no mirror of empathy and desperation to find her new friend Rachelle.

She decides to take matters into her own hands, in a clumsy, ignorant, and misguided attempt to do something, while in reality doing nothing at all.

*******

I'm someone who lives in British Columbia and has heard all about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). The Highway of Tears is horrifying, especially knowing those men who stole so many lives still haven't been caught, and our police chose and still choose to turn a blind eye. I was more than intrigued to read this book and see what the author would make of it. However, I was wary of someone not from this area, and not visibly Indigenous taking this on.

I had issues with some of the stereotypes and wording as they seemed more "American" than Canadian terms and ideals and had me scratching my head at the thought that anyone would think them. For example, thinking Indigenous people wouldn't know how to garden (this comes up a few times) and being shocked that they would have even a slight interest as they are "hunters or gatherers." The idea that Indigenous people wouldn't know how to grow crops is such an unrealistic stereotype, even from people born in the 50's and 60's, as the Indigenous people on and off reservations have always grown food, and we've always had that history taught in schools. We all know that the first people's were the cultivators of this land, so this was a very odd take, especially one to occur multiple times, and completely baffled me that the author would think to include a stereotype that was so unrealistic as such a touching point.

I didn't mind the slow build-up of understanding the female lead, her influences and life, her friends, and her getting to know her neighbour, despite her being a frustrating character. Unfortunately, I often felt confused and turned around during the scenes, events, and people, as the author seemed to ramble on and not really explain there had been a change. She'd go from talking about someone in a grocery store, to being in the house, to how the look of a yard had changed, but no actual context or travel between, or behind, the rambling thoughts. She also introduced characters (a sister, I think? Maybe an aunt?) without explaining the relationship, just giving the name and then describing them and their actions out of the blue, for no discernable reason. I had to constantly flip back to wonder how I got to where I was, or who they were referencing, and not finding anything, which made getting into the book confusing and disjointed. Its like the author imagined scenes changing and shifting, but never describes them, just gave narration to the leads' thoughts. Within the first 20% of the book I had to reread passages so often to try to parse out where on earth a transition occurred, that I ended up needing to put the book down and read something else that night, just so I wouldn't burn out on the novel.

As the book progressed, I couldn't help but to be more and more baffled over why the author thought this was an appropriate book to write. The MMIWG is a travesty that still continues to this day. Centering a white woman's voice and perspective about how useless and misguided her leads attempts are isn't a surprise to Indigenous peoples whatsoever. This just reads as a book that centers white women ahead of a serious, systemic issue that has nothing to do with them and does so for personal profit. The actual injustices and history of the Highway of Tears is barely even touched on in order to favour the lead, and it baffled me that that would even be a choice to make. I also can't help but to notice that the release date is scheduled a week before the National Day of Recognition for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and assume this is another way to prioritize white voices to prosper off of Indigenous tragedy. It left me feeling an off taste in my mouth, knowing that the author was this out of touch with the people affected by the Highway of Tears to think her novel was appropriate or necessary. We don't need a novel that talks about how white women try and fail and to deep dive into that. We need MORE education on the injustices and racist systems surrounding Indigenous peoples and how to force reparations to be made to them, and bring their families home, not white-centered books like this that explore white failure and feelings.

In writing this book, the author is doing what her character is doing. Blindly centering herself in an issue that is greater than her, and making her own faults the main identity, over actually supporting the cause and bringing education and understanding to light. In attempting to create a critique of a woman that does no true harm but no true good, the author herself has taken that role by writing this book.

With all being said, I found this book to be distasteful and would not recommend it.

********

Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Astra Publishing House for providing this ARC for review consideration via NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

Fireweed is the story about a woman living in an isolated area of Canada living an increasingly suffocating life. When a national search for a missing young woman converges with the protagonist’s own neighbor’s disappearance, she becomes increasingly preoccupied with investigating. The story is complicated by the fraught race relationships between the First Nation and Indigenous people and the white Canadians in the town.

The things that I think the author did very successfully is create an atmosphere of claustrophobia and frustration in the main character. There’s a sense of voiceless ness and directionless that’s really highlighted by the brand names, store names, and clutter that are in so many scenes. The author highlights a very lonely middle class existence of a woman who is internalizing her problems.

The author does a wonderful job of showing that Jenny is using her past traumas, poor relationships, yearning connection, as the fuel for her investigation. At a certain point it’s clear that her search for Rachelle is much more about herself and her own identity and self esteem than a true closeness and concern.

What I do think was a little disappointing is that this book very much uses the missing and murdered indigenous women as a scaffold for a story of personal discovery of a white woman. While that may have been the aim for the author to show how white people can co-opt movements for their own reasons, it was disappointing that the storyline ends so abruptly at the end. I just felt like two paragraphs about Jenny feeling wistful in the last chapter wasn’t a fully fleshed ending for this storyline (even if she never ends up being found or getting justice.)

I really wanted to like this. The premise sounded so interesting, and when I saw that it was compared to Tana French I was sold. Unfortunately this was...nothing like Tana French, and I spent most of the book so god damn confused. I know this book is attempting to cover an important topic (the disappearance of indigineous women in Canada and how that has been largely ignored by law enforcement and public concern). My criticism is not about that topic and its importance. It's because the book was sloppy. The prose was EXTREMELY overwritten and at points BAD (ex: "Her and Missy were so fertile, it was almost offensive." -- Her and Missy? Seriously? This is Grammar 101, it should be SHE and Missy...). and the plot was utter chaos (and not in a good way). I felt like I was reading a stream of consciousness Word document first draft rather than a cohesive novel. I would try to come up with specific examples of where I was confused, but because the entire thing was so largely difficult to follow, I am unable to do so. I am not sure what this book is trying to be, but I think the author and editor have some serious cleanup to do before this will be on track for any rave reviews.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for the Advanced Reader Copy.*

Mixed opinions about this book. I enjoyed Haddad's evocative writing and the strong sense of place – as a reader, you feel immersed in the industrial, rural, impoverished town of Prince George, BC and the under-the-surface tensions between white Canadians and First Nations people living side by side.

Choosing to write about the serious and ongoing tragedy of Canada's Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG), though, is bold - and not necessarily executed well. Haddad approaches the issue through the lens of a white woman, Jenny, who has strong negative (almost paternalistic) opinions about her Indigenous neighbor Rachelle, a single mother with two young kids that Jenny is wildly envious of. They form a tenuous friendship before Rachelle goes missing and Jenny becomes obsessed with trying to solve her disappearance.

Centering this topic on a white woman is itself not a wise choice, let alone a character who embodies a lot of the issues Indigenous communities have with white Canadians - the paternalism, the empty promises, and ultimately, the fact that Jenny can move on and forget about Rachelle, only thinking of her occasionally. There's a lot of good commentary here on motherhood, environmental justice, and prejudice – so I wish that Haddad had executed this plot with the respect it deserved, or chosen a different plot.

Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley.

This book had a great concept but the execution was not done well. It had a very white savior complex which is dreadful, and there were a lot of unrealistic things going on. It was not done well

Thank you to NetGalley, to the author, and to the publishers for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!!!

Thank you NetGalley and Astra Publishing House for a copy of the ARC.

Sadly, this book felt very strange and often offensive. Indigenous people don't know how to garden?? Not realistic at all. Reading through reoccurring stereotypes felt like dirt stuck in my mouth.

This was very much "white savior" vibes.

Pass.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC!

In creating this book, I am afraid that I think the author lost her way a little with the plot and piecing the characterisation together. I understand that the main character was created as a study of trying to make up for mistakes and centuries of oppression, racism, and so much more, in a twisted 'white saviour' kind of way, to the extent that she believes at once point she may well be Indigenous. There is a really interesting underside to this facet of the story, but unfortunately I found that this book just did not hit the mark for me. I understand where it was going, but the characterisation felt almost naive in the approach taken.

The search the main character takes for her missing neighbour, with references to repeated abductions of (particularly Indigenous) women, was interesting but didn't treat the subject matter with quite as much respect or decorum as I may have anticipated. There is a good study in things just 'returning to normal' following Rachelle's disappearance, and the misguided attempts of the main character to find her, but it didn't hit the right mark for me. The end of the book totally lost me, and unfortunately this one didn't work for me.

This quote from the preview drew me to this novel: What can we do with a person who isn't bad, but who does no good? Jenny is just that person. She isn't necessarily bad, but she also brings no good. She is the only person who realizes that her neighbor, Rachelle, has disappeared, and she initially tries to find her but treats the situation like she is in a mystery novel. It doesn't help that law enforcement along with the rest of society have deep prejudices about Rachelle and are uncooperative. Jenny struggles with her relationships with her mother and her husband, but does not communicate anything with them and sometimes seems to wallow in her situation. The book paints a realistic picture of a person's prejudices and how even though they may be overcome in a way, if they are not persistent in changing their beliefs about a person, they can be easily swayed by the rest of society. Jenny had such deep prejudices against Rachelle, which she challenged and started to overcome when she formed a tentative friendship with her, but due to surrounding opinions, she found herself falling back to her old patterns of thinking.

Overall, the book was an interesting read that kept me thinking about what happened with Rachelle.

This is a good, but tough read.

It’s really hard to be in the head of our MC at times – even when she starts to be a bit of a better person, I struggled to like her. I also felt that she read much older than she was supposed to be.

The story itself is a good, if painful, one.

It’s very much about how disposable women are – and how much more disposable non-white women are. I’ll warn you, the racism is pervasive and very, very real.

I’m glad I read this one, though it made me very sad.

• ARC via Publisher

I’m not quite sure how I feel about this book. The first half was gripping, following the events leading up to Rachelle’s disappearance. Jenny is frustratingly ignorant, though well-meaning, in her search for her neighbor. She thinks residential schools were called “reverential,” for one thing, and has no clue about the atrocities inflicted upon the First Nations children there. She’s never heard of the Sixties Scoop, and the terms indigenous and Métis are unfamiliar to her.

The second half is more of a character study about Jenny herself, which I didn’t care for. I just didn’t care about her husband, her horrible mother, or her equally horrible friends. I came away from the book asking myself what the point was.

Thank you to NetGalley for the eARC.

Fireweed serves as a poignant reflection on the pressing issue of missing women, particularly highlighting the often-ignored experiences of women of color in the context of white feminism. The narrative delves into the intricate challenges of striving for what is right, even when confronted by systemic obstacles and personal doubts.

The initial half of the book is crafted like a slow-burn thriller, enveloping readers in a gripping atmosphere filled with suspense. I was completely captivated by this approach! However, as the story transitions in the latter half, it shifts into a more introspective character study. While I appreciated the detailed exploration of the protagonist’s inner life, I couldn’t help but notice that the initial focus on the disappearance of an Indigenous woman started to recede into the background.

The conclusion, marked by its somber tone, left me feeling a bit unsettled, but perhaps that was the intended effect. All in all, Fireweed is a thought-provoking read that struck a chord with me. I’m definitely interested in discovering more works from this author!

This gets two stars for being relatively well written and interesting, but doesn’t do anything for me thematically. Jenny is also an interesting unreliable narrator, and almost excruciating to read. I guess the “women return to cycles of exploitation and abuse by men no matter their class, nationality, or race” is… true? To some extent? But it’s poorly marketed as a text about indigenous women, it’s a text about whiteness and domestic and sexual violence. Depicting white characters enacting racism at length against indigenous peoples isn’t actually revealing anything about indigenous people.

I was looking forward to reading a book that dealt with raising awareness of crimes native women face. Sadly, I could not finish this book. I tried really hard but there were so many details that took away from the story. I was so bored and couldn't push through it. This is such an important topic and the execution was lacking.

Unfortunately, I struggled to get through Fireweed. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting but I did not find the story engaging or particularly original. I'm happy to see a book focus on bringing representation to the importance of Indigenous voices, I'm just not sure that I'm convinced this one was executed to its full potential. I would have liked to see a more focused plot that really narrows in on specific elements rather than trying to fit everything in at once. That being said, I did find parts to be a bit convoluted and jumbled and the ending unsatisfying despite Haddad giving a decently wrapped up conclusion. Overall, I would say I found Fireweed underwhelming and not for me.

In "Fireweed," a white housewife named Jenny investigates the disappearance of her Indigenous neighbor Rachelle, who goes missing along with another woman. Despite her initial judgment, Jenny becomes involved in the case and questions societal perceptions of marginalized communities. The novel explores themes of privilege, bias, and the impact of our actions on others.

This book has evoked a multitude of emotions within me. I understand that it may not resonate with everyone, but it has certainly left a lasting impact on me.

Not long ago, I watched a film called Wind River, which shed light on the alarming number of Indigenous people who go missing or are found dead without anyone taking notice. This was a real eye-opener for me, and it made me appreciate the importance of stories like the one told in this book.

The characters in this book are incredibly well-developed and likable, making the story feel very realistic. The vivid descriptions of the environment further enhanced the plot, making it feel like a story that could easily happen in real life. While some parts may seem slow, they are necessary to tie the entire book together.

Overall, this book is a gripping page-turner that will leave you feeling pensive and emotional at times. It reads like a true story, drawing you in with its authenticity.

I highly recommend this book and encourage you to form your own opinion. It may be worth doing some research to understand the gravity of the issues addressed in the book. The struggles faced by the characters, such as Jenny's attempts to report Rachelle missing and being met with indifference, are sadly reflective of real-life scenarios. This book is truly remarkable and deserves to be read.

Thank you, Astra Publishing House for digital ARC copy. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Truly I had so many high hopes for this. The premise? Bringing attention to Indigenous Women being taken and shitty authorities not taking things seriously? A very real and current abhorrent problem. But in the end this continued to be white centered and that frustrated me. I guess this truly is the actual reality, but there was no change in the characters. Also, the main character thinking she was possibly part of a tribe because of her mom hooking up with someone and guessing the identity? That comes off so tacky. I appreciate Netgalley giving me the chance to read, and these completely are my own thoughts and opinions.

Unfortunately not for me. In a world with SO many books being published, I just don't see this as a must in our collection.

This was a tough but amazing read. In the first part of the book, I was really cringing at the racism but Haddad did such an amazing job setting up how hypocritical it was. I thought the main character's journey was believable. She didn't do a dramatic 180 but went through very small changes. The descriptions of a rural town and the time period were so spot-on, it was a little eerie.