{Release Day Review} Fierce Little Thing by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore (@MirandaBW @FlatironBooks)

“It’s time to come Home. All five of you. Or else.” 

Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was entranced by the tang of sourdough starter; the midnight call of the loons; the triumph of foraging wild mushrooms from the forest floor. But most of all she was taken with Abraham, Home's charismatic leader, the North Star to Saskia and the four other teens who lived there, her best and only friends.

Two decades later, Saskia is shuttered in her Connecticut estate, estranged from the others. Her carefully walled life is torn open by threatening letters. Unless she and her former friends return to the land in rural Maine, the terrible thing they did as teenagers—their last-ditch attempt to save Home—will be revealed.

From vastly different lives, the five return to confront their blackmailer and reckon with the horror that split them apart. How far will they go to bury their secret forever?

New York Times bestselling author Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s Fierce Little Thing is a mesmerizing story of friendship and its reckonings.

​Saskia remembers when she wasn’t so afraid.  Those were the days when she was a promising young girl and not a walking tabloid tragedy.  She even had a place where she truly felt like she belonged – a place to be free. Now, she lives alone in a sprawling old house that may as well be a prison.  Its walls are alive with the kind of regret that only she can understand.  And then one day, the past comes knocking at her door.

The outside doesn’t scare me. It’s being in the outside—but not the way they’re thinking. What the outside might do to me is not my concern.
Grit under my soles. The sneeze of cut grass. Evening light in Renaissance flares. Vast sky. Whisper of Acer palmatum, the Japanese maples. Clouds that dance over the sun. The urgent chick-a-dee-dee-dee that earns Poecile atricapillus its common name. Hum of an airplane, hum of Apis millifera—the honeybee. Crunch of gravel off the step. Imagine the blast of noon. Imagine the veil of midnight.

​The friends that she once thought of as family are back.  And with them, the secret that has bound them together for so long.  Someone is calling them back to the place where it all began.  And they have no idea of what she’ll do to protect them and exactly what she’s truly capable of.

What did it mean to be built to destroy?

​Fierce Little Thing is an absolute psychological powerhouse! I can’t remember the last time I experienced such a profound range of emotion while reading a book.  All the feelings came in like waves - sorrow, anxiety, hope, anger, compassion, curiosity, disbelief and then finally, understanding.   

​Miranda Beverly-Whittemore masterfully creates a landscape that is serene in its beauty and yet vicious in its brutality. I could actually see the lush gardens of Connecticut, hear the crowded city streets of New York and smell the damp leaves of Maine. But it’s her characters that make this book truly exceptional.  
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Saskia burns with a clever intensity that borders on unsettling.  Still, I found myself aching for her to find the love that illuded her for most of her life.  Her story is one of grief and human connection.  And it shines a knowing light on the darkness that resides in the heart of us all…

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