‘’Every wildfire, I feel safe and I don’t feel safe. I care and I don’t care and this is my California. From the concrete walk of the courtyard, I count the ants in twos as they rush across the tops of my shoes, two, four, six, dozens, hundreds, too many to possible all know where they’re going. There’s nothing out here for them, just sidewalk cracks, lifeless plants leaning against the walls, cheap patio furniture, my neighbour’s ashtray, the low- hanging loneliness heavy in the air. I wonder what the ants know that I don’t.’’

Sheila’s life is a minefield waiting to explode. Unable to keep a steady job, with minuscule social interaction, carrying the enormous burden of guilt over her relationship with her mother, haunted by the absence of her father. Until two deaths change everything. Two deaths, a shoebox full of letters dating back to the 50s, a kind neighbour and his twelve-year-old daughter.

‘’My mother always hated cooking onions, so the smell is not nostalgic for me. It’s not a smell of home. It’s a smell of somewhere else, something else, someone else. It’s a smell of longing. It’s a smell of lacking.’’

Julia Dixon Evans writes about motherhood, fatherhood, and companionship. Yes, we want to be ‘’strong’’ and ‘’independent’’ and some of us believe that the fewer people the better (it works wonders for someone’s sanity…) but absolute loneliness seldom solved any problems. This story is an ode to complex relationships, the bond between parents and children, the poisoned thistle of unreciprocated love which can easily become a living Hell. All the doubts and fears, the enormous what-if that torments us all. Living without an aim, a purpose, existing in real-life limbo. And at the heart of it all, the bond between a teenage girl and a grown-up woman who has to open a door on the wall she has been carefully building all these years.

Seen through the eyes of an honest, direct character, a woman that is absolutely, totally messed-up in the most enticing, tangible way, this is a story set in lazy days and salty nights, full of that special quiet before the storm.

‘’O God, make speed to save us. O God, make haste to help us.’’

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Goodreads Synopsis:
"It’s not romantic," Torrey says. "It’s physics. For every letter there is an equal and opposite, you know…letter."

Sheila’s life is built of little thievings. Adrift in her mid-thirties, she sleeps in fragments, ditches her temp jobs, eavesdrops on her neighbor’s Skype calls, and keeps a stolen letter in her nightstand, penned by a UPS driver she barely knows. Her mother is stifling and her father is a bad memory. Her only friends are her mysterious, slovenly neighbor Vinnie and his daughter Torrey, a quirky twelve-year-old coping with a recent tragedy.

When her grandmother Rosamond dies, Sheila inherits a box of secret love letters from Harold C. Carr―a man who is not her grandfather. In spite of herself, Sheila gets caught up in the legacy of the affair, piecing together her grandmother’s past and forging bonds with Torrey and Vinnie as intense and fragile as the crumbling pages in Rosamond’s shoebox.

As they get closer to unraveling the truth, Sheila grows almost as obsessed with the letters as the man who wrote them. Somewhere, there’s an answering stack of letters―written in Rosamond’s hand―and Sheila can’t stop until she uncovers the rest of the story. Threaded with wry humor and the ache of love lost or left behind, How to Set Yourself on Fire establishes Julia Dixon Evans as a rising talent in the vein of Shirley Jackson and Lindsay Hunter.

My Review:
What really caught my eye about this book, was the cover and the title. It seemed so mysterious, like it could be about anything and I would enjoy it, and I'm really glad I got the chance to read it. In reality, it's a super relatable story about a woman named Sheila, who's only family is her cold mother, and her grandmother. She doesn't have any friends, and like her temp jobs, the rest of her life seems to be quite on and off. That's the way she likes to keep things.

It begins with a call from Sheila's mother, asking her when the last time she saw her grandmother was, and that she should probably go visit her within the next couple days. She's very old, and close to death. When she visits her, she tells her that history repeats itself, and more importantly, that it never forgets. She says that she wants to give her something, but that it can wait until tomorrow. The next day she gets a call from her mom and she says that she's gone. She has a tendency to lie to her mother to keep her in good terms, to keep her from worrying, and when she asks if she saw her the day before, tells her no. This is the beginning to a book that I can't stop thinking about.

The characters in this book are so real, and they have problems of their own to work out. It follows Sheila in her day to day world, through her point of view, and most of the time she's just reading through her grandmothers old letters. This book is such an easy and enjoyable read, it's just really real and I'm so glad I got the chance to read it. Sheila eventually makes friends with her neighbours, Vinnie and Torrey, and finds out how to live. I absolutely loved this book, and I would love to get a copy of it for my shelf to read again and again. I have nothing bad to say about this book, and I definitely think everyone should at least check it out, it's really worth your time.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon, and another link to the author's Twitter.

https://www.amazon.ca/Yourself-Fire-Julia-Dixon-Evans/dp/1945814500/ref=sr_1_1?i...

https://twitter.com/juliadixonevans?lang=en

Thanks for reading! Check out this review and more at my blog.
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