Ng is very talented at writing tight suburban family dynamics that keep me at the edge of my seat. I could not put the book down.
The suburban settings, the importance of backstory, the mother-daughter relationships, and also the relationship of people of Asian descent within the larger American culture, though in Little Fires Everywhere it was a much smaller element with the adoption subplot. I think of all these elements, I like the exploration of suburban middle class American families the best; reading the back of the book, it makes sense that Ng lived in Shaker Heights herself, because the town was an important as any other character.
I browsed on Reddit a bit after finishing, and one comment that stood out to me there about the book was how the book wanted us to be on Mia's side. And I agree; I think her character could have been developed with more nuance. At the start of the book, I felt like both families were equally flawed: Izzy was as constrained by the Richardsons' order as Pearl was by her mother's chaos and moving every few months. By the end, though, the depiction wasn't as equal, and I feel like the book lost some depth in siding so much with Mia.