These Are the Fireworks by Vicki Grant: A Cozy Mystery About Family Secrets, Suspicious Mothers, and Satisfying Twists

Read time: 4 minutes

📚 Read as a book
📃 306 pages | ARC by publisher
🏷️ Publisher: Vagrant Press | Nimbus Publishing
📅 Published: January 15, 2026

Book Blurb:

Nina Fforde thought she knew exactly what her family was: steady, ordinary, and built on a solid marriage. Then her father dies in a freak accident, and her mother Petra shows up to the funeral in red lipstick, laughing too easily and living too loudly for a woman in mourning. As Petra’s behaviour grows more suspicious, Nina moves in to investigate from the inside. What she uncovers about her parents’ marriage, and about herself, unravels everything she thought was true. With a sharp-eyed detective watching from the wings and secrets buried deeper than anyone expected, this is a mystery about family, loyalty, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

Let’s talk about the book:

Let’s get one thing on the record: when an award-winning YA author makes the leap into adult fiction, the stakes are real. Vicki Grant has built a career writing for younger readers with the kind of wit and emotional precision that most adult authors would envy. So, when she announced These Are The Fireworks as her adult debut, I was already sold. No blurb needed.

What I didn’t anticipate was how good the family dynamics would be. The Fforde sister dynamics are the heartbeat of this story. That tight-knit, slightly suffocating bond felt incredibly real, especially as they orbit around Petra, their newly-widowed mother. Petra, meanwhile, is a strong force in herself. Watching a sixty-nine year old woman essentially reinvent herself is equal parts chaotic and quietly devastating, once you understand what was underneath the marriage she’s escaping.

The rotating POV is handled really well. Nina anchors the story, but getting glimpses from Petra, Gord, and the detective adds genuine depth and texture to the story. I tore through this in one sitting. It’s that kind of addictive. There were a few moments where the pacing dipped (some of the sister-focused details), but overall, nearly everything served a purpose.

Would I recommend it?

These Are the Fireworks is Vicki Grant announcing that she belongs in adult fiction as much as she does in YA, and doing it with wit, warmth, and a mystery that genuinely surprised me. It’s sharp, character-driven, and just twisty enough to keep you guessing without losing its grounding.

Read Next:

• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson — Dark humor and dysfunctional family secrets.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand — a family gathering, a suspicious death, and everyone with something to hide. A great beach read with genuine bite.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty — Domestic suspense driven by women with secrets, sharp humor that masks real darkness, and a mystery that’s almost beside the point compared to the relationships at the center.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• The Family Upstairs by Lisa Jewell — Another story about a family whose picture-perfect surface hides something deeply unsettling, told through shifting perspectives that keep you off-balance until the final page.
  Indiebookstores.ca | Bookshop.org | Goodreads | StoryGraph | Pagebound | Fable | Hardcover | OpenLibrary | Litsy
• Bad Sisters by Jennifer Doyle (TV series adaptation) / Bad Sisters by Apple TV+ / the original concept — The Fforde family chaos maps almost perfectly onto the Garvey sisters: complicated grief, women in quiet rebellion, and the question of whether murder was actually the worst idea. If you loved Petra’s storyline, you need this.
  

So Who’s Your Soul Fforde Sister?

We’ve all got that one family member who is absolutely certain they know best. The Fforde sisters collectively convinced me I have at least three of them. Which sister did you recognize first: the suspicious one, the optimistic one, or the one just trying to hold it all together? Tell me in the comments.

Book Links

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