Author: Kelly Ann Hopkins
Genre: realistic fiction
Similar books: The Library of Lost Things by Laura Taylor Namey
Lucky Girl by Jamie Pacton
Rating:
Summary (provided by publisher): On the outside, Shelly Frank lives a normal teenage life, balancing her gas station job and a budding new relationship with a boy from school. But on the inside, she’s harboring a dark secret: her mother is an extreme hoarder. Within the pristine, outer walls of their beautiful New Jersey home, Shelly and her mother are living amidst piles of collected trash from her mother’s disorder, and Shelly is at her breaking point.
By some miracle, Shelly is offered a chance to escape when she receives a plane ticket to Florida from her estranged father, but she’s met with a decision: should she flee this life of filth and seize the opportunity of a future in the Sunshine State? Or should she risk her own health and sanity by staying with her mother who is helpless without her? When Shelly becomes gravely sick from years of living in her mother’s nest, her decision is staring her in the face. She needs to save herself, but her mother is willing to do everything in her power to prevent that from happening.
My opinion: The base elements of this book are becoming standard: a single mother with a hoarding disorder and the daughter trying to live a "normal" life within the chaos. There are a few elements that make this one stand out from the crowd. For one, the hoarding doesn't have a distinct trigger. It's a part of a complex net of mental disorders that also means it is not easily resolved. Her mother can't seem to track reality. And that begins my trouble with this book. The mother character in particular has no consistent characterization. And the other people in Shelly's life are extremely idealized. Each plot element goes to an extreme. This makes the book increasingly difficult to accept. While I liked some parts of it, especially the conclusion, I found the overall package too much to swallow.
Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley
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