ALA Booklist

Lucy has a secret: her mother is a compulsive hoarder. Her older siblings have moved out, and Lucy has never let her friends come over to see the towering piles of paper, clothes, and trash that cover every surface and block all but narrow passages through the house. Then she returns home to find her mother dead from an asthma attack, and she feels numb: "Maybe after, I could be sad. But not now." The 24 hours following her mother's passing bring one misguided attempt after another as Lucy tries to clean up, hide the truth about her mother's compulsions, and save her family's reputation. The premise seems far-fetched, but the problem of hoarding is real for many households, as the Web site listed in the acknowledgments substantiates. Lucy's range of emotions is clearly presented, as is her fear that her family's secret sets her apart from others: "It made us too different." Her final blazing act to ensure a normal life is upsetting but should provoke discussion.

Kirkus Reviews

An emotionally charged novel dealing with the issue of compulsive hoarding tells the story of a girl forced to make an agonizing decision in this nicely realized page-turner. Sixteen-year-old Lucy has been painfully isolated from her peers for years, refusing to let anyone near her house lest they discover the towers of garbage and heaps of mold-encrusted dishes. Outwardly highly functional, her mother maintains the dysfunction in their home with an obsessive grip. When Lucy returns from a friend's house one morning and discovers her mother dead of an asthma attack, she is poised to call 911 but quickly realizes this will expose the secret that her mother (and Lucy herself) worked so hard to protect. A growing public awareness of this disorder will produce many curious readers, and they will not be disappointed—Lucy is sympathetic and real, her brother and sister equally believable. Her mother is a multidimensional, complicated character. Quick chapters throttle toward an unexpected and morally ambiguous ending that some may feel leaves too many questions unanswered. Nonetheless, readers will be rapt. (Fiction. 12 & up)

Publishers Weekly (Fri Oct 06 00:00:00 CDT 2023)

Debut author Omololu gives a disturbing appraisal of how a mother’s obsessive hoarding affects her teenage daughter in this frank novel that spans a tense 24-hour period. The grief 16-year-old Lucy experiences when her mother dies suddenly at home is overshadowed by her dread that paramedics and the general public will learn her family’s secret: they’ve been living amid piles of filth due to her mother’s refusal to ever throw anything away. (“The last repairman didn’t get past the front hallway before realizing the place was too full of crap to even get near the hot water heater,” Lucy remembers.) Lucy’s decision to clean up the mess before notifying authorities may seem ill-founded and unbelievable to some, but readers will feel compassion for her as she recalls how her mother’s compulsive behavior has cost her friendships and a normal social life, as well as posing health risks. Tension intensifies as the clean-up process proves even more overwhelming than Lucy imagined. Her determination to erase the past may lead to debates about whether Lucy’s motives are rooted in selfishness, shame, or love. Ages 12–up. <EMPHASIS TYPE=""ITALIC"">(Feb.)

School Library Journal

Gr 8 Up-Lucy keeps a horrendous secret. At her old school, it accidentally slipped that her mother's obsessive hoarding forced Lucy, her brother, and her sister to live in the midst of endless stacks of junk and filth, earning Lucy the nickname "garbage girl." Now, starting her junior year in a new school, she has a great best friend, a potential boyfriend of her dreams, and no one gets to see the interior of her house. Since her older siblings have moved out and her father is remarried, she lives alone with her unstable motheruntil the night Lucy comes home and finds that the woman has died in the rubble. She panics about reporting the death, because then everyone will discover the truth about their living conditions. Lucy's attempts to clear the massive amounts of trash from the house, to no avail, lead to an ultimate "solution" that is shocking, tragic, desperate, and believable. Characters, situations, and settings are vivid, and dialogue rings true. As the teen tries to dispose of the debris before calling the police, effective and well-placed flashbacks triggered by unearthed items link her remembrances about what brought the house to its present condition and reflect her feelings about tense and frustrating parental and sibling relationships. As a valuable new addition to heartbreaking but honest books about teens immersed in emotionally distressed families, like Nancy Werlin's The Rules of Survival (Dial, 2006), this potent and creatively woven page-turner brings a traumatic situation front and center. Diane P. Tuccillo, Poudre River Public Library District, Fort Collins, CO

Voice of Youth Advocates

Things are finally getting on track for Lucy Tompkins. She has a new best friend named Kaylie, and a guy with ôJohnny Depp-nessö good looks seems interested in her. In two years, she can join her siblings and enter adulthood, never looking back. No one knows about her depressed and controlling mother or her home filled with stacks of newspapers, magazines, books, and trash. She has even managed to keep not having hot water or heat a private matter. On Tuesday morning, it seems like the familyÆs largest secret will be revealed when Lucy comes home and finds Mom lying dead amidst the ôtreasuresö she refuses to throw away. Lucy spends the entire book trying to decide the best way to protect her family from embarrassment. This appealing first novel is divided by hours, 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning until 5:25 a.m. on Wednesday, which emphasizes the immediacy of LucyÆs problem. The flashbacks might seem contrived, and LucyÆs sporadic errors in judgment and lack of confidence might prove irritating to some readers, but others will be too busy wondering whether Lucy will manage to protect her familyÆs privacy to notice. This reviewerÆs twelve-year-old son also read the book and concluded that although the plot is suspenseful, the author offers a too-simplistic solution to LucyÆs problem. Because the bookÆs flaws are minor, fans of young adult literature are likely to still embrace it.ùKaaVonia Hinton-Johnson.