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A review by avigail
Other People's Houses by Abbi Waxman
4.0
The Smell of Other People's Houses is a book that I have been interested in since I found out about it through BookTube in 2017. It is a delightful story, with solid life lessons delivered masterfully at the right moments. The book contains some perfect phrasings over which readers drool and writers labor.
She vividly evokes the lives of Alaskan natives in the 1970s. Her book, told from multiple viewpoints, all comes together tidily by the end; for some, that ending should be pretty satisfying. I did feel that the characters seemed much older than their physical ages, but I see how growing up in the environment they grow up in would make one come of age faster than a mid-American middle-class teen of that era.
Young adults reading it will relate to the intensity of emotion and the importance of friendship with your peers. Adults will relate to those life lessons learned from youthful mistakes and how important it is to forgive your family for being human and love them anyway.
In Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock's gorgeous debut novel, these characters' lives will become intertwined in ways they could never have predicted. They'll realize that people can save us in our time of need, even people we've never known before. They'll recognize that each of us has untapped reservoirs of courage that we can rely on when needed. They'll realize that sometimes the family we choose brings us more love than the family we're born into.
She vividly evokes the lives of Alaskan natives in the 1970s. Her book, told from multiple viewpoints, all comes together tidily by the end; for some, that ending should be pretty satisfying. I did feel that the characters seemed much older than their physical ages, but I see how growing up in the environment they grow up in would make one come of age faster than a mid-American middle-class teen of that era.
Young adults reading it will relate to the intensity of emotion and the importance of friendship with your peers. Adults will relate to those life lessons learned from youthful mistakes and how important it is to forgive your family for being human and love them anyway.
In Bonnie-Sue Hitchcock's gorgeous debut novel, these characters' lives will become intertwined in ways they could never have predicted. They'll realize that people can save us in our time of need, even people we've never known before. They'll recognize that each of us has untapped reservoirs of courage that we can rely on when needed. They'll realize that sometimes the family we choose brings us more love than the family we're born into.