Tag: debutnovel

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Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard

If you haven’t heard yet, there is a fabulous debut that came out on 11 August! It’s called “Housebreaking” by Colleen Hubbard and if you love Elizabeth Strout this is definitely for you!

Thank you so much to Clare over at Two Fond of Books and to Corsair Books for making me one of the lucky people to have already read this great story!

—Synopsis—

Following a long-standing feud and looking to settle the score, a woman decides to dismantle her home—alone and by hand—and move it across a frozen pond during a harsh New England winter in this mesmerizing debut.

Home is certainly not where Del’s heart is. After a local scandal led to her parents’ divorce and the rest of her family turned their backs on her, Del left her small town and cut off contact.

Now, with both of her parents gone, a chance has arrived for Del to retaliate.

Her uncle wants the one thing Del inherited: the family home.

Instead of handing the place over, and with no other resources at her disposal, Del decides she will tear the place apart herself—piece by piece.

But Del will soon discover, the task stirs up more than just old memories as relatives—each in their own state of unraveling—come knocking on her door.

This spare, strange, magical book is a story not only about the powerlessness and hurt that run through a family but also about the moments when brokenness can offer us the rare chance to start again.

—Review—

“She wanted to go through life completely unnoticed, below level, submarine.”

Meet Del. 24 without much to show for. She lives with Tym, an old friend of her late father, and she just cannot be bothered. She can’t retain a job, she has no purpose, 0 ambition, and no social life. 

So when she loses yet another menial job, and Tym asks her to move out, she gets quite a kick up the backside! Coincidently, a ghost from her past shows up: her cousin Greg. He came to make her an offer on behalf of his father, her Uncle Chuck: he wants to buy her parents’ house. 

As she travels across the country and back in time, intent on accepting this offer, she is forced to face the feelings she’s buried all of those years. And when reality strikes that they are not interested in her or the house, but in fact in the land to develop and make money out of it, something in her snaps.  

She goes back to a feral state, a core and primitive instinct possessing her that she cannot (nor want to) get rid off, embarking on this insane project to deconstruct the house room by room, piece by piece, and move it across the pond as an act of vengeance against this family she so despises. 

What a clever story Colleen Hubbard has written here!

As Del has no choice but face her past, you cannot help but wonder if one can ever really escape the past? Aren’t we always forced to confront it in order to move forward?

“You’re a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a terrible haircut.“

By deconstructing the house, Del also deconstructs her life. To free herself from the shackles and hurts from the past, she will have to perform an exorcism. She will have to face and accept the dichotomy of nostalgia, make peace with herself, her late parents, their shortcomings, and this town and its people that she loathes and loves at the same time. 

“I need to finish this. I do. I can’t explain it.“

She’s so stubborn, it might kill her but she won’t give up! For once in her life she doesn’t want to. It is stronger than her, it’s an urge she cannot shake. In her determination and her fury, she takes herself to the brink, turning into a wounded animal who wants to be left alone. 

But it is without counting on others forcing a helping hand. By reluctantly (not) accepting for other people to unexpectedly make their way into her life and her project, she is given something even more unexpected: hope. 

Through this crazy endeavour, Del is working towards finding herself and letting go of the past, ready for the future, and you cannot help but wonder: what would I have done in her shoes?

With Love
AGJ

—About the Author—

Colleen Hubbard is an American writer who grew up in New England and now lives in (old) England with her British husband and children. Her debut novel, Housebreaking, was published in the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand in April 2022, in August 2022 in the UK, and is forthcoming in 2023 in translation. Her essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub and other publications.

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“The Lost Girls” by Heather Young – Blog Tour

Thank you so much Hollie over at Verve Books for inviting me on this tour! This was such a wonderful discovery, Heather Young is definitely a new author to watch, I cannot wait to read her second novel “The Distant Dead” due to be published in Spring 2022!

—Synopsis–

In 1935, six-year-old Emily Evans vanishes from her family’s vacation home on a remote Minnesota lake. Her disappearance destroys the family – her father takes his own life, and her mother and two older sisters spend the rest of their lives at the lake house, keeping a decades-long vigil for the lost child. Sixty years later, Lucy, the quiet and watchful middle sister, lives in the lake house alone. Before her death, she writes the story of that devastating summer in a notebook that she leaves, along with the house, to the only person who might care: her grandniece, Justine. For Justine, the lake house offers freedom and stability – a way to escape her manipulative boyfriend and give her daughters the home she never had. But the long Minnesota winter is just beginning. The house is cold and dilapidated. The dark, silent lake is isolated and eerie. Her only neighbor is a strange old man who seems to know more about the summer of 1935 than he’s telling.

Soon Justine’s troubled oldest daughter becomes obsessed with Emily’s disappearance, her mother arrives to steal her inheritance, and the man she left launches a dangerous plan to get her back. In a house haunted by the sorrows of the women who came before her, Justine must overcome their tragic legacy if she hopes to save herself and her children.

—Review—

“The things we do for love are the hardest things to regret.”

What a truly impressive debut!

Heather Young transports you with so much ease and through beautiful writing to this mysterious lake in Minnesota. She wittily brings out every little detail of the lives of the Evans’s girls – past, present, future.

Alternating between Lucy’s and Justine’s stories, you get to meet all the protagonists, who drag you in this fabulous family portrait, however dysfunctional it is, analysing the cause and effect of their actions, their choices, the secrets they keep and the price they paid.  

Through Lily, you share history, ever so slowly pulling the thread, unravelling the mystery of what happened to her sister Emily. Poor little Emily, overprotected by their mother, despised by her sisters, adored by her father. As Lucy exorcises her demons, freeing herself from her regrets, you share the weights of the secrets, you become part of this “last summer” when everything changed, connecting with her fate.

Through her eyes, you understand the bonds of the past, with her sister Lilith, the Miller bothers their neighbours, and Justine’s mother: Maurie, who left the lake as soon as she could, never to return. 

Through Justine, you get to grow and evolve, trying to learn lessons from the past, witnessing how her ancestors have shaped her future through their destiny, how the choices we make impact future generations, how it impacts our roots and behaviours, showing how what is unconsciously passed down can manifest in different ways, but more importantly how one can shake things around. 

It is so easy to fall into old habits, mirroring what we have seen done all of our lives; through understanding where we come from, we can hope to move forward in the right direction. With Lucy’s inheritance, Justine is given the chance to start over, to escape the toxic relationship she is in, but more importantly the chance to find herself, and give to her daughters what none of the Evans girls ever had. 

“Please remember […] all of us. We are the ghosts of lives stolen and lives never lived.”

Atmospheric, gripping, thought provoking, I can only praise this book! Such a beautiful story about family, love, tragedy, building tension throughout and never letting you down!

With Love
AGJ

Out now with Verve Books 

—About the Author – Heather Young—

HEATHER YOUNG is the author of two novels. Her debut, The Lost Girls, won the Strand Award for Best First Novel and was nominated for an Edgar Award. Her second novel, The Distant Dead has also been nominated for the 2021 Edgar Award for Best Novel. A former antitrust and intellectual property litigator, she traded the legal world for the literary one and earned her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2011. She lives in Mill Valley, California, where she writes, bikes, hikes, and reads books by other people that she wishes she’d written.

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