Have you ever seen that BBC TV show "How Clean is Your House?" Where the two British ladies go around to the filthiest houses imaginable and clean everything up? This YA book reminded me a lot of that show. Only sadly Lucy, the protagonist, doesn't have two charming yet stern TV hosts showing up to help her sort out her messy house and life. There's only her and her mother, who is a "hoarder." A hoarder is someone who never throws anything away, someone who thinks of worthless junk as "treasures" and has trouble parting with anything. Lucy's mother keeps things like quilting supplies, which doesn't seem too bad, until you realize that she also keeps plastic containers and ceiling-high piles of newspapers. There is a lifetime supply of junk in the house that covers the windows, clutters the beds and fills the hallways so you have to squeeze to get through. Worse than cluttered, the house is also disgusting. Mildew and mold covers every surface, and the kitchen smells like food that's been rotten for years.

That's one reason that made this book hard to read, yet fascinating at the same time. Most of us live with clutter at one time or another, but this is another world entirely. You wonder how people can really live like this; yet, they do. (The author researched this book with the help of the Children of Hoarders org.) Another horrible, yet riveting facet to this book was the character of Lucy's mother. She was once a normal, kind person, but Lucy doesn't know that mother. The mother she knows yells if Lucy tries to clean up her room or get rid of her "treasures," but then turns around and yells at Lucy for not helping around the house. As a result, Lucy is detached from her mother, and that's what makes the later conflict a little easier to bear for her. I'm not telling what happens, but it's pretty sick.

I recommend this book if you can stomach reading about disgusting things. It isn't all disgusting, though...it's also touching and sad, as you read about Lucy struggling to have a normal life with a best friend and possible love interest. The ending was a bit too tidy, but the conflict had the happiest possible solution given the circumstances.