My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Gutting!
The House No One Sees by Adina King is an eye-opening, gutting revelation of the impact of a mother's opioid addiction on her young daughter and parents and the community's response (or lack thereof) to the child's obvious need for help. The author combines prose and verse to tell the devastating story, which further heightens its impact on the reader. This was one of those stories where you can feel the outcome well before the tale's end, but, like a trainwreck, you can't look away nor put the book down.
On her 16th birthday, Penelope âPennyâ Ross is beckoned to her childhood home by desperate and ominous text messages from her estranged mother. When she steps across the threshold, the memories of her traumatic life flood her mind and emotions, crippling her with the weight beneath the chaos as she slowly advances through its rooms in search of her mother.The circumstances of Penny's past are heartbreaking, stark, and all too real, especially if the reader experienced a similar situation growing up. Penny was emotionally torn apart repeatedly as her family cycled through her mother's drug use, rehab, premature release, and uneasy reunions, only for her mother to succumb to her addiction over and over again. All the while, Penny is obviously struggling, bullied by fellow students, and leaned on by some school administrators to get her act together and follow the rules and be like everyone else, concepts she's completely ignorant of and ill-equipped to attain on her own. Her grandparents also struggle to help their daughter and try to keep their granddaughter safe as they work through the sluggish government processes and health systems. Time and again, as her mother relapses, Penny is subjected to neglect, abuse, and danger, at the mercy of the rollercoaster of addiction.
I recommend THE HOUSE NO ONE SEES to young adult fiction readers.I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advanced Review Copy through TBR and Beyond Book Tours.
