The Smell of Other People's Houses

This book has such a strange title that it immediately intrigued me as a reader, then I saw some reviews from Booktube that said it was a good read so when I saw it as a new release in my local library I decided I definitely would give it a try. It was a short, quick read but a satisfying one for me this month.

Set in Alaska in the 1970's it's the story of 4 different teens whose lives collide due to the cultures and limitations of their world. Ruth lives with her strict Catholic gran and her little sister Lilly. Her mother left them years before after her father died in a plane crash and now she longs for a way to exert her independence but finds it difficult in her small town with a grandmother who believes in living a humble and quiet life. From nearby we have Dora, the child of the towns violent criminal drunk she has left her family home and moved in with her friend Dumpling and her parents. She just longs for a home she feels safe in and a promise she won't have to go home again to her violent family.

Alongside these two stories we also have Alyce, a talented dancer who has been offered the chance to audition for college scholarships in dance but she doesn't know how to tell her fisherman father that she cannot help him during the fishing season because she thinks he won't manage alone. Finally, we have Hank and his two brothers who are trying to run away from their mother and her new boyfriend to begin a life of their own. They just want to be together.

Told from the perspectives of each teen this book was both heartwarming and heartbreaking in equal measure. It really highlights the isolation of living somewhere like Alaska where there are huge disparities between those who have and those who do not. There is a blending of many cultures and traditions which lead to different pockets of community and ways of life but I loved learning about how they all blend and how the young people come together to support one another no matter which they belong to.

In this short book, we cover the span of a year in the community and the way in which the lives of all 4 lead characters change forever as they each seek a future that will take them outside the small world they have become used to and bring them together in a way they could never have expected.

A 3 star read for me with this one, it may have been short but it was very impactful but I felt I could have done with more to flesh out parts of the story and another hundred or so pages might have allowed this.

This was an extremely fast read for me, and I really enjoyed it. It's a book about people who have private business that they think (or are told) they should keep private, and how those secrets affect their lives. It's not going to change my life or anything, but I really liked it and had a great time while reading it. Of course, it had some issues that you would expect from a debut novel, like the somewhat rushed ending, overly cheesy dialogue between Ruth and Hank, etc. It easily needed another 25 pages in the Fall/Winter sections.

But honestly it was an excellent debut as far as writing style goes, which I really liked. I particularly appreciated the no-fuss time jumps that let us skip to important parts of the year without slogging through every day in between. There are multiple perspectives, and I kept track of them pretty easily. There was a list of characters in the front of the book that I only had to refer to twice. Overall, I thought it was a really heartwarming and sweet story. I think it would be an easy book to recommend to a wide audience that most people would like.

The ending was a little eye-rolly, but I chalked it up to it being a debut. I also think the small Alaska town vibe made me less annoyed by how it all came together. It was a feel-good movie ending, and honestly I was totally fine with it. It was cute, and sometimes you just need a cute ending.