The Smell of Other People's Houses

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.