THE HOUSE NO ONE SEES Book Review

The House No One Sees¹ by Adina King, eBook, 294 pages

Synopsis from GoodReads: Penelope Ross has always felt like a passenger in her mother’s fairytale - until the night of her 17th birthday, when she is forced to enter her own. After a text from her estranged mother rips her away from a night with friends, Penny is forced into a kaleidoscope of memories locked inside the dark labyrinth of her childhood home. As Penny wanders between present and past—prose and verse—she must confront her mother's opioid addiction to mend her fractured past. But the house is tricky. The house is impossible. It wants her to dig up the dead to escape. And as Penny walks through herself to find herself, she is not sure she has the courage to free the light she trapped inside.

BOOK REVIEW: This one is another one that I had a hard time finding a rhythm for. Penny switches between tell her story as a narrative in the present to basically using poetry to give us the back story of how she got to where she is now. That's fine. It was some of the narrative that would trip me up sometimes. Her text messages from her mom came in italics but then so did something else. It took me entirely too long to figure out the other set of italics and I won't spoil it for you.

My favorite quote I will include. This came from Penny's grandfather.

And Grandpa said, "A weed is just a flower someone left alone to grow."

I feel like just recently I heard something similar to this said or mentioned somewhere and I absolutely love it. I definitely need that on a mug or something!

My overall feeling kept wanting to give it lower than 4 stars for most of the reading but it was only because some of the narrative wasn't making sense and then the flipping back and forth between narrative and poetry was throwing me off quite a bit. Overall the story is a sad one that I'm grateful I never had to experience first hand but I know of too many who have. The way she works through her grief with her mother's addiction gives hope and that's why I went with a 4 star rating. I'm intrigued enough by this author's book that I will definitely keep an eye out for more by this author.

4/5 Stars

2025 Reading Challenge: 28/50 complete

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