Available here (paperback 2023)

I selected this book, through the library’s audiobook selection, on a bit of a whim. It sounded like it had potential but it was blatant that it could tip too far and just become a terrible collection of emotions poorly researched.

Focussed on four sisters all sharing trauma from their childhood and it presenting itself in different ways as they try to navigate various steps in their adulthood. One sister falling pregnant from a one night stand and heading off to face the world alone, another having their engagement fall apart from an affair, another engagement collapsing from a lack of love and one nearly losing their job, flat and partner because of chasing after protecting all the others.

All this whilst their parents, who were already hardly present in their lives increasing the traumas of all of them, decide to give the family home to the four as they officially went to move to France instead of just being there for half the year. But with all the chaos going on in their own lives them trying to come to an agreement about whether to sell, rent or keep the house for their own uses was a proven challenge.

Much like all the chaos of the events unfolding in the story the pace of the events and speed of them being presented seems to increase too. At moments it becomes a little bit too much and jumbled up but when you get nearer the end of the story it all falls into place and the speed of everything turns out to be perfectly calculated by Amy Lavelle.

By the end of the story the sisters all come back together and they work through the issues that they found themselves gaining together to have what seems like a happy set of lives. A happy ending partly feels a little bit of a let down and very much just a generic way to do a speedy ending. Despite all this it didn’t completely take away from the story and a wind down of the drama that we had ploughed through for numerous hours and I could appreciate Amy’s way of taking what might feel initially as an easy way out.

Home Sweet Home is Amy Lavelle’s second book and it has me curious to read the first one, Definitely Fine, to see how that stands up compared to this one or if there has been some writing style development. Seeing the plot of Definitely Fine and Home Sweet Home combined it is very clear that Amy has a focus for her works of home, finding a place in the world and of finding yourself through struggle.