The Library of Lost Things by Laura Taylor Namey

The Quick Cut: A teen girl with a love for happy endings struggles to find her own with a mother who struggles with hoarding. A Real Review: Readers are known for having a love for happy endings and imagined worlds. However, some prefer the escape of a good book so they can escape the difficulty of their own lives. For Darcy, this is very much a reality. Darcy works at the Yellow Feather bookstore and loves to read. She prefers a great ending to her own life, that seems to be lacking happy circumstances. She's recently turned eighteen and has lost the money she used to get from her grandmother. With a mom who has problems with hoarding, this means that making ends meet is a serious problem. Will she find a way to help her mom get past her issues? Or she using it to avoid the problems in her own life? This book has all the elements that I enjoy, so theoretically it should have been a total win of a read. Instead, I finally finished it after days of reading sluggishly and feel torn instead. While I should have loved this story, I didn't connect with it at all. The best stories make you feel like the characters and world are real - this one felt far too fictional. Darcy has a lot on her plate, far more than any normal eighteen year old. She's also dealing with some serious adult issues that put her needs in combat with her mom's. As much as I wanted to relate to her, she feels almost too cliche. She loves reading, supports her family, and still finds time for herself. She deals with her struggles far better than anyone I know at her age, in a way that feel unrealistic. The one thing I did enjoy about this book was it's portrayal of hoarding. It's a serious mental condition and in many cases doesn't get seen as one. When life gets difficult, it is often used as a coping mechanism. It affects not only the hoarder, but their family too and it's effect can ruin relationships. This story captured that reality well. A contemporary story that misses the mark. My rating: 3 out of 5