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A review by jess_reads_books
The Home by Sarah Stovell
5.0
The body of a fifteen-year-old girl has been found in a churchyard on Christmas morning. Hope Lacey didn’t lead an easy life. Growing up in a home where her mother battled drugs, alcohol, and prostitution, Hope’s needs were rarely looked after. Hope ended up living in The Home, an institute for young girls who come from violent and disturbing pasts. The Home is supposed to be a place for these girls to feel safe again, but Hope’s life didn’t follow that path. Someone was seeking revenge, but for what?
THE HOME is my second book by Sarah Stovell and she has yet again blown me away with her ability to write character relationships that captivate and draw me into them. In this story we meet Hope Lacey, a troubled girl who has had nothing positive remaining in her life. She lives in a place called The Home with two other girls around her age, Annie and Lara. Looking for a sense of happiness and purpose in her life, she quickly builds a relationship with Annie and it is Annie who is with Hope the morning her body is discovered. This relationship and discovery set the stage for the story within these pages, as the reader learns about each of the girls, their friendship, their pasts, and their present realities. I was captivated by every single aspect of these main characters and immediately was pulled into their world.
The subject matter within the pages of THE HOME is disturbing, but Stovell writes in a way that also shows the beauty within the darkness. Despite all that the young girls living in The Home have been through, the reader is able to see the light within them. It’s something that for me makes me want to learn every facet of the characters. To know what makes them tick and how they have survived what they have been through. Stovell allows the reader to learn the bulk of this information firsthand, as she alternates the narration between Annie and Hope. There are also portions of the story told by Helen, who runs The Home, which provides the outside opinion the reader needs to see the girls from an alternative perspective.
Stovell has mastered the art of driving a story forward in a thrilling and suspense-filled story. Utilizing short chapters and cliffhanger revelations, Stovell lures the reader into consuming chapter after chapter to find out more information. I never wanted to put this book down. There was constantly something new I needed to know more details about. The joy in this need was that the details I wanted weren’t always about the present day situation, but they were about events from the past or instances at The Home. There was never a part of this story that didn’t matter to me or that I wasn’t fully invested in.
I cannot say enough how brilliant this book was! If you enjoy suspense, thrillers, crime fiction, drama, or just reading in general, you must give this book a try! I promise you that you’re going to love it from the moment you open it until the late hours of the night when you finally finish!
A huge thank you to Orenda books for providing me with a free copy of this book!
THE HOME is my second book by Sarah Stovell and she has yet again blown me away with her ability to write character relationships that captivate and draw me into them. In this story we meet Hope Lacey, a troubled girl who has had nothing positive remaining in her life. She lives in a place called The Home with two other girls around her age, Annie and Lara. Looking for a sense of happiness and purpose in her life, she quickly builds a relationship with Annie and it is Annie who is with Hope the morning her body is discovered. This relationship and discovery set the stage for the story within these pages, as the reader learns about each of the girls, their friendship, their pasts, and their present realities. I was captivated by every single aspect of these main characters and immediately was pulled into their world.
The subject matter within the pages of THE HOME is disturbing, but Stovell writes in a way that also shows the beauty within the darkness. Despite all that the young girls living in The Home have been through, the reader is able to see the light within them. It’s something that for me makes me want to learn every facet of the characters. To know what makes them tick and how they have survived what they have been through. Stovell allows the reader to learn the bulk of this information firsthand, as she alternates the narration between Annie and Hope. There are also portions of the story told by Helen, who runs The Home, which provides the outside opinion the reader needs to see the girls from an alternative perspective.
Stovell has mastered the art of driving a story forward in a thrilling and suspense-filled story. Utilizing short chapters and cliffhanger revelations, Stovell lures the reader into consuming chapter after chapter to find out more information. I never wanted to put this book down. There was constantly something new I needed to know more details about. The joy in this need was that the details I wanted weren’t always about the present day situation, but they were about events from the past or instances at The Home. There was never a part of this story that didn’t matter to me or that I wasn’t fully invested in.
I cannot say enough how brilliant this book was! If you enjoy suspense, thrillers, crime fiction, drama, or just reading in general, you must give this book a try! I promise you that you’re going to love it from the moment you open it until the late hours of the night when you finally finish!
A huge thank you to Orenda books for providing me with a free copy of this book!