Dirty Little Secrets

"Local history would remember us as that garbage-hoarding freak family on Collier Avenue, or as the nice oncology nurse with the lovely children.
It was up to me to decide which one was our truth."

This was a sad and moving story. There are few books about hoarding - from either the perspective of the family or the person suffering from the mental struggle of it. Lucy is the youngest of three - and she's the last kid counting her days until she can get out of the house from the garbage, the clothes, the newspapers and mold. But one morning she wakes to try to find her mom only to find her life has completely taken a turn. She has some hard decisions to make - ones that aren't necessarily right or wrong, just the only ones she sees at the show more time.

I'm glad this is short as it's a very emotional read. I can't even imagine being 16 and having such a tough decision and secret to keep. The emotional struggle with the mental illness her mother has and the blame, the door removal and the anger - it was all just so deeply horrible. I'm so glad I read this. Great addition to the YA genre. show less

Compulsive hoarding is a disease I both understand and fear; while I have no desire to keep all of our garbage, for example, I can sympathize with the panic and anxiety that inspires one to keep "x" because it might be needed one day, or the similar fear of forgetting that leads people to collect things like receipts. Thankfully, my own compulsive disorder drives me to streamline and organize as much as possible (I guess you could say I hoard electronically, since I scan all paperwork/children artwork/photos/etc instead of keeping it in hardcopy), but in the absence of that kind of drive people with similar anxieties just tend to ... keep. Unfortunately, it seems in many cases that one's hoarding doesn't just impact the hoarder's life, show more but it has a detrimental effect on those around them - most tragically their children.

I picked up Dirty Little Secrets because of my own interest in the show "Hoarders," which attempts to help hoarders recognize their anxieties and problems. Omolou's book focuses on the real victim of this kind of household - the child of a hoarder. The protagonist has fought with her mother's hoard for her entire life, and suffers great emotional and psychological problems because of it. I found the narrative to be both compelling and realistic (from my own perspective, mind), and I could feel my own anxiety and OCD rising just reading about her living conditions. And I have to admit - I found the conclusion to be a relief. show less

From the outside, Lucy's life looks pretty normal. She's a junior; she babysits the neighborhood kids; she spends a lot of time at her best friend's house; she has a crush on a guy who plays in a band. What Lucy knows, and tries to hide, is a lot less normal. She could never date Josh Lee, his hotness unattainable; she loves her best friend, but she also stays at her house so much because it has a working shower; she needs to make and hide her own money, because her mom never has any money left after buying all her "collectibles." And the worst truth of all, Lucy has two years left before she can move out and start a new life away from her mother's hoarding.

When Lucy's mother dies under a stack of National Geographic's that she was show more saving "to go through later," Lucy, rather than being sad, sees a chance at salvation, but is she a horrible person if she takes it?

It is so easy to say, "If I found my mother, dead, I would call an ambulance." Clearly, right? Opening all the windows to let in the winter air and postpone decomp is not everyone's immediate response. It's not Lucy's either. She almost dials 9-1-1. When she doesn't, it's really easy to be shocked at Lucy's callousness towards her mother. What Omololu does marvelously is to take us from this extreme opening moment and then work backwards to slowly introduce us to Lucy's life. She makes Lucy's decision make sense.

Because this story, most of which spans 21 very tense hours, is told by Lucy, things that she takes for granted, like the lack of hot water or heat in her house are treated as blasé. She is nervous, beyond belief scared, that people will find out about her home life; she knows it's not normal. At the same time, it is normal for her and treated as such. Her interactions with her surroundings, as well as with her older siblings, one of whom has hoarding tendencies herself and the other who resents their mother for the breakdown of the family, reflect that. It is the honest of Lucy's reactions and reality that make this such an engaging book.

From the beginning you'll want Lucy to have a chance at a normal life, and by the end I think you'll agree with the lengths that she must go to in order to get one.

Book source: Philly Free Library show less

Everyone has a secret, but teenager Lucy's secret is much bigger than most: Her mom is a hoarder, and their house is full of piles and piles of garbage. She's afraid that her friends will find out and shun her, so instead of inviting them over, she does everything in her power to keep people away from the house. But when Lucy returns home one day and discovers something terrible has happened, she starts down a path from which there is no return, even as she desperately tries to save her family and keep their secret.

The book's subject matter is like a train wreck you can't look away from -- that's not to say the book is bad! Rather, the topic of hoarding is both deeply disturbing and fascinating, and as a result, I found myself both show more uncomfortable and compelled while reading this novel. I didn't necessarily like all of it, but I think that's because my disgust at the description of the family's living conditions make me feel revolted and ill at times. To that end, I think the author did an excellent job portraying the situation of a hoarder's child and what a family has to go through when living with a hoarder.

The only thing that really bothered me was the ending. I can't say I would have made the same choice as the main character, but at the same time, I really couldn't think of another way out of the situation. I'm still thinking about it and wondering if there was any other way to resolve things, which upon reflection, means the author definitely did her job. I'd love to discuss the book with someone else who has read it, and see what they thought about the ending. This is definitely a discussion piece for both children, teens, and adults. show less

After reading the plot summary of DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS, I was both horrified and intensely curious. I couldn't imagine how Omololu could make such an extreme situation work. In fact, I worried throughout the entire novel about how it would all be resolved, but I honestly cannot think of a better or more satisfying conclusion than the one Omololu wrote.

Omololu picked an extreme situation as the focus for a novel, not to mention for a debut novel. I've never read anything about the subject of hoarding, but I've always had a sort of fascination with it. I think that Omololu's portrayal of hoarders, and living with hoarders, was written in a way that I could imagine how such a situation like the one in the book could develop. It seems show more almost too crazy to be possible, but when one considers that hoarders have a psychological compulsion to do so, it is a lot easer to imagine.

I'm so glad that Omololu wrote a YA novel. Not only does DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS expose teen readers to the subject of hoarding, a largely undiscussed topic, having a younger narrator really made the story come to life. Lucy's age brought SECRETS to a whole new level. She knows that her mother has a compulsion to hoard, that she really can't control her hoarding, yet her youth impedes her ability to get help for her parent and pushes her towards hatred towards her mother and bitterness. If Lucy had been older, SECRETS would have been a completely different story - a story that I think I would have found lacking.

Omololu has the amazing ability to make me actually feel Lucy's emotions. I think I had such anxiety about how the story would end because it would have had such a dramatic impact on Lucy, and I so wanted her to be free of her mother's madness. So many novels just end with a wrap up; the action is, understandably, the climax. SECRETS, however, kept me guessing and on an emotional high all the way to the last page! show less

This book took me a little while to get into as I could not initially relate to the idea of hoarding rubbish, but as the story line unfolded I really could feel what Lucy was experiencing, shame. This book will appeal to those children who were ashamed of the goings on in their house when they were growing up. Children living amidst the shambles, who were frightened, bullied, teased, pitied or even regarded as tainted by the community. If you were one of those and couldn't wait to get the hell out of it, then you'll totally relate to this story, the desperation Lucy felt and they way she dealt with it.

It’s a small miracle that I was able to finish this book, not because it wasn’t good but because I would look around my house and see a stack of paper and think, “I need to clean that up, NOW!” Despite my urge to do a thorough cleaning of the house (and believe me when I say that urge is a rare one), my desire to finish Lucy’s story won.
What I liked about the structure of the book was that, though the events of the book only cover a small period of time, Lucy’s flashbacks told the backstory in a way that didn’t seem choppy or out of place. Every story has a connection to what she’s dealing with in the present. It is through these flashbacks that I came to understand exactly what Lucy endured in the house with her mom. As show more she is forced to deal with the problem at hand, I felt the isolation and desperation right along with her. There were points in the story when I thought, “Oh, she is so screwed. There’s no way she can get out of this. How will this ever be resolved?” Then, at the same moment as Lucy, I figured out the answer to her problem. I always like books that don’t show me the solution long before the main character figures it out.
Lucy’s friendship with Kaylie wasn’t a cliché book friendship. Although Lucy shut Kaylie out of so much of her life, Kaylie didn’t back down. But, at the same time, she wasn’t forceful when it came to getting Lucy to share her life with her. Instead, Kaylie pushed just enough to be helpful and show her concern. And then there is Josh. He is so much more than a cute Johnny Depp-esque boy; he is her hope for the future. (I totally don’t mean that in a damsel in distress/knight in shining armor thing.) The idea of him, of being able to be with anyone without hiding this secret part of her life, is the greatest motivating factor for Lucy to make a change. But, the cute Johnny Depp-esque stuff doesn’t hurt; in fact, it plays well.
One note: when I finished this book, I felt a sense of relief (not that I finished the book, but for the way the story ends). As time passed, though, I started to realize that Lucy’s story could go in so many directions, not just the one I assigned to it as I shut the book. Some people may not like that ambiguity, but I’m starting to find that those are probably my favorite kind of endings. show less