Lucy has never had many close friends. It hasn’t always been by choice but it has been out of necessity. She would love to have sleep-overs at her house but her mother’s “hobby” makes that impossible. Lucy finds herself making excuses to her best friend Kaylie so that she won’t want to come into her house. They always stay at Kaylie’s house and hang out there. Lucy is good at keeping people at a distance and deflecting any questions that come up about her family. She knows her older brother and sister got through it, and were finally on their own but Lucy wonders how she’s going to get through the next two years. She wants a boyfriend and to have friends over but how can she do that when all of her mother’s stuff is piled to the ceiling?

Her mother does not see her collection of things as hoarding. These are all things that she may need some day. There may be something in the newspaper from three years ago that she will need to look at. It is so bad that their kitchen is unusable and there is no hot water in the house. Lucy feels alone since she cannot tell anyone out of fear of humiliation but it’s getting to the point that she cannot handle it anymore. When she comes home one morning from Kaylie’s she cannot believe what she finds amid her mother’s piles of stuff. She knows that she needs to keep it together or her family’s secret will get out and she will be talked about as Garbage Girl for the rest of her life.

Omololu does a masterful job describing the actual living conditions for Lucy. It is heartbreaking to see the lengths that Lucy is willing to go to keep her mother’s secret. Even when Lucy is doing things that the reader cannot even imagine doing, you can’t help but find yourself rooting for her to succeed even though this is a no-win situation for Lucy. She is so completely on her own in this that you wonder how she gets up every day. The fact that she has kept this a secret for so long is staggering once you think about all the ways the secret could get out.

Lucy’s fear of humiliation is what stands out the most in the story. Her longing to be a normal teen has to be put aside in order to maintain the secret. Even when the boy she has a crush on shows interest, her first thought is that he can never find out. She is so used to diverting people from her life it is second nature to her and it is sad to read. Things that most people take for granted are not available to Lucy such as water and heat. Omololu has written a thought-provoking book that will make people realize that you never really know what goes on behind closed doors.

© 2012 Amy Ridley

Amy Ridley received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Boston University