Review: This is Home by Lisa Duffy

This is Home

by Lisa Duffy

Publisher: Atria Books

Pages: 304

Format: eARC

Buy the Book: Amazon

Goodreads:  Sixteen-year-old Libby Winters lives in Paradise, a seaside town north of Boston that rarely lives up to its name. After the death of her mother, she lives with her father, Bent, in the middle apartment of their triple decker home—Bent’s two sisters, Lucy and Desiree, live on the top floor. A former soldier turned policeman, Bent often works nights, leaving Libby under her aunts’ care. Shuffling back and forth between apartments—and the wildly different natures of her family—has Libby wishing for nothing more than a home of her very own.

Quinn Ellis is at a crossroads. When her husband John, who has served two tours in Iraq, goes missing back at home, suffering from PTSD he refuses to address, Quinn finds herself living in the first-floor apartment of the Winters house. Bent had served as her husband’s former platoon leader, a man John refers to as his brother, and despite Bent’s efforts to make her feel welcome, Quinn has yet to unpack a single box.

For Libby, the new tenant downstairs is an unwelcome guest, another body filling up her already crowded house. But soon enough, an unlikely friendship begins to blossom, when Libby and Quinn stretch and redefine their definition of family and home.

Kritters Thoughts:  Libby Winters and Quinn Ellis take turns narrating this book and between the two of them you get a full picture of how a family reacts to their loved ones returning from contemporary war.  Libby Winters lives with her father and he returned from war with physical and mental scars, he became a police officer and is living a mostly normal life.  Quinn Ellis' has been abandoned by her husband who returned from war with major mental scars and may never heal from what he saw abroad.  

I enjoyed reading about the real impacts that people feel from going to war and how it not only affects them but also affects their families and friends.  War is no joke and what they see, feel and experience lives within them forever.  This book really hits home on how different people react different ways to what happens to them while at war.  Not to spoil, but the puppy dog story that Quinn finds out about just really made me stop and think about everything.  

This was both a hard book to read but also necessary.  If you have an inkling of wonderment of how people are affected by war then pick this up.  If PTSD is a trigger warning for you, then I would possibly avoid this one.  It was well written and put together quite nicely.  


Rating: definitely a good read, but can't read two in a row

Ebook 2019 Challenge: 23 out of 100

Disclosure of Material Connection:  I received one copy of this book free of charge from Atria Books.  I was not required to write a positive review in exchange for receipt of the book; rather, the opinions expressed in this review are my own.