This Is Home

By: Lisa Duffy

Narrated by: Renata Friedman, Emily Woo Zeller

From the author of book club favorite The Salt House comes a deeply affecting novel about a teenage girl finding her voice and the military wife who moves in downstairs, united in their search for the true meaning of home.

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.

With gorgeous prose and a cast of characters that feel wholly real and lovably flawed, This Is Home is a nuanced and moving novel of finding where we belong.

Critic reviews

"Narrators Renata Friedman and Emily Woo Zeller provide their vocal talents to a new audiobook that explores the boundaries of what home can be. Friedman strikes the perfect balance of frustration and inquisitiveness in her portrayal of Libby Winters--a 16-year-old who has lost her mother to cancer and finds herself moving back and forth between her quirky aunts and her father. Zeller skillfully captures Quinn Ellis, a young wife with twins and a husband with PTSD who seems to have simply disappeared. The voices of Friedman and Zeller are comforting even as the audiobook deals with difficult subjects like PTSD and the loss of a family member to cancer."

Good

I enjoyed listening to two people reading the parts of the two main characters. It was a good story.

Flat

I think the author was trying to bring attention to the issues of PTSD and alcohol/drug abuse, but the story was a lot of telling rather than showing the effects of these social problems. The characters weren't very well developed, and the plot was pretty predictable.