Home Truths by Susan Lewis

Have you ever felt like the system is rigged against you?

Have you asked for help and been kicked down instead?

Have you ever been made homeless?

After I read Susan Lewis's novel One Minute Later, I felt like I couldn't wait to read another one of her books. Her writing style is very unique - she writes with such warmth and a strong depth of understanding. She picks out societal issues in a very frank way; pulling us into the life stories of some of the most vulnerable people in the world and how badly things have gone wrong for them to end up there. Her books are heart-wrenching in the most endearing way.

Home Truth's Main Plot:

Angie Watts and her family of two young children are introduced to us in an already dire situation, where they are forced to count pennies at the grocery store, to sneak showers from their auntie's house across the road every day and where Angie herself often goes without food in order to make sure her children have eaten properly. It's a situation all parents dread, surely.

Angie once had an older son, a wonderful husband and a landlord that cared about her family almost as if he was family too, but her son became ensnared in drug gangs, one of which killed her husband and her landlord died. Unfortunately the landlord's son is a nasty piece of work and informs Angie that she and her young children are being evicted... Unless she would like to work for him - which we are lead to believe involves sex work.

Rather than this, Angie's sister takes in her children while Angie herself lives on the streets and in her van, sneaking into charity shops at night just to sleep with a roof over her head; she does all of this while keeping up a brave face to her children and sees them to school every day, and she keeps up with her job that supports men who have become homeless and are looking for a second chance.

Angie's teenage daughter looks for ways to earn money in dangerous places, her younger son struggles with the way his life in changing, and Angie battles with a system that sets up the vulnerable and knocks them down every time they get up.

I cried a couple of times while reading this book, I'll be honest. The determination in Angie's character is what I imagine every mother has inside of them. Finding help from friends and co workers is the only way Angie is able to keep (barely) afloat, when the benefits system doesn't give her children (let alone herself) enough to survive.

Let's get into the Pros and Cons!

➕ As soon as I saw the first mention of 'Deerwood Farm' it took me a moment to remember where it came from and I flipped! One Minute Later has a storyline that revolves around Deerwood Farm and although Deerwood isn't really pulled into frame too much in this book, it was awesome to link the two tales. 

➖ Get ready to cry. For real. I cried at many points in this book - it's hard not to when you feel so connected to a character and you can almost empathetically sense their hopelessness in a system that's rigged totally against them.

➕ The perseverance of the characters in the book are nothing short of outstanding. It's what we do as people; we survive. It's incredible to see this endurance put into words.

➖ There is a lot of mention of poverty, eviction, homelessness, sexual assault, drugs, self-harm and suicide, to name a few. It isn't gone into a lot of unnecessary details however if you are triggered by these things I wouldn't recommend this book to you. It's very sad and very real. And more often than not, real life is very messy.

➕ I loved the ending. It may not have been the ending that everyone in the real world gets when they find themselves in this catch twenty-two-type situation, but I loved it. We needed a happy ending at the end of this book after all the heart-breaking hardship leading up to it!

I'm going to give this one a 4/5! ⭐⭐⭐⭐☆

If you want a real-life, heart-tugging book that'll have you falling in love with the family written into it, wishing you could give your own spare room to them, then you should add Susan Lewis' Home Truths to your TBR list!

I hope you enjoyed reading this review, please follow me on social media and drop me a comment if you're going to be ordering this for the weekend ahead!