I received an electronic ARC from Random House Children's Publishing through NetGalley.
I wanted to like this story more than I did as the premise was solid and the plotline offers a look into the reality for many. However, Onome unfolds the story painfully slowly as readers see the main character, Chinelo, struggling to keep everything as it is and ignore all changes. This applies to her own body changes as well as seeing her neighborhood through realistic eyes. I had a difficult time liking her as a character and grew impatient with her at various points as she refused to acknowledge other people's viewpoints nor listen to their needs and thoughts. The other characters were relatively flat though readers do see more revealed about them as the story develops. Readers will identify with the various teenagers and their choices for themselves as well as the choices forced on them by life. The struggles for this age group can be exacerbated by poverty and Onome captures that aspect well.

Like Home takes a deeply emotional look at gentrification through narrator Nelo's eyes as she watches her beloved neighborhood, Ginger East, shift in obvious and subtle ways. Nelo is lovingly rendered as she fights for what she believes in - and fights to make Ginger East what she believes it can be. Louisa Onome's writing is amazing and captures a huge range of emotion as Nelo navigates relationships with her friends, family, and other adults in her neighborhood. An important book that represents a slice of life not portrayed often enough in fiction.

Interesting premise. Likable/hated characters. Cool plot. I would recommend this story to others. Some spots I found that didn't hold my attention, but overall, I still liked it.

Like Home wasn't really for me, but I can appreciate why others have really enjoyed it. I just couldn't connect with the characters, I'm not sure if that's my age or something else, but I just couldn't get invested in their story as much as I'd hoped. I felt that it was growing increasingly obvious how the window had gotten smashed, and so the big reveal fell really flat for me and somewhat ruined my enjoyment.

I did absolutely love the community and the setting of Ginger East, it felt like it could so easily be home. There were a lot of important themes, in particular how gentrification negatively impacts on existing communities and businesses. But it felt like these aspects were often pushed to the side in favour of the romance/friendship storylines, and that was where I struggled as I personally wasn't as interested in those parts of the story.

This book delves into really important topics for teens regarding gentrification, neighborhood violence, and finding out what really is the essence of home. A very diverse set of characters also made this book one that initially grabbed my attention. However, the plot dragged at times for me and I found the twist to be somewhat predictable. This is geared toward teens and although I am often a YA reader maybe it just didn’t strike me as a generational difference,

Disclaimer: I got this ARC in exchange for an honest review from @NetGalley!

I love the fact that this book talks about friendships and what it feels like to lose a close friend. Chinelo or Nelo is the narrator. Nelo's been through a traumatic life-changing event that caused her to lose two of her best friends. Kate's been the only constant in her life. When their relationship becomes estranged, Nelo's worried that she's losing the only friend she has. This was a heartfelt book and it is perfect for fans of Angie Thomas!

It’s so refreshing to welcome brand new indie authors to the literature town who truly help us to hear more different voices and experience brand new perspectives!

This book is another brilliant, thought provoking story about gentrification and its realistic effects to the community.

Chinelo or as her best friend rephrased: Nelo is the narrator, a young girl who already suffered from traumatic changes in her life when she was 10. After an unexpected incident, she lost two of her best friends because their parents found the place they lived dangerous and they moved away. Now Kate is the only friend she had. But after Kate’s family store also named Ginger Store was vandalized and a new big box spice store’s decision to move to the Ginger East neighborhood, Nelo has to face new radical changes in her life even though she resists with every bond of her body.

The estrangement between she and Kate also makes her think she’s also losing her best friend, too.

The street portraits the author drew and the voice of Nelo hooked me from the beginning but I wish the author chose to tell story from different voices. I’d like to read Kate’s and Nelo’s other friends’ stories and their perspectives as well because only getting stuck in Nelo’s mind , her stubbornness and resilience to the concept of change could be so repetitive, clunky. With more narrations and plural voices we may get better reflections of the real effects of gentrification!

Instead of that issue, the story wrapped up well with great messages and presented us great portraits of Ginger Street!

As a debut novel, this was fresh, provocative, realistic, bold start! I’m looking forward to read more works of the author! Because of that I’m rounding up 3.5 to 4 epic, friendship, resistance to change, I love to read realistic young adult novels stars!

Special thanks to Netgalley and Random House’s Children’s/ Delacorte Press for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

Nelo is sixteen and her life has changed a lot in the last few years. She is really not a fan of change.
She lives in a neighborhood called Ginger East. When she was ten, a violent incident at the local arcade caused a lot of her friends’ families to move away.
It used to be her, Kate, Maree, Rafa and Bo. It’s just her and Kate now.

Kate’s parents own a store called Ginger Store. It’s the go to store in the community. Some things change but Ginger Store has stayed the same. It brings a lot of comfort to Nelo.

Things change abruptly when Ginger Store gets vandalized. Nelo is determined to prove it was someone from outside the community. She’s so scared that Kate’s parents will see the incident as a reason to move to another town.

After what happens at Ginger Store, things keep changing. Nelo and Kate barely talk. Nelo feels that she’s already losing her best friend. Rafa and Bo reconnect with the girls. Even Maree seems like she’s trying to reconnect.

Nelo really struggles with the way people see her neighborhood. She hates how all the adults seem to see it as dangerous. She hates how her friends that moved away say it’s always been bad there. Nelo can’t see it. It hurts her the way others see it.

I liked the characters and found the storyline interesting. At times it felt a bit repetitive. I know Nelo is really resistant to change but why does buying a new bra size seem so upsetting to her? I didn’t understand that part. It felt like one more way of saying, “Nelo doesn’t like change”. I get it. The types of change that really upset Nelo are the ones that make her feel like she’s losing her friends, her home and even her memories of a good childhood.

I got to read an early ebook edition from NetGalley. Thank you.

Nelo is extremely protective and loyal to her neighborhood, Ginger East. After her best friend’s family store is vandalized, outsiders swarm the neighborhood with all kinds of plans to change it. Nelo must come to terms with her relationships and her neighborhood changing.

I really liked the concept of Like Home, and I think books that educate and raise awareness about gentrification are really important. I felt like the message that Onomé was trying to get across about gentrification got a little lost somewhere along the way. With so much focus on how Nelo needed to accept the changes in her life, it came across like we shouldn’t fight against gentrification or that gentrification isn’t really a bad thing and Nelo was just being stubborn.

Along with that, it bothered me that no one ever told Nelo that her feelings were valid. It felt like everyone just kept telling her that she was stubborn and naive and overreacting to everything, but I don’t think it’s naive or stubborn to not want your neighborhood to be gentrified.

I also really didn’t like Kate. She constantly gaslit Nelo and made her feel like she was overreacting when Kate was the one lying to her face, keeping secrets from her and making her feel left out. She never even apologized for everything she had done. It all just came back to Nelo needing to grow up.

I did love the rest of the friend group and I loved their dynamic. Onomé did a great job of capturing how teenagers talk to each other and I think their group texts were the highlight of the book. I wish there was a little more of that friend group dynamic in the book.

I think there was a lot of potential with this book, but it just really didn’t live up to my expectations.

Thanks to netgalley and Delacorte Press for this ARC.

Thank you to Random House Children's/Delacorte Press and Books Forward for the free ARC!

I really loved the concept of the book, both how gentrification affects a teen and her community, as well as the overarching theme of dealing with change. I think it's important that more stories like this are told, from the POV of someone living there, not just how the news wants to paint it.

In this instance, I wish we would have been able to see into the heads of Nelo's friends as well. I think it would have been really insightful and made for a richer story if we also had Kate's point of view, and even one of the friends who moved away. Nelo, like any teen, gets hyper-focused on her thoughts and feelings which reads a little flat overall.

All in all I think this is a great read for teens just starting to learn about bigger issues in the world that may not necessarily experience themselves.

This book truly has so much heart! It really gets to the core of how much your childhood home and friends can be a reflection of who you are, and how you deal with those things changing when you’re not ready for them to be different. Also, I loved these characters and their interactions. I was legit cackling over some conversations. And the friendships were so fantastic and authentic.

Louisa Onomé had me feeling all the feels in LIKE HOME. Following the aftermath of Nelo's best friend's family's store getting vandalized, Onomé explores gentrification and the way people outside Nelo's neighborhood try to "help" without asking the people who actually live in the community what is really needed. Meanwhile, Nelo deals with changes in herself and her friends happening at the same time, and her journey adapting to that change and standing up for her neighborhood is one that's going to stick with me for a long time.

Thanks to Harper Collins (via NetGalley) for the ARC!

LIKE HOME follows Chinelo (aka Nelo) as she deals with changes in her neighborhood. Her best friend’s store, Ginger Store, is vandalized, and a new big box spice store is moving into Ginger East neighborhood. Nelo is reluctant to see that things are changing, and wants the neighborhood she grew up in to stay the same as it’s been her whole life. It takes her a while to realize, but Ginger East has been slowly changing before Nelo’s eyes, so she has to come to terms with the fact that her neighborhood is slowly being gentrified, and that Ginger Store is next in a long line of losses.

I really liked the concept of this story. Nelo has to deal with changes in her neighborhood, a place that she’s loved her whole life. She’s reluctant at first to realize that things have been changing for years now, and that she maybe hasn’t noticed how much things have changed, but there were things about her character that just felt a little off to me. It takes several characters--adults, friends who have moved to different neighborhoods, etc.--telling Nelo that things are changing for her to realize it. Even then, she flat out denies that things are different. Several times. She just refuses to accept things are changing, and I understand that’s part of her character arc, but the way it’s handled is a little clumsy. She is so naive and stubborn to the point where it’s almost not believable that a person wouldn’t notice a new store in their own neighborhood. She’s so adamant that things stay the same and blind to the changes that have occurred, that it seems almost unbelievable.

Another thing that bugged me was that the writing was a little clunky in places, especially regarding dialogue and descriptors. I felt like I read the same exact conversations multiple times, which had me going back to check if I was inadvertently rereading sections. And a lot of the times I felt like the descriptions of what characters were doing with their facial expressions or their tone of voice didn’t match what they were saying. Again, it was just a little clunky, which made the story flow a little less in my opinion. I’m hoping this is just because it’s a debut novel, and that Onomé’s writing will improve. Because, again, I did really like the story! There was definite character growth with Nelo from the beginning to the end of the book, and she goes on a journey, learning more about herself and the world she lives in. And the story itself is timely as well. LIKE HOME shows the importance of being connected to your community, and also gives personality, attention, and importance to a type of community that is often overlooked in the media.

I look forward to what Onomé writes next because I haven’t read many (if any at all) YA books set in Canada, so I really enjoyed that setting. She has a unique voice, wrote a timely and relatable story, and came up with a lot of fun characters in this book, so I'm am eager to see what she does next.

Unfortunately, this book wasn't for me. I had an extremely hard time getting into the plot and invested in the characters. The writing was thoughtful and concise, but unfortunately, my lack of interest in the actual content overshadowed my admiration for the prose. I would pick up another book by this author if the plot was one I was more interested in.

Nelo is happy the way things are.

Then things aren't that way anymore, and she is angry. She is angry that her best friend, Kate's, family story is vandalized. She is upset that people have moved away that were her friends, and she is upset that new stores are moving in to gentrify the neighborhood of Ginger East. She doesn't want any of these things to happen, but they do.

The problem that I have with this book, other than it moves at a snails pace, and has a subplot about young love that drags it out even further, is the Nelo doesn't really grow in the end. She doesn't change. The neighborhood still changes, and she is stuck.

I had so much trouble pushing myself through this because I didn't care about anyone. Hard to read a book where you dont' care what happens to the main characters.

Thanks to NetGalley for making this book available for an honest review.

This sort of felt like Baby's First "The Hate U Give". Nelo was a bit annoying, and the "twist" was pretty obvious. This one wasn't for me, and that is OK.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read this in exchange for an honest opinion.

This was an incredibly realistic young adult novel about community and gentrification. The dialogue was extremely well-done, though I did feel very uncool while reading it because I had to Google a few of the slang terms. Oh, youths! I did not always love the main character and felt at times she was a bad friend...but weren’t we all at some point as teenagers? Made it all the more realistic. A solid and important read.

Nelo has grown up in the neighborhood of Ginger East her whole life. It IS her whole life. And the sense of community she feels is so strong. But, when her best friend Kate’s parents’ store is vandalized, a crack forms in her world. Suddenly, Kate is distant and Nelo is on the news and nothing is the same. All Nelo wants is for people to look at her neighborhood and not see violence and hate, but to see the beauty of community like she does. Now, with a big chain store opening up, she helps her neighbors organize a silent protest to demonstrate how her community can bond together and make a difference.

The truly bone deep friendship between Nelo and Kate was so powerful. I had this growing up. The back and forth almost shorthand kind of speaking you have when you truly know a friend and are so comfortable. I felt that! And I felt the despair and desperation Nelo felt when she could see that friendship slipping away.

I loved how intense of a character Nelo was and how deeply she felt things. She was a fierce force of nature that would stop at absolutely nothing to find out who vandalized this cornerstone establishment of her neighborhood and her childhood. But at the same time, she was dealing with so many other things flying at her like growing up and school; old friends and acquaintances coming back into her life; her changing body; boyyyyyyys... She has so much going on.

I truly was transcended while reading this. And will eagerly read whatever Louisa Onomé writes next!!

Like Home is very much a story about change. Whether it be the changing relationships with our best friends or the gentrification of our neighborhood. Sometimes we can become too preoccupied with what we know, that we don't seem to accept the changes in front of us. Nelo is an endearing main character. She feels the ache of the people who leave us behind. The hurt that remains. At the same time, Nelo sometimes sees things only in terms of right and wrong, and all in her own eyes.

And that felt incredibly relatable to me. The ways we can become too immersed in our perspectives, we fail to see the ones of those we love. That they too can change. Onomé shows readers the complexity. The elitism, the privilege, and racism. No one can escape change. The question becomes how to make change happen, to influence it, to shape our future.

The voice in this was soooooo strong it carried me through, especially as I'm not usually a contemporary reader. I really liked Nelo, and she felt very real, and like a real teenager, not something an adult writer thought a teenager is. The book is rooted firmly in Nelo's neighborhood, and it was refreshing to see how much she cared for where she lived.

But my favorite part was her friendship with Kate. It's so rare to see how friendships can have problems in YA, and even rarer for them to have problems and still be friends at the end. I loved how Nelo was a bit dramatic and petty, but that she was feeling replaced by her best friend's boyfriend. I don't know that I've read that before in YA even though it happens to so many teens. It certainly did to me right around when I was Nelo's age.

The writing was basically flawless. There wasn't any part that felt awkward or unnecessary.

Hand this to fans of Angie Thomas, Elizabeth Acevedo, and anyone who loves a character driven contemporary with a strong voice.