Housebreaking takes place in the 1990s and is the incredible story of a twenty something woman, Del, who has lost so much in life and in an act of defiance against her estranged uncle and cousins, dismantles her parents’ home piece by piece and schleps the pieces across a frozen lake in the middle of the winter. This book was difficult to read as Del engaged in so much self sabotaging behavior but at the same time, I was riveted and heartbroken for her given everything she had been through. Del’s story of resilience and perseverance also is a very raw look at bigotry, hatred and homophobia. The AIDS crisis is front and center and the pain and grief so many suffered. While I was so frustrated with Del and the decisions she was making (and I really wanted her to shower), I embraced watching her grow as a person and a friend and I absolutely loved her support network who she reluctantly let into her life. This book goes down as totally unique and intriguing. It came out this week!

feud can make one do some pretty unique things. In this book Del makes a stand against her uncle. He wants the one thing she has, the family home that was left to her.
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Del has no resources of her own and decides tear the house apart and move it across a freezing pond piece by piece. She finds she must break piece by piece to put herself back together.
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Huge thank you to @berkleyromance @berkleypub @letstalkbookspromo @berittalksbooks for an advanced copy.

This was quite an interesting tale and while it seems bizarre on the surface, if you dive down and read between the lines, you might find that this book is about so much more.

Del (short of Adela) is 24 and hasn't done much with her life and doesn't seem to care too much that she is floundering along. She lives with a friend of her dad's, Tym, who has given her a safe place to live. Until he doesn't and decides that he wants to live with his latest beau. So Del is out on the street but what timing because her cousin Greg has shown up in town telling her that they want to buy the house she inherited from her mother so they can develop the area. With nothing better to do, she sets off for this small town to see what the family (that she despises) has got in mind. You can tell by how smarmy her Uncle Chuck appears that it will not be in her favor. A deal is struck and Del has about 4 months to move the home she grew up in to another location that she agreed to with her Uncle.

This is where the book got weird (for me anyway). She decides to take the house apart brick by brick (or board by board in this case) and move it to the land she took as part of the deal. So we see her toiling over this house, removing the walls, ceilings, plumbing fixtures, furniture, and everything else to this small plot of land and laying it on tarps. Perhaps dismantling the house was a way she could deal with the destruction of her life with her mother's accident and death years before, acceptance of her father's lifestyle before his death, and struggling to discover herself. Or perhaps she was an odd duck and decided to stick it to her uncle and make her new "home" an eyesore for the people that will eventually own homes surrounding it.

I wondered if Del might have some psychological issues of her own that were never discovered because she seemed to self-sabotage herself with jobs, friends, and more. When she moves back to this town, the house has very few utilities. There is no electricity and heat comes from a coal stove. There is running water from a well but she doesn't seem to take advantage of it much since she rarely bathes or showers. She is a loner but manages to befriend a few people in the town including the waitress at the local diner where she eats from time to time. But despite her attitude, she manages to have a few people willing to help her in her endeavors with the house.

I enjoyed the last couple of chapters and found that Del might have learned something about herself and those around her. I don't think it changed her much, but perhaps she found a new self-worth...or maybe not. Only time will tell for her.

We give this book 3 paws up.

This was an interesting book and I’m not sure if I’ve read one quite like it before! That was a good thing in some ways and a not so good thing in other ways.

It’s a story of returning to your hometown (and not in a fun, nostalgic kind of way) and battling the ghosts from your past while you’re there. Del has to return home because her uncle wants the family home that she inherited. But instead, she decides to take it all apart and move it off the land.

I struggled a lot with the characters and I think that took a lot away from my experience. Del was a miserable person and I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I love a good villain, but I don’t think that was the intent with this book. She just seemed very cruel…actually, a lot of the characters seemed quite heartless.

I did love seeing Del push through so many obstacles in order to achieve her goal with the house. I also liked seeing the friendships that bloomed the longer that she was in town.

This novel was definitely unique and there was a lot to the story, but I base a lot off of characters so maybe it just wasn’t quite right for me. I encourage you to still check it out because I can definitely see it being a huge hit with a lot of people!

Thank you to Netgalley and Berkley Publishing Group for my digital copy. I have posted my review on Goodreads and on my Bookstagram (link included).

This was a beautifully written and captivating novel. Hubbard gave us scandal, divorce, family issues, and loss.
I have to be honest and say the information about disassembling a home was a bit annoying after a bit BUT I stuck with it and it paid off. I really enjoyed this portrayal of such a strong woman doing her thing.

This was a tough one, I really didn’t ever care much for the main character and the repetition of her tearing the house apart wasn’t entertaining. Yet it had some interesting characters even if there wasn’t really a back story with them. I was a bit dissappointed.

Short synopsis: 24 year old Del inherits her childhood home in a small New England town. In effort to thwart her Uncle’s construction plans for a new home development, Del decides to dismantle the home ‘brick by brick’ and take the pieces across a pond to her new plot of land

My thoughts: This one started off really great and entertaining, but quickly plummeted about 1/3 of the way in. Reading about disassembling a home just got a little monotonous in my opinion. I did like Del and her drive to prove a point and find something to be successful at, and how people were drawn to her. She’s a good example of a strong woman!

Read this if you’re a sucker for:
* DIY projects
* Strong underdog woman with a penance to prove a point
* Family drama

This is a Family Drama Women's Fiction. I like the characters in this book. My biggest problem with this book is I did not understand the house thing, and I kept asking myself why and what was the point of doing it. The book was interesting read, but it really did not make sense. The storyline in this book just was weird, and what the characters do was confusing. This book wins the weirdness and pointless books I have read award, but it kept me reading it. I was kindly provided an e-copy of this book by the publisher (Berkley Books) or author (Colleen Hubbard) via NetGalley, so I can give an honest review about how I feel about this book. I want to send a big Thank you to them for that.

I started reading this debut novel by Colleen Hubbard late last night and before I knew it I was sucked in and picked it up first thing this morning.

I love a heavy family drama, I mean the heavier the better and this seems like it’s heading that way. It seems like it’s almost therapeutic as Dell, who is a bit stubborn and rude to say the least, dismantles her mom’s house to sell the land in some sort of agreement with an estranged family member.

The only thing I can think to say about this one is "Meh". It seemed like a whole lot of nothing happened. And Del, the main character GOT ON MY NERVES. She was one of those "oh I'm so bad off but I won't do anything about it just to spite you" types of people and in reality the only person she was spiting was herself. I don't know that I would recommend this one, because honestly it was boring.

Del is a young woman who hasn't had many breaks in life and doesn't expect much. Both of her parents passed away when she was a young age and she's been working here and there to make ends meet. When she finds out her uncle wants to buy and tear down the house she lived in with her parents and they lived in with their parents before she decided she'll sell the property to him but move the house to a small area of marsh lands. She decides this because she feels like she can't give in to his greed and uncaring. She sets about doing this job all alone and learns a lot about herself while doing it. This is a quirky coming of age story about a girl who is not like all the rest, does her own thing and doesn't expect much in return. This book was a quick read and I really enjoyed following Del's story!

Del has had a difficult childhood and even life as an adult, hasn’t been easy. She doesn’t feel like she belongs anywhere, especially when a family scandal leads her mothers family to disown them. Del’s uncle Chuck is still jealous that despite the inheritance he got, Del’s mother was left the family home. When Del’s parents have both passed on and her roommate is ready for her to move out, the only option she has left is to move in the family home. Chuck is operating to her coming back to town so he can buy the house from her so he can clear the land to make way for his latest housing development. He gives her a tiny piece of land with his offer, and Del decides to turn down his deal and dismantle the house by herself, by hand and pile up all the pieces on the piece of land he gave her just to show him he can’t get everything he wants, and he sure didn’t expect her to be able to rebuild it again. While deconstructing the house, she lives in it and even when her aunt leaves her uncle, she comes to live in the dilapidated house with her and sets up a schedule to help her plan how to get the job done by the deadline, despite there not being running water and electricity most of the time.
This is a story of strength, self discovery and friendship that is family. There were some funny moments, but overall, it was pretty sad.

Del never planned on going back to her hometown. But at a crossroads herself and with both of her parents now deceased, she reluctantly returns for closure.

When she arrives she is offered compensation in exchange for the land where her childhood home still resides. At first taking the money and running seems like a no brainer. After all, Del is in recently unemployed and in desperate need of some cash. But being back in town brings up some old feelings and old grudges that make letting go and walking away easier said than done.

So Del offers up a unique proposition instead- one that involves her dismantling the house, piece by piece, by herself. What family she has left thinks she’s crazy and maybe she is. Can Del tear down the house in time while attempting to rebuild herself in the process?

Housebreaking was an interesting book. Admittedly I too thought Del’s proposal was crazy and even as it was unfolding, I found it hard to visualize. I actually think this book would make a great movie, just to fulfill that visualization. Del was a frustratingly stubborn character who had both a literal and figurative ax to grind with nearly everyone she encountered. It soon became clear that the actual dismantling of walls was necessary to Del’s own emotional dismantling. It’s a concept that’s been explored before, but never in quite this way.

Overall, the surprisingly humorous and heartfelt Housebreaking is a good foundation for a new author to build a reputation on.

Del left her hometown after her mother's death, leaving her childhood home to rot away. Now many years later, her uncle wants the site for a development he's planning. Acting ever defiant, she decides to broker a deal over the course of a few months to move the home piece by piece to a parcel across the way from where it stands today.

The home represents the last huddle to overcome her a challenging upbringing and current life. Every nail, board and shingle helps her to clear a path to new beginnings. Del sets out to do one thing, but instead she experiences the unexpected bond of family and friends she didn't believe she deserved.

Thank Berkley Publishing for the complimentary copy of this novel.

3.5 stars

This was one of the more unusual reads I've had lately. There was something compelling about this story, although the protagonist was not super likable and the premise was somewhat unbelievable.
Young 20-something Del left her home town after her alcoholic mother died in a car crash. Her father had left years before, when he came out as a gay man. Neither their family nor their community offered much support and Del is bitter, particularly toward her uncle and his family.

Del has meandered along since then, working dead-end jobs and living with an old friend of her dad's. She seemingly has no ambition, no friends of her own, and no emotional resources. Then her cousin shows up, telling her the old decrepit family farmhouse is hers, and the rest of the family wants to buy her out and scrape it for development.

Inexplicably, Del decides to move back, live in the abandoned house, and complete the demolition herself. It's not logical on any level, but it is symbolic of Del's struggle to actually finish a project that she starts. Her main personality feature seems to be stubbornness -- she spends weeks camping with no amenities, no hygiene, little furniture or heat ... but she does end up seeing the whole thing through to the end which is a major victory for her. She re-connects with a couple people along the way and makes a new friend or two.

There is one short paragraph at the end that holds out hope that Del will move forward to a more "normal" life -- time will tell. Thanks to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I received a gifted galley of HOUSEBREAKING by Colleen Hubbard for an honest review. Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review!

HOUSEBREAKING follows Del, a young woman without a lot going for her. Her parents divorced and she never really had the opportunity to know her mother. Her father passed away more recently and she’s been living at loose ends with little ability to stick to a job or make much of her life. When she loses her latest job and finds out that the man who took her in after her father’s death is ready for her to move out, she returns to the home her parents left behind.

Her family wants to develop the land where the house she has inherited stands, but Del isn’t going to make it easy on the family who turned their backs on her and her parents. She renegotiates the terms, leaving herself with a short period of time to break down the house herself and move it off of the land her family owns.

I really didn’t know what to expect going into this book and I was not initially very impressed with Del. She starts off the book losing her job and hiding it from the man who was kind enough to take her in. As the book went on, I really did grow to care about Del and want to hear more of her story. I just needed to keep reading to find out more about her history and her family’s past.

Del thinks she is on her own with this project, but she begins to find like minded people in sometimes unexpected places and this seemingly impossible task becomes slightly less unlikely to be finished. All of this gives Del the time and the resources to reconnect with the parents she didn’t know as well as she wanted and the people still present in her life.

Trigger warnings for homophobia and slurs. I think the author did a good job of building the small town setting and the often backwards thinking family’s perspective, but it wasn’t always easy to read.

This was a fantastic debut and I will be looking for more from Colleen Hubbard in the future!

Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard is a very highly recommended coming-of-age domestic drama but also a novel about healing brokenness.

Del Murrow is currently living with a friend of her father's, Tym. What led her there was a scandal, divorce and the death of both of her parents. When her father died Tym offered a room for her at his place. Now at age 24 she is directionless and recently unemployed. Then after no contact for years, her uncle unexpectedly sends her cousin Greg as an emissary to talk to Del about selling the abandoned family home and land from her mother's estate. Then Tym suggests she should get her own place. These changed circumstances lead her to travel back to the small town where her childhood home is located to consider the offer. Once there she devises another plan, and counters her uncle's offer with a totally unexpected condition. Her plan will require her to move her family home across a pond onto a swampy track of land.

It is the tale of a relative (Del) who is looked down at by her other relatives (her uncle) who wants to take advantage of her youth and inexperience to benefit himself. Del is certainly broken emotionally and demoralized. She feels she has no one to rely upon but herself, although Tym remains a friend and supports her emotionally. Her plan has her taking on the clearly Sisyphean task of dismantling a house and moving it across a pond. The end result of this enormous task is that her uncle will not own the house and the new houses in the development her uncle builds on the land will have a view of the junk pile of her deconstructed house.

As Del works on her monumental backbreaking task, she has her mother's friend Eleanor checking up on her and she makes friends with a supermarket clerk, but mostly Del works alone, desperate to extract her revenge on her uncle while simultaneously examining her parents lives along with her own while taking the house apart. She needs the cash but she also needs to deal with the powerlessness and hurt she feels over the treatment of her family as well as the abandonment their deaths represent by leaving her mark in the area for her mother's sake.

This strange fairy-tale of a book captured my imagination and held my attention throughout. I don't know if I can adequately express why I loved it so much, but I did. Del experiences growth as a character as she undertakes the seemingly impossible task by sheer determination. The undertaking of the project, which appears to be foolish, actually provides a calling for Del. She puts all of her fortitude and effort into the project and refuses to give up. In the end she learns something about herself.

There is one drawback which was a niggling little fact always at the back of my mind. In the real world you have to pay property taxes. I had to set aside the fact that realistically her uncle could have likely bought the property for back taxes due. Just as with any fable, reality isn't always part of the story. I embraced the folkloric part of the plot and set reality aside to enjoy the heroine overcoming the obstacles placed before her in order to finish the task she must complete.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Penguin Random House via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Edelweiss, Google Books, and Amazon.

Housebreaking
by Colleen Hubbard
Pub Date: April 19, 2022
Berkely
Debut author! Thanks to Colleen Hubbard, Berkely, and Net Galley for this ARC. It was not an easy read for me. Actually, the summary makes the book sound more interesting than it was. I could not wrap my mind around this one. I will not be recommending it.
2 stars

(Review will be posted soon, when it is published)
A well-written coming -of-age story about a woman in her mid 20s. This book is for anyone who has ever been an outsider, anyone who has had to empty a childhood home, or anyone dealing with unfinished business with deceased parents. That should take in a lot of people.

Housebreaking by Colleen Hubbard

Twenty four year old Del had a difficult childhood. Her mom was the black sheep of the family and a scandal led to her parents splitting up and her mom's family despising Del's family even more than they had before the scandal. Despite Del's Uncle Chuck making out big with the family inheritance he's mad because the family house was left to Del's mom. But Del's mom died and she went to live with her dad until he died and her dad's friend Tym took her in. But now Tym wants her gone, in the most friendly of ways, because he's finally ready to start living with one of his many guy hookups.

Del's Uncle Chuck wants her to come back to her hometown so he can pay her for her house. He's building housing developments and her land is right smack in the middle of his latest endeavor. But Del, who has made a life of underachieving and self sabotage, can't stand Uncle Chuck and his family and rebels at taking the house money and running. Instead she decides to dismantle the house and place it on the tiny lot of land that Chuck provides her. Not dismantle the house in a way that it can be put back together again, not move it so that it can ever be lived in again. She's going to destroy the house but pile up the pieces in sight of the new development. Del goes long periods of time without washing herself, she stinks, she doesn't comb her hair, she's unfriendly to everyone, and she has no other plan but to move the pieces of the house to the other lot before her March deadline is up.

Del reluctantly makes friends whether she wants them or not and they even help her with her project although they do tell her she stinks and get her to occasionally take a shower. By the end of the story Del has acquired a sort of friends and family group of people who care about her, she is certainly not alone, but I'm not sure she won't continue her destructive and self sabotaging behavior in the future. For me, this story was difficult to read, not as funny as it might be for others, and I really couldn't connect with Del's journey in life so far.

Thank you to Elisha at Berkley and NetGalley for this ARC.