A charming, bizarre, and lovely story of one woman looking for a home. Evie has been evicted from her apartment in NYC. By chance, she remembers a distant relative lives in Texas so she goes there in hopes of a place to stay.

This was a strange and fun read. Evie is compelling and easy to root for and I adored her relationship with Bertie and her newfound shoemaking skills. I am excited to read whatever the author writes next.

Thank you very much to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the opportunity to read a copy.

Thanks to Netgalley and FSG for the ebook. This is a wonderful adult fairy tale that never moves completely out of our world. It starts when the mayor, in order to clean up NYC, evicts everyone who is renting an apartment. The city is in chaos, with people sitting hopeless in the street on their furniture. This leaves Evie homeless. She remembers a very distant relative in a small town in Texas and sets out to see if she’ll take her in. And the delights keep coming, including moving into a small house that’s in the shape of a shoe and then training to become a shoemaker and then joining a shoemaking fraternity, where she may be the chosen one that they’ve been waiting for for almost a hundred years. Not to mention having to try and free her sister from an asylum, with help from her new boyfriend who can make any key, as long as he knows the door’s history. Such a fun first novel.

This was a journey and a “fun” (in a black comedy sort of way) social commentary of the current world and the socioeconomic divides, I’d say. Main character, Evie, is a renter in the city and is evicted where only the 1% can still afford to live because they own their properties. She must find a home elsewhere and leaves for Texas.

I enjoyed the commentary bit. Very gallows humor which I enjoyed.

Evie is expelled from her New York City apartment when a new mayor forces renters out, and driven mostly by chance, ends up in Gulluck, Texas, living in a building shaped like a shoe. She will discover strange creatures, a secret association, distant relations, and semi-magical occurrences on the path to rebuilding a family and finding her purpose.

DWELLING is off-kilter: zany things exist and occur, which initially charmed and eventually bloated and dragged. I found the book too committed to realism to be generatively weird. I was interested in a book (even a satire/fairytale) set in north Texas, but the setting (as with other elements) felt arbitrary. To me, it felt like the book basically contains all of whimsical features in the blurb, but doesn't quite knit them together in a satisfying way.

For those who enjoy the genre of contemporary fabulism, like Hilary Leichter, Helen Oyeyemi, and Ling Ma, this is a pretty good addition about the housing crisis!

i loved this book so much! it is a wildly imaginative story set in a world that’s literally falling apart. Evie, left alone after losing her family and everything else, escapes a crumbling New York City to a strange Texas town called Gulluck. there amidst albino cicadas, quirky townsfolk, and even a giant fish, she begins a surreal search for belonging and meaning. the story feels like a mashup of fairy tale weirdness and sharp social commentary. it tackles big themes like the housing crisis and personal loss but does it with humor and a magical, offbeat vibe. the setting was so bizarre yet oddly relatable, and Evie’s journey is packed with existential questions and unexpected moments of hope.

If you’re into stories that blend real-world struggles with a dose of the absurd, Dwelling is worth checking out. it's fresh, funny, and hits hard in all the right ways. ❤️✨

thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux for my copy!

I recently finished an interesting fantasy book. Dwelling by Emily Hunt Kivel was not what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised.