The House No One Sees

December 2, 2024
A teen attempts to forge her own future while navigating her mother’s opioid dependency in King’s spellbindingly surreal, fairy tale–infused debut. On her 16th birthday, a text message plea for help from her estranged mother finds Penelope Ross reluctantly traveling to her dilapidated childhood home and once again trying to rescue her mother from the grip of “poison apples.” But returning to the house that long ago stopped being home awakens a painful labyrinth of suppressed memories that swallows Penny—until she accepts that the only way out is through. Directly addressing her mother and the house, Penny’s first-person narration alternates between present-day prose and verse-relayed memories that strive to transform pain into hope through “a kaleidoscope of words.” Imagistic and metaphor-driven text enchants, but the fragmented, aching narrative—which examines poverty, neglect, addiction, abuse, and first love through the lens of “Sleeping Beauty,” “Snow White,” Greek mythology, and more—occasionally feels disjointed, obscuring clarity. Penny’s quiet growth from “the house no one sees” to becoming a teen with agency and a future nevertheless casts a dizzying, dazzling spell. Back matter includes a resource list. Penny cues as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Ginger Knowlton, Curtis Brown.

Starred review from January 15, 2025
Penelope Ross' mother struggles with opioid addiction. On the night of Penny's 16th birthday, a desperate text from her estranged mother draws her back to the house they once shared. There, Penny, who presents white, is forced to confront buried trauma and painful memories. Through verse and prose that veer into the surreal, debut author King shows Penny revisiting a childhood in which she was left to fend for herself. Penny likens her mother to Sleeping Beauty; referencing a needle mark on her mother's foot, she thinks, "This must be where the spindle entered. The one that turned you into The Sleeper." She recalls the growing suspicions of adults who knew something was amiss and frequent visitor Seth--"He had dark hair and blue eyes that came / after me when you weren't looking"--who died of an overdose in their home. Eventually, Penny's mother enters rehab and her maternal grandparents take her in, beginning a cycle of painful separations. Life with Nana and Grandpa provides her with structure, physical care, and emotional nurturing as well as therapy. Meanwhile, life with her mother is marked by hunger, neglect, and chaos. The shifting narrative creates an intentional sense of uncertainty. Penny's childhood memories are conveyed through a childlike voice that's filled with longing for her mother and the blissful early days before addiction took hold. This heartbreaking work will resonate deeply with fans of A.S. King and Amber McBride. Raw, gripping, and heart-wrenching. (content note, resources)(Verse fiction. 14-18)

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Starred review from March 1, 2025

Gr 8 Up-No one ever saw Penny's old house, the one on the corner that's blue outside and red inside and so tired of keeping its secrets. No one seems to see Penny either, which is convenient when late on the night of her 16th birthday, an urgent message from her estranged mother pulls Penny away from her crush and her friends and back to the house. Knowing but not wanting to acknowledge what she might find, Penny must reckon with the house's tendency to distort time and reality in a surrealistic labyrinth of memory and perspective. As the prose present twines with the past in verse, Penny retraces her childhood and examines her mother's addiction and the havoc it has wrought in Penny's own life. As she begins to come to terms with the reality of her mother's decisions and the consequences for both of them, she must walk through her own memories to arrive in the present, beginning to realize along the way that she is more than the empty vessel of her invisible house on the corner. Shifting narrative styles highlight the ways that Penny's mother's addiction defined her whole childhood; verse sections from the past are sweetly (painfully) naive, while prose present-tense Penny is more world-weary and aware. VERDICT A gut-wrenching and powerful kaleidoscope of a story; for fans of A.S. King, Ellen Hopkins, and Kathleen Glasgow.-Allie Stevens

Copyright 2025 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2025
Grades 9-12 It begins at a fair on Penny's sixteenth birthday when she receives three texts: "lonely here," "miss little doll," and "need help." She responds by rushing to a house no one can see, where she finds her mother sleeping. Musing, her thoughts turn from prose to poetry as she becomes captivated by memories. The text shifts from poetry to prose and back again as the verse conveys memories of her life as a child with a drug addict mother as Penny is raised by her caretaker grandparents. Shadows are a leitmotif of this unusual novel wherein Penny finds herself reflected in her mother, a doll, and even the house no one sees, where in the present her mother sleeps on until readers realize she's dead. The memory-filled narrative veers dangerously close to being overwritten with a near surfeit of simile and metaphor. Nevertheless, it is well plotted with acute characterization, while the combination of prose and poetry serves the material well. Though perhaps not for every reader, the book will surely have its champions.

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