Family Game Night and Other Catastrophes by Mary E.Lambert

Publisher: Scholastic USA
On Sale Date: February 28th 2017
Pages: 256
Age Range: Young Adult/Middle Grade

Annabelle Balog is a teen with a problem: she can't take any friends to her house. Why? Because her mother has a weird issue: she collects all kinds of everything, and her house is cluttered to the nooks with egg cartons, milk cartons, soup cans, old newspapers sorted by even and uneven numbers, and all kinds of things that are in their own way to special for her to throw away; her mom is a classic type of hoarder. So to avoid that her friends see what is happening, she keeps them at a five mile radius of her home. Her dad is getting into a lot of nasty fits with her mom, as he also can't stand anymore how full the house gets, and that her mom is even getting more slouchy and at a sudden moment even doesn't care to take a daily shower anymore. But soon he is of to a trip to London with his students, and Annabelle and her younger sister and brother have to deal with mom's behavior issues alone. Until Grandma Nora  stops by, and is shocked by what she sees. She decides  to stay for a while to figure out what is going on and how to help them, altough this doesn't go very easy and with a lot of tension between the four of them. Slowly they start to throw away loads of things behind the back of mom. And slowly her mother starts to acknowledge that she needs help. But one mystery remains: what does she keep in the dinner room that she held behind a locked door for years??

I had this book on my e-reader for quite some time before I finally had time to read it. The cover already caught my eye, it looked like a fun read to me because of that (I mostly don't read the synopsis beforehand). I didn't expect the book to be this good and that it dealth with a serious issue, what a surprise! It is perfectly written, I really liked the plot and the characters of Annabelle and her family where very well potrayed. As A reader you could just imagine everything happening like a movie, what really defines a good book for me. (can they just adapt this book to the big screen? ) Her mothers hoarding just gives you the vibes to clean, she really acts like the people you see sometimes in documentaries about hoarders, in this case Annabelle's mom just had trouble letting go, as she dealth with quite some personal lost in the past, which didn't made her behaviour good, but more understandable for the reader.
A very well written and entertaing book for middle grade and YA readers, definately recommend it!!!