My letter O pick for the A to Z Challenge was OBJECTS OF MY AFFECTION by Jill Smolinski, a lighthearted book about what it really means to let go.

Lucy Bloom, our protagonist, finds herself in a serious bind when she’s dumped, then homeless because she had to sell her house in order to put her nineteen year old son in rehab. Having had some success with a book about decluttering, she takes on the enormous (but well-paying) task of cleaning and organizing the home of Marva Meier Rios, an eccentric old artist and hoarder.

Lucy soon begins to understand “there are those things you keep, things you let go of – and it’s often not easy to know the difference.”

This was a light, funny, heartfelt read. It got off to a bit of a slow start, and in the beginning, Lucy was irking me by talking down to the crochety but lovable Marna. I got pulled in more as the book unfolded, but the shining star of this story wasn’t Lucy and Marva’s relationship, Lucy and her ex and new boyfriend’s relationships, but the emotionally eviscerating, helpless-but-still-hopeful relationship between Lucy and her son Ash. If you’ve ever dealt with a loved one dealing with addiction, this will hit you right on the feels and rub them raw with sandpaper.

The story does resolve everything in a satisfactory manner, and once it started rolling, I felt like I flew right through it. If you plan on listening to the audiobook, I must say in all honesty the narrator was not very good and the performance did the story a disservice.

Three and a half stars.