Review: Getting Clean With Stevie Green

Getting Clean With Stevie Green by Swan Huntley
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It is said that the brain attains its total growth at the age of 25 ---(https://neurotray.com/when-does-the-brain-stop-developing-or-fully-develop/#:~:text=The%20brain%20stops%20developing%20or,as%20our%20nervous%20system%20grows.) and since Stevie Green is 37 and still acting on what happened in High School, well, you can't prove that fact by me! However, I do realize just because your brain stopped growing doesn't mean you've stopped developing; it is just that Stevie's sure did not develop in a good way.

 

However, she shows that she is human with all the flaws being human means.  

She is a drinker on a "cleanse," which still makes her a drunk.

She unconsciously questions her sexuality and eventually comes to the correct conclusion even though the clues are as plain as the nose on your face.

Stevies is still living in the '90s, and what is worse, she is still blaming most of her ills on an incident in high school.

I could not connect with any of these somewhat odd characters, as a matter of fact, I couldn't find myself liking them, but I did understand a few of them.  Winsome this book is not-it is a quite deep book (in places) sand a hot-mess in other areas.

I will agree that this is a very fast read.  It was enough to capture my interest but not enough oomph for me to remember very much of this book for very long.  Great beach or long trip read.

*ARC supplied by the publisher, the author, and ATTL/Edelweiss. 

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SYNOPSIS: "The author of the “sparkling dark romance” (Redbook) We Could Be Beautiful brings her “wit and verve” (The New York Times Book Review) to this quirky, feel-good novel about one woman’s messy journey from self-delusion to self-acceptance.

At thirty-seven, Stevie Green has had it with binge drinking and sleeping with strange men. She’s confused about her sexuality and her purpose in life. When her mother asks her to return to her hometown of La Jolla to help her move into a new house, she’s desperate enough to say yes. The move goes so well that Stevie decides to start her own decluttering business. She stops drinking. She hires her formerly estranged sister, Bonnie, to be her business partner. She rekindles a romance with her high school sweetheart, Brad. Things are better than ever—except for the complicated past that Stevie can’t seem to outrun.

Who was responsible for the high school scandal that caused her life to take a nosedive twenty years earlier? Why is she so secretive about the circumstances of her father’s death? Why are her feelings for her ex-friend, Chris, so mystifying? If she’s done drinking, then why can’t she seem to declutter the mini wine bottles from her car?

A winsome, fast-paced read, Getting Clean With Stevie Green is about coming to terms with who you are, resolving the pain of your past, and accepting the truth of your life in all its messy glory."