Dirty Little Secrets by C.J. Omololu Grades 7+ 224 pages Walker Books February 2010 Hardcover     Every family has secrets, but Lucy’s has one that is way bigger than most. From the outside her home looks normal; inside, it’s full of floor-to-ceiling piles of junk and filth and mold. The bathroom doesn’t work, the kitchen is beyond repair, and tight pathways through the mess, brought on by her mother’s compulsive hoarding, have taken over. So when her mother dies unexpectedly, Lucy hesitates to call 911 fearing the media frenzy will be the difference between exposing “the freak family on Collier Avenue” or the death of “the nice oncology nurse with the lovely children.” Determined to clean the house before reporting her mother’s death, Lucy begins a two-day ordeal that eventually proves to be more than she can handle. But no matter what, Lucy will not succumb to the embarrassment and shame she has endured for so long. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Lucy’s solution will change her life forever. This powerful story of one teen’s desperate attempt to hide her family’s Dirty Little Secrets is the debut novel of author, C. J. Omololu. Her passionate descriptions of the home and emotional state of the main character make it easy to understand how Lucy is able to put aside her feelings of loss as she contemplates her own future, mourning the childhood tossed among the garbage and lost forever to a psychological disorder.     web reviews   Niki Masse Schoenfeldt/2010 for curled up with a good kid's book   For grown-up fiction, nonfiction and speculative fiction book reviews, visit our sister site Curled Up With a Good Book (www.curledup.com)