Other People's Houses [Paperback] Hawkins, Kelli

A woman walks into other people's homes — not to steal, but to breathe. She's house-sitting, nannying, cat-feeding her way through strangers' lives, trying to figure out where she belongs when her own life has come undone. Kelli Hawkins writes domestic fiction that lives in the uncomfortable space between longing and trespassing. This is a quiet study of a woman rebuilding herself in borrowed rooms, surrounded by other people's routines, other people's children, other people's carefully arranged lives. It's about the intimacy of caring for someone else's space and the strange comfort of temporary belonging. The writing is observant and unsentimental — it notices the small ways we try to make ourselves at home in the world. For readers drawn to character-driven stories about reinvention, solitude, and the emotional architecture of houses that aren't ours.