This is the story of Gloria at the age of 79, comes of age. Her eyes are opened to the squalor she lives in, her tattered relationship with her son and his family and to the fact that she wants more from her life. She sets out to change the way she has been living her life thus far, since the death of her husband. Few steps take her all the way into the middle of the strangest adventure.

This in short is what the story is about, it falls lightly under the genre of 'Uplit' but doesn't quite get there. I like what it was trying to do, unfortunately I could not go along with most of the story. I do not know if it was the lingo, but I did not find the time to connect. The people felt irredeemable, even if a few of them try ultimately to change. I felt bad about not feeling the appropriate feelings with the people in the book but I felt like I was not given a chance since Gloria hopped from one project to another as soon as one was successfully dealt with.

On the plus side, it has people making efforts and taking steps towards betterment of their lives and does stand for a more positive outlook. People who read more books of this genre and are used to the twists and turns such a story could take, should give this a try, you might like it more than I did.

I loved everything about this book, moving and hilarious all at once, I read it in one go and have told everyone I know to read it. Don’t pass this one by, don’t put it back on the shelf, just pour a cuppa and settle down.

I really wanted to like this but I found the whole tone to be a touch glib. It was a nice easy light read. Some of the subject matter could have given the novel more depth, instead it just glossed over some quite emotive subjects.
I liked the ideas and some of the characters had potential but I felt disappointed and couldn't connect.

The premise for this book captivated me and I was hoping for something similar to The Lady in the Van but it fell flat from the start. I never felt anything for the characters which made this a very difficult read.

This book was a lovely read which is why I would give it between a 3 and 3.5 stars.

Gloria, the woman in question, is a hoarder and lives in terrible condition without really realising it. It takes her house to be condemned by health and safety officers for her to start realising her situation. I'm not a big fan of books about hoarders, but it quickly changes to a personal life quest. She decides to start doing what she always wanted to do, spontaneously, which is very charming and inspiring. The one problem I saw with this book is a lot of entitlement about her age and how people should treat the elderly, especially how her son should treat her. He's a piece of crap and I'd never treat my parents this way, but at the same time she asks for things that are also in her control but puts the faults only on the younger people, which feels a bit like old vs young people.

Overall, it was a good read and I'd recommend it!

A very decent debut read. The subject it's anything I've read about before, but is well handled with a sympathetic lead. I was charmed and will be following this author with interest.

Gloria is a hoarder. Every nook and cranny in her home is stuffed with things that most people would term as rubbish. She hasn't left her home for years and when something goes "bang" one day things come to a head. Shoved in a home by her seemingly uncaring son, Gloria starts to come to terms with life and heads off on some adventures of her own..
This is really a rather light & fluffy book. There is nothing wrong with that but if you are expecting one which gets its teeth into the reasoning behind Gloria's hoarding and the problems in her life then this is not the book for you. I felt that this book rather trivialised hoarding. Gloria mentions in passing that she has had a couple of seeions with a counsellor & that it is all solved. I don't feel the author did any favours to the people who have this terrible compulsion.
Gloria is a person that at times I didn't like. She knows nothing of her son or his finances but is happy to spend hundreds of pounds on the credit card he gave her for emergencies. She thinks he is rich and spends willy nilly. Otherwise she is a bit of the life and soul of the party - quite a turn around from the isolated hoarder character she begins with in the start of this book. She has a sense of adventure and meets many like minded older people on her travels.
Yes, this book is fun. It flows well and is quick and easy to read. There are amusing moments and a few sad ones. I do like the fact that Gloria and her friends aren't ready to give up on life yet & have plenty of fun and adventure left in them. If it weren't for my dislike of the way the hoarding was glossed over then this would have been a four star book.
I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley.

‘The Woman Who Kept Everything’ is Jane Gilley’s debut adult novel. What a debut novel it is too!!! I absolutely loved, no make that ADORED reading it but more about that in a bit.
I couldn’t help but take to the character of Gloria Frensham as soon as I met her. When the book starts, Gloria is living in a house that is full to bursting with all manner of clutter as well as other less pleasant things. I know that Gloria is a hoarder but unlike a lot of people, I wasn’t immediately appalled by her living situation. That said I couldn’t help but worry for her safety. She has to temporarily leave her house and she has a short stay in a nursing home. At first she feels lost but she makes the best of her time there and soon has some of the other residents in giggles. Following this short stay she goes to stay with her son Clegg and his wife and she would have had a better time in prison. I don’t really want to give too many further details about the stay because I would hate to give too much away. Subsequent to the stay she goes on a journey of self discovery and she has many laughs and experiences along the way. You could say that she finds her true self again and she takes herself way, way out of her comfort zone. Gloria is kind, funny, warm hearted, generous, stubborn, determined, brave and a lovely lady, who I would be proud to call my friend. I bet she would be a big hoot on a night out. I couldn’t help but keep my fingers crossed that she would find the happiness she deserved and that those who treated her like dirt, would get a few dozen doses of karma.
Oh my goodness, ‘The Woman Who Kept Everything’ is simply one brilliant and beautifully written book. I must admit that the book wasn’t quite what I was expecting when I first picked it up and it far, far exceeded my initial expectations. I was hooked on this book from the end of the first sentence onwards and reading the book soon became an addiction. I became an addict in desperate need of my next fix. I picked the book up at the right kind of time for me because I was in pain and feeling down in the dumps but as soon as I started reading, I thought ‘pain, what pain?’ and I pretty much giggled all the way through the book. I have a very vivid imagination and so I was imagining the looks on certain people’s faces when they discovered what Gloria was up to next, which naturally made me chuckle all the more. I was so hooked on the author’s writing style, the story, the humour within the book and the characters that I found it impossible to put the book down. The first time I looked up to check how much I had read, I was stunned to realise that I had cleared 35 % of the book. I was enjoying the book so much that I didn’t realise just how quickly I seemed to charge through the story.
In short, I adored reading ‘The Woman Who Kept Everything’ and I would definitely, definitely recommend it to other readers. I can’t wait to read what Jane comes up with next. The score on the Ginger Book Geek board is a very well deserved 5* out of 5*.

This was a nice easy read, following the story of Gloria and her friends and family. We meet Gloria living in squalor without realising this has happened. She doesn't really know how she got her and it' just normal life to her. She has hoarded for years, since her husband's death, now even keeping food waste. One day her electics blow and she reaches crisis point. Her bully of a son puts her in a home for respite and it's a lightbulb moment when she speaks to a helpful social worker. Clegg, her son, just wants the money from her house, but as Gloria takes charge of her life the relationship changes. We see a much more determined lady emerging, who decides to enjoy lifealone, and with her partner in crime. I loved to see the butterfly emerge and embark on all sorts of new adventures and make new friends. By the end I felt Gloria was my granny and I was really invested in her story. A truly lovely story. #netgalley # thewomanwhokepteverything

Thanks to NetGalley, Avon, and Jane Gilley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Gloria is a hoarder. After the deaths of her foster mother and her husband, she started accumulating collections and couldn't bear to get rid of any of them. Her son, Cleg, is neglectful and controlling, adding to her issues. When Gloria burns herself, Cleg puts her in a nursing home for a period of time while he clears the house. At the nursing home, she realizes that the way she has been living isn't living. Her long-time friend, Tilsbury, who her son has tried to banish from her life, takes her on an adventure to a nearby town. That makes her realize that she needs to really start living again.

While hoarding issues can't be fixed as easily as they are in this book, I felt that there were lots of good discussion issues in the debut novel. The role of the elderly in society is getting pushed away, so many times by family members. It's easier to put them away and move on with life than deal with the issues. There were many social implications in this book as well, trying to help the marginalized.

But as Gloria goes through her transformation, she's a joy to behold and I enjoyed going through her adventures with her.

A heart warming story that confirms my love of reading. A book that brought me out of a reading slump, this is one of the best of 2018. Gloria is such a sweet, quirky character that I thoroughly enjoyed.

In the Woman Who Saved Everything, Jane Gilley introduces us to Gloria, a lonely, elderly woman who has become a hoarder in her loneliness, She is forced to move from her overcrowded home when an emergency forces her out. After this event she goes to a care home and turns her life around by getting out and living life to its fullest. She struggles with her relationship with her son and reconnects with her grandchildren and longtime friends for love and support. Her transformation almost seems too easy. To go from hoarder to neat and tidy, from almost nonexistent familial relationships to loving and supportive relationships is ideal. Even though the author shows many of Gloria’s struggles, I found the resolutions too simple and easy. That being said, it was still an enjoyable read..

Very good story and a good read for Christmas so ask for it in your stocking. Can you imagine what your place would be like if you did actually keep everything, this looks a bit close at the reasons why. Understanding between family members becomes a tricky issue anti is always good to have some great friends to lean on. Loved this also a bit different from your normal story line.

When a book is described as a cross between The Lady in the Van and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry it's a bit of a no-brainer for me. I really wanted to read The Woman Who Kept Everything by Jane Gilley and I have to say that it really did remind me throughout of Harold Fry.

It tells the story of Gloria Frensham, on the cusp of her 80th birthday and a chronic hoarder. She's one of those people you read about who can't actually move around their house for clutter. She's still got her son's tricycle and he must be well into his 50s. I did empathise with Gloria as I know how hard it is to throw things away that have a sentimental value or bring back precious memories. But when her electric blows whilst she's cooking her potato soap on the hob action is taken and all of a sudden she finds herself out of her house for the first time in a long time.

And this is where Gloria's adventure begins. It's like she's got a new lease of life and boy, is she going to enjoy what's left of it! It was great fun to follow her as she caught up with old friends, travelled to the east and south coasts, and generally took back control of her life.

It's light-hearted fare but with a serious side to it. It addresses getting old and losing sight of who you are. It's also a feel-good story and it made me smile a lot. Gloria is quite a character and so is her best pal for many years, Tilsbury. In fact, throughout it all, Tilsbury has been probably the one constant - even her son let her down.

There's a lot of local slang in this book, me ducks, and whilst I could maybe have done with a little less of it, it certainly gave me a strong sense of what it would be like to hang around with Gloria and her friends - a very warm and friendly feeling.

The Woman Who Kept Everything is funny, moving and insightful and I loved seeing Gloria get a second chance at life.

EXCERPT: CHAPTER 1
The boiling hot water splashed over Gloria's fingers. 'Waargh!'

She did a little agony dance whilst she waited for the pain to ease, blowing on her fingers. Damn. She'd need to get outside to dunk her hand in the cold water barrel.

Her oldest friend, Tilsbury, was always harping on about that darned pan; said that using it, without a lid, instead of a kettle, might prove disastrous one day. Gloria wouldn't buy a kettle, though. Said she didn't have the money for expensive items like that. Well, her son, Clegg, had given her a credit card for 'essential items' but she never went anywhere to use it. In fact, she rarely went out at all. She didn't really need to.

Today she'd knocked the pan by accident, reaching over to check the potato soup she was cooking for their lunch. These days she was always eating potato soup, on account that she had a large sack of them, out back, that Tilsbury had got from someone in the know. She liked that it could be a cheap nourishing meal when she had onions, carrots and a good stock in it.

But, today, she only had potatoes. Add a bit of salt and it would have to do, she'd thought. Anyway, the hot water for their tea, boiling away in the pan next to the soup, had sploshed onto her left hand as she'd leaned over the grimy stove to stir their meal.

Gloria grunted as she hitched up her Crimplene dress and clambered over the piles of squashed cardboard boxes and magazines, nearly slipping on mouldy teabags, decomposing potato skins, marmalade-smeared crusts and other detritus around the kitchen sink unit. She no longer noticed the stink like rotting cabbage. Empty, dripping or congealed milk cartons, plastic bags and other household rubbish also littered the floor – more obstacles to tackle – in order to get to that cold water barrel, outside by the back door. The original Georgian taps in her kitchen sink had long since seized up. So the only water she could use was in that rainwater barrel, outdoors: for cooking, for occasional washing, for everything really.

But, at seventy-nine, she knew she was getting too old for all this.

ABOUT THIS BOOK: 79-year-old Gloria Frensham is a hoarder. She lives amongst piles of magazines, squashed cardboard boxes, surplus carpet rolls, heaps of towels and knick-knacks littering the stairs. She hasn’t left her home for years, until a loud bang and a sudden smell of singeing sets in motion Gloria’s unwilling exodus from her home…

That day is the start of a journey that will never return Gloria back to her beloved, hoarded possessions, nor to her son’s house to live. For it is the start of her journey to discover life again – and she’s going to make some good friends and defiant decisions along the way, with just one very small suitcase in tow…

MY THOUGHTS: The publicity blurb says, and I quote 'Heart-warming and poignant in equal measure, this is a story about the loneliness of life, the struggles of growing old, the power of kindness, and the bravery it takes to leave our comfort zones.', but I felt nothing of this.

It is superficial. There is no depth to either the characters or the plot. I felt no involvement only, briefly, revulsion at the broken tea bags and rotting cabbage leaves that litter the kitchen floor. And it is here that a distinction needs to be made. Most hoarders live quite cleanly. No, I am not a hoarder, except of books. The author is quite correct in that people hoard in response to a sense of loss, but living in squalor, in filth, is something quite different again.

Gloria's road to recovery is far to quick and smooth, she wavers only twice, resisting temptation both times. After all those years of hoarding she is miraculously cured by a few days of counselling in the rest home? Not likely.

The Woman Who Kept Everything read somewhat like a child’s bedtime story. In my head, it was being read by a very soporific voice, one designed to put me to sleep, and it did. This could have been a brilliantly funny and touching story but, for me, it missed the mark by a very wide mile.

This book is compared with The Lady in the Van and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, both of which I loved. Not even close.

😐😐.5

THE AUTHOR: Jane Gilley has previously self-published five children’s books. The Woman Who Kept Everything is her debut adult novel.

DISCLOSURE: Thank you to Avon Books via Netgalley for providing a digital ARC of The Woman Who Kept Everything by Jane Gilley for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own personal opinions.

Please refer to my Goodreads.com profile page or the about page on sandysbookaday.wordpress.com for an explanation of my rating system. This review and others are also published on my blog sandysbookaday.wordpress.com https://sandysbookaday.wordpress.com/...

I quite enjoyed this book, with its cast of quirky characters and their foibles. Overall an uplifting read, though it deals in part with the trials and tribulations of becoming old, neglected, and thinking very little of oneself - a sobering thought for all of us.

I was pleased that our heroine (Gloria) turns a corner and wins the day when she adopts a positive outlook and "you only live once" attitude to life.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for my honest review.

* It also made me realise that I may need to get a grip of my own "magpie" tendencies before too long...

Gloria is a 79 year old lady who is a hoarder - her house is filled to the brim with junk she has accumulated over the years. She is unable to wash properly as she can't get to her bathroom. She survives on potato soup as that is all she can manage to cook. It all comes a head one day when she has electricity problems and when social services see how she is living, her son gets involved and she is shipped off to an old peoples home while they decide what is to be done with her. She actually doesn't mind this turn of events too much as she can wash properly again and eat some decent food, but when she moves back in with her son and his wife and they start discussing her future without consulting her, she isn't happy. When her old friend and sometimes lodger Tilsbury, offers her a day out she jumps at the chance and she starts to realise she can live again.
I was a bit worried when I started this...reading about old people in distress is something that really upsets me and the attitude of her family towards her is shocking. She hasn't seen her grandchildren in years and her son is rude and uncaring towards her. But Gloria is a great old lady, and when given the opportunity is keen to start living life again. She has a great time travelling around reconnecting with old friends and making new friends wherever she goes. And her travels give her the strength to stand up to her son and start a new life for herself. It is quite a light hearted story but does touch on both the depression of Gloria and also her son Clegg. A heart-warming story that looks at the struggles of growing old but reminds us that life is still worth living.
Thank you to Avon Books for inviting me on the blog tour of this book which I received through Netgalley.

This is a book is a good yet it is tinged with a little bit of sadness.
79 year old Gloria who lives alone and she is a bit of a horder
Suddenly Gloria has to move out and is put in temporary stay residential care home and during her stay she is given support about her obsession with collecting.
There is so much more to this wonderful story.
Thank you to both NetGalley and Avon for my eARC of this book in exchange for my honest unbiased review

The Blurb:
79-year-old Gloria Frensham is a hoarder. She lives amongst piles of magazines, squashed cardboard boxes, surplus carpet rolls, heaps of towels and knick-knacks littering the stairs. She hasn’t left her home for years, until a loud bang and a sudden smell of singeing sets in motion Gloria’s unwilling exodus from her home…
That day is the start of a journey that will never return Gloria back to her beloved, hoarded possessions, nor to her son’s house to live. For it is the start of her journey to discover life again – and she’s going to make some good friends and defiant decisions along the way, with just one very small suitcase in tow…

My Thoughts :
The blurb really appealed to me and looked like a fun read.
We meet Gloria Frensham who lives in a messy, disorganised house with no real running water, cooking or washing facilites. She has let herself go after her husband Arthur passed away. Her son Clegg doesnt have much time for her. When her electrics fail she is forced into a nursing home for a respite period whille her house is sorted and cleaned out. She is then going to live with her son and wife for a whille until things are sorted out.
As we progress through Gloria’s life and her coming weeks, we are transended into a fun filled, laugh a minute ride as things take an unexpected turn.
Things havent always been great in her life and she has experienced loss and when things seem to be ending, Gloria’s life is just beginning. You only live once and have to take life by the horns.
I really enjoyed this story and it was hard to put down after getting stuck in to a few chapters. It had a fabulous array of charactors and this is one story that will stay with me for a whille to come. Jane Gilley has made a wonderful charactor out of Gloria and really taken time to perfect this storyline to make sure it grabs the reader.

Brilliant reading. Gloria is living in squalor, her uncaring son steps in ,puts her in a residential home temporarily, clean up her house and puts it on the market. Once she has moved in with her son and family, Gloria realises his plans for her future and decides to take her life in her own hands. She travels where she wants and realises her life is not over. Funny ,sad, and so realistic, this book is a must read for all those with elderly relatives!