This was a powerful story following Maddy, a homeless 20-something who hangs around with her other homeless friends in Golden Gate Park. You get a detailed picture of their lives and how they manage to make do despite hardship. While walking her dog, Root, Maddy becomes witness to a crime, upending the dull but predictable life she had lived until then.

I've never been homeless or lived anywhere with a large homeless population, so I appreciated the detail the author included about how Maddy and her friends lived. I really felt like I got to know them and their lives, their associates, their hangouts, where they go for food, their interactions with cops and tourists. I liked the insight into Maddy's thoughts, and the motives for why her and her friends are on the street. It was a nice look at a subsection of the population I don't know much about.

On the other hand, I felt like the plot the author was trying to tell alongside this snapshot of homeless life fell flat. I don't understand what switched in Maddy's head to go from actively avoiding anything involving the crime to becoming a junior detective on the street. I didn't like some of the characters, particularly the ones involved with the crime. I also somewhat didn't like Maddy turning her nose up at all the opportunities the author wrote into the narrative for her to change her life, and actively encouraged her friends to do the same. Maybe it's a product of the homeless mentality, I don't know. The book also just....ends. There's no real conclusion to Maddy's story, which I guess we're meant to just infer as being the same as it always had been.

In short, the writing is really well done, but the story woven by that writing just isn't compelling. That, coupled with unlikeable characters and motives prevented me from rating this much higher.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of At the Edge of the Haight by Katherine Seligman.

Maddy is a twenty year old experiencing homelessness in San Francisco with her dog Root and a ragtag group of friends. Her life isn't easy, but she's making it, using local resources and the kindness of others to get by. But when she witnesses the murder of another homeless peer, her life begins to get a lot more complicated. Could this be the road to destruction, or an opportunity to heal?

Gosh, I have such mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I felt like the writing style did a good job to convey the fever dream that being homeless in San Francisco would be. But, for some reason, I really struggled to fully immerse myself in the story. I was never completely clear on the plot, of the crime that took place, or even where Maddy was all of the time. There was something about the writing that felt a bit too "foggy" for me.

I don't know if At the Edge of the Haight is considered YA or not, but it certainly reads like YA--it's very simplistic, kind of juvenile. It's not for me. .Others might not mind the YA feel, but I was very disappointed in it. I think the publisher should be clear on the intended audience when they publicize this book. I didn't want to leave a rating, because I understand this might be more to others' tastes than it was to mine, but apparently NetGalley requires one, so I've left a rating that reflects my experience with this book.

I'm always a fan of books written by journalists and At the Edge of the Haight is no exception. The subject matter is heavy without being overly depressing. This would be a great title for book discussion and I will definitely be purchasing for my library.

Writing: 3.5/5 Plot: 3/5 Characters: 3/5

A very readable book about Maddy — a 20-year old homeless girl in San Francisco who unwittingly witnesses the tail end of the murder of a homeless boy and gets tangled up with the victim’s parents and general ineffectiveness of the judicial system.

The writing is good and it does thoroughly depict at least one homeless person’s life in San Francisco — the utter tedium of hanging around doing little but scamming for money or getting high all day, sleeping in the park but waking at 4:00 am to avoid the cops, heading to the shelter for showers and food — rinse, repeat. While the book was clearly supposed to trigger a feeling of empathy, pity, and a desire for more social programs to “help,” it really did the opposite for me. Maddy and her friends were given so many opportunities to live a different life: in addition to all the free food, showers, medical care, etc. they got from the shelter and free clinics, they were constantly offered entrance into all kinds of programs to help by a slew of well-meaning social workers. Instead, they spend their days hanging around doing nothing, begging for money to get high, and sitting in the park gathering program pamphlets from do-gooders. Which they didn’t want. Eventually, after watching the young boy bleed out, engaging with the boy’s heartbroken parents, seeing one of her friends almost OD, and having a social worker make the effort to find her in the park every day offering encouragement, more programs, and a round trip bus ticket to find her estranged mother, Maddy begins a journey we hope will be more productive. I was honestly left feeling like maybe all of the money behind these programs could have been better spent elsewhere. I’m completely behind offering people opportunities to get out of a hole — whether of their own making or not — but I’m not enthused about chasing them down repeatedly until they deign to give it a try.

At the Edge of the Haight was incredible. It is an illuminating foray into a little known world that will engage and entertain.

I very much enjoyed this book. I read it because we will be running a First Impressions Promotion for it in January and so I was reading it for background. I felt it provided a nuanced view of an intractable problem. I particularly appreciated that the reader was given insight into many perspectives, showing that there is no one-size-fits all solution to homelessness, I also am grateful to the author for developing many characters, not just those central to the story, so the reader can see the challenges faced not just by the homeless but also the many individuals and agencies working to help them. Given the current times and the topic, it was a surprisingly positive reading experience.

I thought this was going to be more of a mystery/thriller when I started reading it, but instead it is a ground level look at homelessness through the eyes of a young girl as she experiences it. The narration of her seems quite realistic and never sugarcoated nor written through a “woe is me” lens. Maddy does not have the answers, does not necessarily know what is right for her life, and takes us along on her journey to try to figure it all out. She stumbles and struggles along the way and sometimes takes help when it is offered and other times she shies away from it. Having never lived the homeless life, I can’t say for sure, but this book feels like a true representation of what so many people experience through no fault of their own. Thank you to NetGalley for the advance read copy.