Sarah and Debbie were dynamic characters and the author did a good job of giving them their own distinct voices. The book highlighted the mental and emotional complexities of hoarding while keeping the story lighthearted. The parallels of Debbie's story with the royal family will make this a good read for anyone who has followed the royal family drama since Princess Diana.

I felt Debbie’s development was a little rushed at the end but I appreciated that she wasn’t fully “healed” and how the author portrayed her.

I special thank you to the author and Get Red PR for the gifted eArc in exchange for an honest review.

Debbie Windsor is obsessed with London’s Royal Family and collecting every piece of memorabilia she can buy. Her house has become so crowded with bins and stacks of magazines, her three children, Anne, Will, and Sarah, fear for her safety.

Will, newly hired on the reality TV show, Stuff, featuring a crew assisting hoarders to get clean houses and minds, nominates his mom, claiming his famous sister, Sarah will participate if she is chosen.

Sarah, of “Sarah Says” fame, gives household cleaning and organizing tips to all of NYC, and worries how this will affect her faltering career.

Anne, whose husband is a respected local business, has pressure from him not to tarnish his image by participating in the show.

All three siblings must find a way to join together to help their mother deal with her 20 year old divorce from their father in order to heal and clean.

House of Windsor is a fantastic family drama with excellent closure. With just enough humor and romance to keep it light, I enjoyed the depth of each characters and their growth and healing individually as well as together as a family. Uplifting and current!

Debbie Windsor lives in the U.S. now and is a hoarder. She is divorced from Alan Percy, of a wealthy family in the U.K. They met in London when Debbie attended university in London. She loved everything British and she and Alan fell in love just as she was preparing to return to the U.S. When she found herself pregnant, they got married. While Alan’s father was never fond of her, his mother took her under her wing.

Debbie gave birth to Sarah and not long after, became pregnant with twins, Will and Anne. Even though they all lived in a nice, large house, Debbie’s constant collecting of British items caused the marriage to break down. Now, the children are grown and they and Debbie live in the U.S.

Anne is married with children and Will and Sarah work in television. Will has a new job as a producer with the hoarder show, “Stuff,” so the family has decided to feature Debbie on the show in an effort to get her to clean out her house. Debbie is having a difficult time agreeing to get rid of many of her treasures, but finally agrees to please her children.

There is some humor in the story, but for the most part it’s about Debbie’s obsession with Princess Diana and the royal family. She lived in the U.K. at the time Diana and Charles married which correlated with Debbie’s marriage to Alan. We see a number of those comparisons in the book. I was drawn to the book because I am also a great fan of the British royal family and greatly admired Princess Diana. The characters act like true siblings which is nice and adds some laughs. It’s a clean book and a good story about hoarding that I think many readers will enjoy.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

A House Full of Windsor by Kristin Contino was not what I was expecting. I think that the blurb is a bit misleading. I was lead to believe it is something completely different and was disappointed with the twist.

It is a very serious book that deals with issues such as hoarding and I found that very interesting how devastating it is and how much it affects not just the hoarder but everyone around them as well.
This is a story about a family and their relationships, both with parent and siblings as well.
I couldn't connect with any of the characters, they all seemed a bit superficial and plain.
Also I thought that Sarah says tips were so basic and not inspiring at all.

I enjoy reading about royals when I come across news or gossip so the synopsis of this book immediately grabbed my attention!

A House Full of Windsor is such a fun book! Contino delves into heavier topics, but they're wrapped up in humor and the book stays on the lighter side.

I would say this book is primarily a family drama, with a sprinkling of romance and friendship. Told through the POVs of Sarah and her mom Debbie, we get flashbacks to Debbie's life in England in the 1980s/90s and what led to the current situation, as well as the present timeline in Philadelphia.

As the family struggles to help Debbie overcome her hoarding, we begin to understand just how much it's affected everyone throughout the years.

If you love the British royal family, this is a must read! But even if you don't, I guarantee you'll enjoy this story of a family's struggles, perseverance, and joys.

If your a fan of the Royal Family you'll enjoy A HOUSE FULL OF WINDSOR!

Spanning from 1980s London and the wedding of the century to a present day reality show we meet Debbie Windsor and how her messy past is shapes he family's future. Sarah is on a popular morning show and her Sarah Says segment is full of household advice, but what her viewers don't know is her mom is a hoarder. Sarah's mom Debbie has always been fascinated by the royal family and she was in London for Diana's wedding, but as he life changed she turned into a shopaholic for royal souvenirs and her house is overrun.

Sarah's brother gets a job in on a reality TV show - Stuff and gets his mom and sister involved what are they going to learn about their family...

This was an enjoyable book and I loved all of the Royal nostalgia and some of the funny collectibles that Debbie had. I liked that it was told in Sarah & Debbie's point of view and the family secrets and reality show aspect, plus a little bit of romance! It didn't reallly talk about the mental aspect of hoarding though.

“Sarah called it ‘sleek, modern style’ but I call it cold and boring. Would it kill him to put out a few picture frames or a nice Waterford vase”

If you thought (as I did) that this book was going to have royalty or a small charming town in the London Countryside, you would be wrong. Because even though the Royal names we have all come to know and love (Kate, Wills and George!) it’s actually about a hoarder in the USA. A hoarder and her 3 adult kids who sign her up for a reality show intervention.

Cute book, not a favourite of mine. I think it was the cringing I was doing at the level of hoarding. I did however love the tidbits about the royal family and all the names I love to read about 😉 Ms Windsor reminds me of my gram who is no longer with us. She loved all things Royal and collected every collectible she saw.

If you enjoy easy summer reads, you’ll enjoy it. Just wasn’t right for me. I do appreciate the gifted copy though in return for an honest review.

As someone who’s obsessed with all things England and grew up interested in the royal family, A House Full of Windsor really appealed to me. I didn’t know much about this one going in (I rarely read blurbs; I was drawn in by the gorgeous cover and Kristin Contino herself since I follow her on Instagram), and I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end.

At its heart, this book is about family and the messy, wonderful, painful, dysfunctional, loving dynamics experienced among all its members. I loved that we got a dual mother-daughter perspective, and I enjoyed how Sarah and Debbie’s stories - along with Debbie’s past and present - were woven together.

For a relatively short novel, A House Full of Windsor had a lot of depth. I found Debbie’s hoarding fascinating. I’ve never watched any of the hoarding shows, but I knew a hoarder in real life many years ago, which made it easy to picture Debbie’s house and lifestyle. I’m sure many of us can relate to the impulse to fill a void; it manifests in different forms for different people, and in Debbie’s case, it was hoarding. She attached sentimental value to things - specifically British and royal family things - and was afraid that without all her possessions, her memories would fade away. It was especially interesting how her life paralleled Princess Diana’s in many ways - living in London, married young and around the same time, having children around the same, divorcing around the same time. Those parallels and her ‘connection’ to Diana fuelled her hoarding.

Besides the family dynamics and the ties to England and the royals, I enjoyed the romantic storylines for both Debbie and Sarah. They found love when and where they least expected it, and had to overcome obstacles - largely internal struggles and past hurts and fears - to allow themselves to be happy.

A House Full of Windsor is a heartfelt, thought-provoking, and funny story about learning to let go of the past, the perils of keeping up appearances, and learning to let in love and new experiences.

This book was quite fun though not what I was expecting. I did like most of the characters (very indifferent to Alan).

Sarah, Will and Anna are the children of Debbie- who is a hoarder of royal collectibles and Alan- who wasn't a very attentive father.

When Will gets a job with hoarding show STUFF, he volunteers his mom and her house- without her knowledge. He also convinces his new boss, Pierce, to bring Sarah on as a consultant. (Pierce is a dreamy, Southern gentleman/charmer)

You can imagine the things that happen after that. The mom of course thinks she needs all the stuff she has and will NOT get rid of it. The kids start to fight on who has to placate the mom the best. They even threaten to have their dad take the house away from her.

What will it take for Debbie to see that things are not as important as family?

Thanks to Get Read PR for asking me to be part of the early release campaign and to @getredprbooks and @royallykristinc for an electronic advance reader copy exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis provided by Get Read PR:
❤️ Spanning from 1980s London to a present-day reality TV show, A HOUSE FULL OF WINDSOR explores how one woman’s messy past shapes her family’s future and how long-buried secrets and resentment must come to the surface for them to move on.

Debbie Windsor was always fascinated by royalty, but when her marriage fell apart, she turned to collecting to fill the void. Now the house is a royal mess, and Debbie’s health and safety is on the line. Even her etiquette expert daughter can’t fix this disaster, and when the entire family ends up on a hoarding show, everyone has something at stake.

💙With all the characters seeped in charm, I couldn’t help but root for them as they uncovered the true meaning of their unresolved and often buried problems. The story includes a couple of light romances, but the romances are vessels of growth rather than a central theme. My favorite parts were the flashbacks to the Royal family, specifically how Prince Charles and Princess Diana's life together paralleled the Percy/Windsor marriage.

Overall, I enjoyed this touching coming-of-age story. We often equate coming-of-age stories to teens moving to adulthood. But this book is a heartwarming reminder that this can happen at any stage in your life since the elements of a coming-of-age age story are personal growth, reflections, and the journey to improve oneself. Moving on from broken marriages and grown children can be just as messy as teens moving into adulthood.

I look forward to reading more from Kristin Contino. I’ve added her previous novel, The Legacy Of Us, to my TBR list.

The premise of this book was super interesting, and what first drew me in other than the title was the concept. All families have their struggles; what I thought this book did a great job of doing was taking the one main struggle (hoarding) and showing how it not only affected each family member, but also how it shaped their lives as well.

This book was a great length; the chapters were short enough to keep you intrigued, and the break up of today vs the past was engaging. However, what I felt prevented this book from being a 5⭐️ were the depth of characters. There were a number introduced in the book, but I felt some of the arcs fell a little flat. While maintaining screen time for each character, it really prevented the author from diving a bit deeper.

Loved the writing and the story. I enjoyed the flashbacks to the past more than the present timeline. Overall a cute story with more depth than I expected

A House Full of Windsor was a good read. In the book, Debbie Windsor is at least organized with her mountainous piles of royal souvenirs (my brother’s ex-mother-in-law was an organized hoarder with one room where you could sit down and the rest of the house had piles of boxes of stuff lining each wall. Quite a shock to see from my 12-year old’s eyes). Told from two viewpoints, Debbie’s and her daughter Sarah’s, the subject of hoarding is explored through these two very different perspectives.

Debbie’s an American who studies in London in the late 1970’s. She’s about to go home because she’s graduated, right before Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding, but she meets a guy in a bar who convinces her to extend her stay. The two start dating and Debbie ends up pregnant. The guy comes from upper crust society (he grew up at a place called Percy Hall, a vast estate just outside of London). So the two get married not long after the royal wedding, and Debbie follows Charles and Diana’s life, happy to be pregnant at roughly the same time as the princess.

But Debbie is also isolated, with her husband working hard to build his business of night clubs with his brother. So he’s rarely home. What does Debbie do with her free time? She shops for any object having to do with the royal family. She’s unhappy and her husband doesn’t seem to understand her. They limp along in their marriage until they have another pregnancy, this time twins, at around the same time as Prince Harry’s birth. But more children doesn’t fill the emptiness Debbie feels in her marriage, and they finally split in the early 1990’s, the same as Charles and Diana.

Sarah is Debbie’s oldest daughter and has a lifestyle blog and segment on New York morning TV. Her younger brother, Will, gets a job as an associate producer on a reality TV show about hoarders. His pitch to his new bosses is to offer up his mother as a case for the show. He recruits Sarah to help, and her boss agrees to let her do the show. Sarah and Will’s sister, Anne, doesn’t want anything to do with the show and adamantly opposes to “airing the dirty laundry” of her family. It takes some convincing, but finally, Anne agrees to approach Debbie. It takes quite a bit of cajoling to get her to open herself up to doing the show, but finally agrees.

There are two romantic subplots for Debbie and Sarah. Debbie’s is with an antique dealer in her hometown of Philadelphia, where she decamped with the kids following her divorce. Sarah’s has this flirty thing with the host of the hoarding show, which didn’t add nor detract from the story; I didn’t find it necessary either way. And of course, Debbie has to come to terms with the kids’ dad if she expects any closure.

While I really liked the book because of the 1980’s flashbacks and duh, it glancingly has something to do with the royal family. But I felt that the dealing with Debbie’s psychological state and helping “cure” her of her hoarding wasn’t serious enough. It seemed a little too cookie cutter, Lifetime Movie type of solution You can’t cure someone of a hoarding problem in a few weeks. That’s the only time I felt the book fell flat.

Overall, though, this book is a hit for it’s nostalgia, for putting a different face on to hoarders and their families, and showing the strength of family ties. Four out of five stars. Although, to be completely honest, all that talk about Diana, Princess of Wales, made me pick up a few more commemorative books to go with the two I’ve had since 1997 to add to my collection. 🙂

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. A House of Windsor will be released on July 13, 2021.

I confess I do not care at all about the Royal Family, but I saw the promise of potential whimsical plot points and the promise of romance so I thought this might be a cute read. This did not live up to all my expectations on those fronts (actually defied a lot of my expectations), but it was a cute read overall.

I confess I have rather mixed feelings about this one due to the fact that ultimately this is a book about hoarding and I am not sure real mental health was prioritized in this one due to the fact that all the answers came through reality television and things wrapped up too neatly. I have not quite settled my feelings on this.

Also, this book more than anything, is a family drama. It is ultimately about family relationships. I am not sure this fact was really elaborated on in the initial summary. It is not whimsical at all (don't lie to me, cover!), but actually a rather serious read in many ways. While this is not at all bad, it is not what I was expecting.

On some positive notes, I did like the sibling relationships and the work each character put it to their relationships with each other. Relationships take work and I think this showed this really well! I appreciate how flawed and real the characters felt at times.

So, what can I say, is it is a good read but I was quite misled in my expectations of what to expect from this one. Also, it needed WAY more romance, but that is just me.

This was such a unique premise, it was a little slow to get going but a great story.
I love watching hoarders and am very glad Kristin Contino did not add in flat cats or anything else gross. However, that really didn’t feel realistic. If you live in a hoard, there’s bound to be gross stuff.
I thought she did a good job showing how a parent’s hoarding can affect their children. I also loved how Debbie’s life mirrored Princess Diana’s.

Sarah Percy is the stylish New Yorker doling out lifestyle tips on Good Morning New York’s “Sarah Says” segment. But Sarah has a family secret she doesn’t want her viewers to know.

When her brother Will lands a job on the popular show 𝙎𝙩𝙪𝙛𝙛, a show about hoarders, let’s just say the “stuff” is about to hit the fan, and their lives are about to change.

Debbie Windsor is a compulsive shopper and hoarder. She likes to think of her stuff more as collectibles. Having lived in London for twenty years, Debbie followed the royals, primarily Charles and Diana, very closely. But after her divorce, she moved back to the States with her three children, Sarah, Will, and Anne. Now her house is stacked full, and her children are concerned for her safety. But when Will suggests she go on the show, Debbie is hurt and embarrassed.

Debbie says yes to the show, which is a huge step, but it starts to bring up a lot of the past as she worries that if her things are gone, what will she have left. We stroll down memory lane with her a bit, across the pond, to when she met her husband and started a family - before it all went wrong.

This story is an up-close, honest look into the life of a hoarder and how it affects not only their life, but their family’s too. Contino adds delightful elements of romance, family drama, and fun royal-watching; giving it a warm and endearing feel.

Thank you to @suzyapprovedbooktours and @royallykristinc for an invitation to this tour and a gifted digital copy.

Debbie Windsor is a shopaholic and compulsive hoarder, a secret her kids Sarah, Will, and Anne have tried to hide for years. Debbie was always fascinated by British royalty, and when her life started to mirror Princess Diana's, she turned to collecting royal souvenirs to fill the void. However, two decades later the house is a royal mess, and Debbie's safety is on the line. When Will gets a job on Stuff, a reality show about compulsive hoarding, he nominates his mother for an episode and promises that his famous sister will participate. Sarah and Debbie both agree, but everyone has something at stake whether the episode does or doesn't go off without a hitch.

This book was not what I expected it to be, but I really enjoyed how Debbie's life mirrored Princess Diana's and that the topic of compulsive hoarding was brought up, as that is something that I've never read about. Unfortunately, There were a lot of different characters but I didn't find any of them to be super likeable, and I found it a little confusing when some characters would only show up for a scene or two. There was way too much going on and the second half of the book felt like it was rushing to wrap everything up. I was also expecting more romance and wished we could've seen both romances develop a little more.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC, which I received in exchange for an honest review.

What a fabulous book by a new author to me, Kristin Contino. When Debbie’s collection of royal paraphernalia grows to extreme numbers and takes over her house, her children step in to help her find a way to part with treasures. This book delves into the intricacies of families and how an obsession by one member of the family can effect the lives of the remaining members. A tale of love and forgiveness with a little humor! I highly recommend this book and thank Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read an advanced copy!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this book in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This was my first book by Kristin Contino and enjoyed it. It wasn’t what I expected, and the subject matter can be heavy at times, but it was great to see the dynamic between Debbie and Alan, and then subsequently Debbie and Sarah. I loved the Royal aspect of this book and it feels like it could really be true, as there are people all over the world who loved Princess Diana as much as Debbie.

I do feel that there should be a better trigger warning in regards to the hoarding discussions in this book.

A House Full of Windsor is a delightful story of three adults kids trying to help their hoarder mom. This is my first book by Kristin Contino and I loved it!!!!!! It gives you a new insight into people who let stuff get out of control like that in their homes. I definitely have new empathy for hoarders now. I highly recommend this book.