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I have always enjoyed Orson Scott Card's forays into the more-or-less real world. While Homebody certainly has its fantastical elements, its setting is modern-day Greensboro, North Carolina, aka my home town. It is always great fun to read a novel set in a place that you know really well, as you can vividly imagine the setting and frequently think "yup, got that one right" when the author references local culture.

Besides the setting, I enjoyed the set-up: Don, a lonely former contractor, having lost his family and most of his savings to a legal battle followed by a tragic accident, takes solace in renovating abandoned houses. The house he chooses is a once-magnificent mansion that has since been cut up into student apartments and finally abandoned all together. As I have dedicated a fair amount of time to fixing up my very old house, I enjoyed the loving descriptions of the house and its construction, as well as Don's renovation work. Since this is an Orson Scott Card book, there is something a bit strange and otherworldly about the house, and soon enough that becomes the focus of the story.

My one complaint about the book is that Don, who was deeply wounded by his ex-wife's treachery and the terrible accident that claimed the lives of both his ex-wife and daughter, falls in love remarkably easily. Early in the book, he begins a physical relationship with the realtor who handles the house sale, and within days of knowing her is talking as if he is in love and responsible for her happiness. Next he allows Sylvie, a squatter who came with the house, to stay. Over a period of a few weeks their relationship develops into something with fondness, but then, he once again makes the leap to love and deep emotional connection with very little notice. At the point where he and Sylvie start to talk all starry-eyed, I thought it was a bit ridiculous. I will say, that by the end of the book, I believed in the relationship and that the conclusion was pretty satisfying. Overall, a fun book!