Stevie Green has moved back home to La Jolla, California. After what happened in high school, she promised herself she would never come back. But after what happened in her 20s and early 30s, she didn’t have anywhere else to go, so she went back home. Her mother asked her to help clean out her house, so she could move to a smaller house. And Stevie did such a good job helping her mother declutter that her mother suggested she start a business. So Stevie did.

Stevie set up her decluttering business and started posting on Instagram. And she added a profile on an organizing site, and she was getting good reviews from her clients. There was just one organizer ahead of her, Ursula. Stevie made it her goal to crush Ursula on the app. But she wasn’t sure how to reach that goal.

And then things start happening for her. She runs into Chris, once her best friend in school, and Stevie thought that she’d done the thing that ruined her life and wanted her to apologize for it. Instead, Chris just said that she hadn’t been the one to do that to her and walked back to her office across the street from the coffee shop. Then Stevie’s sister Bonnie got dumped by her longtime boyfriend and moved back home too.

At first, Stevie isn’t interested in living with Bonnie. And when their mother suggested that Bonnie work with Stevie, she isn’t interested in that either. But then Bonnie shows Stevie how to bump up her Instagram game, to create more exciting posts and get more followers, and Stevie starts to see how maybe she could help her in the decluttering business. They meet with some clients, and Bonnie’s outspoken honesty is a good balance to Stevie’s cool, calming presence. They even go meet with Brad Rose, Stevie’s high school boyfriend, to talk about a decluttering project.

Outwardly, Stevie is doing well. She’s gotten rid of all the things that were holding her back, choosing clothes in only black or white, creating a clean and streamlined life. She’s running every morning. She’s stopped drinking. She’s working on her project (it’s too soon to call it a book, but maybe someday). And she may go out with Brad again. He’s a good-looking guy, with a successful surfing school. And her rating is going up on the organizing app, so soon she’ll overtake Ursula and be the number one organizer in La Jolla. Everything will be perfect. And that thing that happened in high school won’t matter anymore. And she won’t wake up hungover next to random men or random women anymore. And she won’t obsess over whether or not Chris has texted back yet.

At least, that’s what she tells herself. Because when you remove all the things from your life that are a no, then what you are left with is who you really are. Stevie believes that. It’s what she tells her clients, and it’s what she believes. It’s what she wants to believe. It’s what she tries to believe. What will it take to make it come true for Stevie?

Getting Clean with Stevie Green is a sly study of one woman’s journey to find herself. After a series of bad decisions, Stevie is back home ready to find out what she’s been running from, and her willingness to show up brings with it an infectious energy. As an unreliable narrator of her own life, Stevie is strong and vulnerable, hopeful and imperfect. She has made mistakes, but she’s trying to be better. She’s trying to live clean. It’s just that she can’t until she fully deals with her past, and doing that will take all her strength.

At times clever and irreverent, at times heart-breaking, Getting Clean with Stevie Green is a surprisingly complicated tale of growing up and cleaning up old messes. I know I could empathize with Stevie’s pain, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. As with the last Swan Huntley book I read (The Goddesses), I can’t say that I liked all the characters, but I think they will stick with me for a long time. So while this book reads quickly and seems pretty straightforward, it’s deceptively complex emotionally and left me with a lot to think about and feel about. Also, I really need to clean out the basement. And my closets.

Egalleys for Getting Clean with Stevie Green were provided by Gallery Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.