declutter to create space inside

Jane Brown gave up her Hollywood dreams to organize. She had worked for an agent and then in development, hoping to put her classical literature degree to good use. Instead she got overlooked and disillusioned and left the industry for something new. Now she works as a professional organizer in L.A., so she works with a lot of actors and influencers.

Working as an organizer gives her structure. She works with a different client almost every day, working on an over-stuffed closet or a neglected room until everything has a place. She helps clients sort through their stuff and find a way to keep it clean and sorted, whether it’s the dog popular on social media or the actress on the popular teenage witch show from the 1990s.

Jane craves that peace that comes from organizing, because her feelings are a mess. Growing up with a brother who was disabled meant that more or her parents’ attention went to him, and she finds herself with a hole inside that stuff can’t fill. And she tries. Jane quietly takes something from every job she works, storing it in her garage. Meanwhile, she struggles to connect with her live-in boyfriend or her co-workers.

But despite loving her job, she can’t stop feeling unfulfilled. She is critical of herself and hard to please. She blames her boyfriend and asks him to move out, but then she misses him. But as she spends time with her clients, she realizes that she wants to be more open to life. Jane tries to be more open in her yoga class. She journals. She finds herself opening up at work, with her coworkers and her clients, starting to make friends. As she declutters her negative feelings, Jane finds the happiness she had always been craving.

Mess is a character-driven novel about clearing out the things that are no longer working for you to make room for what you want. There is a certain amount of Hollywood insider information, but the story here is about the emotional life of Jane. Her journey felt to me like a quarter-life crisis, and it brought me back to a time in my 20s when I was struggling with self-criticism and an unsure future.

I feel like some of the marketing for this book (the cover and the description especially) make it seem like a funnier book than it is, but I still enjoyed the story. I liked Jane’s transformation, and I felt hopeful for her at the end of the book. Because there does seem a gap between what this book looks like and what it is, I’d recommend reading an excerpt to see if it’s something you’d like to read before you buy it. But I do not regret my time with Mess. I really enjoyed this book, and I hope it can find other readers who love it too.

Egalleys for Mess were provided by Harper Perennial through NetGalley, with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.