For listeners of The House on Mango Street and We the Animals, this striking debut brings to life an unforgettable young narrator and the complicated, loving, cruel, and generous figures that make up her universe.

Sofia’s mother promises that soon she’ll have her own bedroom to decorate. Soon, too, she’ll be able to see her friends, go back to school, and eat the colorful, tempting cakes in the grocery store’s display case. For now, though, twelve-year-old Sofia lives with her mother and younger brother in their car. For now, Sofia’s days are a blur of freeways and strip malls as her mother searches for a safe place to park for the night. For now, Sofia tries to carve out a space and an identity for herself while grappling with her family’s disintegration.

This haunting and lyrical novel captures the fault lines of an existence marked by economic insecurity, exploring what it means to come of age during a moment of displacement. Beautiful, evocative, and emotionally charged, Amanda Rizkalla’s Hungered is an indelible ode to survival, memory, and the search for home in its many forms.

I received a complimentary copy of this audiobook from the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

This was a heavy and heartbreaking read. It’s the kind of book that, like it or not, sticks with you once finished, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s an honest, on-the-ground look at home and food insecurity, and it doesn’t flinch from the things that come with them. Racism, sexism, classism, the slow grinding weight of being treated like you don’t matter are all present here. What makes the whole thing land is that we get all of it through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl. That choice of perspective is what makes this book hit as hard as it does.

Sofia is twelve. She lives in a car with her mom and her little brother. The three of them spend their days moving between parking lots, gas stations, and side streets while her mom works and then tries to find somewhere safe enough to stop for the night. Her mom keeps promising that things will get better soon. Sofia will get her own room. She’ll be in school again. She’ll be around her friends. She’ll get to eat the bright, fancy cakes lined up at the grocery store that she always stops to look at. For now, though, Sofia is trying to figure out who she is and what kind of person she wants to be while her whole family is falling apart around her.

Sofia is a powerhouse. She’s one of those characters who walks in and just takes the book over. What I loved about her, and what makes this story work, is that she’s at this exact age where she’s still naive about a lot of things but also old enough to know when something is wrong. She can see her mom struggling. She can feel the looks people give them in public. She knows things are off. But she still has the hope of a kid, and that mix of awareness and innocence is devastating to read.

Rizkalla’s voice for Sofia is pitch-perfect. It actually sounds like a twelve-year-old. It doesn’t read like an adult writer trying to sound like a kid, which is a hard thing to pull off. Her observations are sharp, and they always feel like they belong to her age. Her interior life is rich, and it never feels overwritten. I bought every line.

The other characters get the same kind of care. Her mom, her brother, and the people they brush up against are all written like full people, not just supporting pieces. Nobody in this book is reduced to their circumstances. They’re not symbols or statistics, they’re just people trying to survive a country that doesn’t seem to have room for them.

This isn’t a book that offers easy answers, and it doesn’t tie things up with a bow. The ending doesn’t pretend that what these characters are dealing with can be fixed by a single good day or a single act of kindness. There’s hope in here, but it’s a complicated kind of hope. The truth is that the cycle this family is stuck in isn’t going to break easily, not while the country looks the way it currently does, and the book respects the reader enough to let that sit.

I listened to the audio and the narration by Ana Isabel Dow was perfect. She captured Sofia’s voice so well that I felt like I was sitting next to her. If you’re an audio person, that’s a strong way into this story.

This isn’t a light beach read. It’s the kind of book that asks you to sit in something uncomfortable, to look at something you might be tempted to look away from, and to remember that there are real kids out there living the version of this story that isn’t fiction. If you’re up for that, and you want a beautifully written novel that puts a real person at the center of a conversation we don’t have often enough, read this one. It’s a powerful read, and it stays with you.