I liked this book and it gave me emotions for sure. The characters were a lot different than normal characters and I liked that. it was a bit slow though.

Thank you to the publisher, Sword and Silk Books/ Independent Book Publishers Association, for providing me with this e-arc in exchange for an honest review!

A Feeling Like Home by Haleigh Wenger is such a fluffy and simple contemporary romance with deep moments. It was a quick read that definitely made me smile but made me think hard too. This book would be perfect for getting out of a reading slump.

Paige is sent to live with her sister when she's caught vandalizing a building at home. Her parents tell her that she needs to change and become better otherwise they'll send her to boarding school. it doesn't help that her dad is dying and she's apparently making his illness worse. But Paige starts to improve especially with the help of her friends and her sister's neighbor, Joey.

Overall, Paige was an interesting character with a good amount of growth. The romance was written well and the plot was simple but captivating. I love the emphasis put on the importance of family. I wish it was explained why Paige started tagging even if you can assume it. I did find Paige a little selfish and frustrating but it got better as the story progressed. Joey on the other hand is so sweet and an easy character to like.

A stunning romance that will break your heart and piece it back together again.

A Feeling Like Home follows Paige Williams, a sixteen year old who’s changing life has caused her more than a little trouble recently. When enough is enough, her parents send her to Texas to live with her older sister, who will not put up with poor behavior. Paige is determined to show her family that she is capable of being a better person, and has a goal to get back to her home town before she’s sent to boarding school. But, when she meets a kind-hearted boy, does she really want to go back home?

Overall, I thought A Feeling Like Home was an emotional and sweet read. I didn’t know what to expect going into it, but by the time I had finished, I shed more than a few tears. Paige was a fun character to follow, and although she feel flat at times, I enjoyed watching her grow. The romance was well-written and the plot was structured perfectly. Highly recommend to teenagers!

I loved this story! The characters were amazing a 5 star read for sure, I really loved the whole family and the support they showed to Paige and her mother after her dads death.. It really showed the truly meaning and unity of family and how they will always be there for you when times are tough I really loved reading this heartwarming story.

Where do I start? I went through it all with this book. I laughed, I cried, and I swooned - specifically for Joey. Their conversations always had me smiling. Haleigh Wenger pulled on my heartstrings. I definitely would read this book again and again. And I'd recommend this book to anyone that'd listen to me!

3/5
Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A Feeling Like Home by Haleigh Wenger is a quick read that's good for getting out of a reading slump. When sixteen-year-old Paige Wiliams keeps vandalizing people's property her parents send her away in fear of how much extra stress she's giving her father who has Crohn's disease. Now living in Texas with her older sister she's determined to convince her parents that she's changed and that she should come back home after the summers over rather than go to the boarding school that her mom keeps looming over her head. Paige befriends a boy her age in the neighborhood whos the complete opposite of herself. Joey is straightlaced and shy while Paige is rebellious and bold. When the two's paths keep intertwining things start getting complicated and Paige starts questioning if she'd rather go back to Washington or stay in Texas.

I liked this book but it didn't wow me. Personally, I disliked the main character Paige and found her selfish and frustrating. I don't want to spoil for anyone but there are just certain actions Paige does throughout the book and it made me start to dislike her character. Joey was a fun and sweet character and I really liked him though I wish we got to see more of the odd dynamic he and his parents had. Overall this story was simple and sweet with a few emotional bits and I did shed a tear or two during it. I would definitely recommend this story for people who're looking for a fun and sweet summer romance to read. Once again thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing this ARC.

Unfortunately I did not enjoy this as much as I though I would.

Feeling like domestic takes after the story of Paige after her guardians sends her to live with her sister for the summer. The reason for it? Paige fair need to have fun and finished up vandalizing some walls with spray paint. Her guardians signs her up in a building extend to apologize and there she met Joey, a dependable young person, a total inverse of Paige. Opposite attracts opposite they say and I did enjoyed how Paige and Joey reinforced together but my reading session was nearly crushed on the distinctive choices Paige have all through the story. For me, she appears to be the rebellious, defiant girl who faults anybody for her botches and would as it were alter when a major fiasco hit her.

This book was so cute. It had so many emotions and twists. In some ways it kind of reminded me of the After series. I loved the relationship with her nephews. I love the romance element also. At some parts it was very sad but also very joyous.

Thanks to Booksirens, Netgalley and Sword and Silk for providing me an eArc.

Now let's get to the point! I didn't quite enjoyed it as much as I thought I would. Maybe its the character. Maybe its the plot, I really don't know.

Feeling like home follows the story of Paige after her parents sends her to live with her sister for the summer. The reason for it? Paige just want to have fun and ended up vandalizing a few walls with spray paint. Her parents signs her up in a building project to repent and there she met Joey, a responsible teenager, a complete opposite of Paige.

Opposite attracts opposite they say and I did enjoyed how Paige and Joey bonded together but my reading session was almost destroyed on the different decisions Paige have throughout the story. For me, she seems to be the typical rebellious daughter who blames anyone for her mistakes and would only change when a major disaster hit her.

The plot is also makes no sense for me. I get some parts and felt bad but at the same time I just didn't vibe with it.

It feels like I have more rants than on this than I anticipated.

**e-ARC received by the author and publisher of NetGalley in an exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.**
Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Name of the publication: Sword and Silk Books
Date finished: July 8, 2021
Pub Date: Aug 3, 2021
Review:

A Felling Like Home is an easy to read book. This book is also a good read to get rid of reading slump. Started slow but the character growth is everything. Kind of enemies to friends to lovers trope. But some scene don’t really make sense, Joey is cute though.

Paige is sent to her sister’s home in scorching Texas to nanny her nephews and spend time as a teen construction volunteer as a punishment for vandalism she and her boyfriend perpetrated in her hometown. Her father is home battling Crohn’s disease for which he was recently hospitalized. Paige fears that her delinquent behavior has caused her father’s condition to deteriorate, and she struggles with guilt. Because of her part in the vandalism, she has decided to breakup with her boyfriend, who is also her best friend. But she is very conflicted about this breakup. In Texas, she meets straight laced Joey, who immediately rubs her the wrong way. She also makes friends, Callie and Jen, two local girls who are also volunteering on the building project, and proceeds to experience a summer that will bring both difficulty, growth, and some surprising happiness.

There are some excellent aspects to this book. Paige’s relationship with her parents, as well as the family dynamics feel authentic. As the youngest child in a large family, she feels misunderstood and not as valued as her older siblings. The relationship with her father, as well as the fear and guilt about his illness also feel genuine, as do the new friendships with Jen and Callie. There are also some sweet romantic scenes and some typical teen angst about the love triangle she didn’t anticipate.

Unfortunately, there are some ways in which this book disappoints. Although Paige is presented as a troublemaker, it’s clear from the beginning that the magnitude of her delinquency is relatively minor and that she is basically a good kid that made a bad decision. Because of this, her extremely antagonistic attitude towards Joey doesn’t ring true. Her personality doesn’t quite match up with the unkind way of perceiving and treating Joey. Much of the dialogue between the two seems stilted and forced. Also, the severe illness and ultimate impact of Crohn’s Disease could have been better explained, and her resulting emotions shown more in depth. The impact of her father’s illness merits more emotion than dealing with feelings for a summer crush. Also, the author’s overuse of words like crazy, lunatic, manic, and insane rely on outdated and stereotypical images of mental illness to describe characters and plot related situations that could be much better explained with less stigmatized language. Finally, Joey’s bicultural identity could have played a much larger part in this book, as positive portrayals and authentic introspection of multicultural teens are desperately needed in modern YA literature.

This is the perfect romance novel for anyone! I love the characters, the plot, and the conflict that caused the characters to meet. If you ever decide to make a second novel, I cannot wait!!

A feeling like home by Haleigh Wenger is told from the perspective of a teenager who has been sent away from home to her sister in Texas. Paige has been feeling for a long time that her family has no love or attention left for her, the youngest child of the family, regardless of her achievements. If readers can overcome the plot errors, the poor secondary character development and the repetitive nature of Paige's narrative they will see that the book raises quite a few important issues such as: parents of teens need to communicate; whether a friendship is a romance and whether to stay in the relationship for the sake of the other's feelings; and hiding serious medical conditions from your loved ones can cause them to blame themselves. Teen angst, romance, family dynamics, serious medical conditions and death... all were introduced to the plot but I do not feel any were given enough drama to make this book more than a light read.

Really enjoyed A feeling like home by Haleigh Wenger, i liked the characters a lot as i have an imaginative mind so i like to delve in the books i read, the storyline was easy to read and i thoroughly enjoyed the pace of the book, there was not one part which i didn't enjoy reading. Very interesting and easy to fall into. I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend.

I finished this book a few days ago and this is what I’m still thinking about:

I never related to Paige as a character.
The plot/story didn’t really make sense.

Let’s start with Paige, since this was my biggest problem. We’re led to believe there’s some BIG reason she’s being sent to boarding school, but it never comes up. We’re TOLD she’s a delinquent, but she never shows it. If anything Paige acts like most teenagers, grumpy, angsty and annoyed by her family. The Paige we’re shown and live with and the ‘bad’ Paige are two completely different people. By the time the ‘bad’ Paige comes out we’ve sat with the normal teen Paige for so long it feels like a personality change.

Paige never felt real to me. I think we were supposed to believe that she was a self-sabotaging teen, but I never felt that until it was too late. Paige is obviously going through a lot and complains about it, but never talks to anyone. When she does open up it’s never explored beyond the surface level for so long that by the time we have some kind of deep conversation it still feels lacking.

The very first line of the summary says that Paige self-sabotages. But that rarely happens. Stuff happens to Paige and she handles it badly. It’s not really self-sabotage to me.

I could continue with Paige, but I’ve said enough I think. Let’s move on to the plot/overall story.

It didn’t work for me. From the first page to the last I didn’t like how the story developed. I didn’t like how Paige interacted with the other characters (who were all mostly one dimensional), I didn’t like how Paige spent her time in Texas (doing mostly nothing). And I absolutely hated the love triangle. Yes, there’s a love triangle (a stupid one, but one nonetheless). I didn’t like the build up with Joey. I hated it to be honest. And the last third of the book or so almost made me stop reading.

When Paige’s dad has his surgery it felt like a lot. To bring all the new characters in and have a million things going on felt like too much. And it was. The twins are two of the most annoying characters ever and the fact that they have free reign to terrorize Paige made me angry (can you tell I’m an only child, or were they too much for 18 year old boys?). I hated that all of Paige’s sibling, aside from Allison, were defined by one personality trait.

When the family is back in Seattle for the second time (to avoid spoilers) it felt pointless all over again. The entire plot of the second trip to Seattle was unnecessary for the story. We didn’t know these characters enough to feel bad for any of them. At least I didn’t.

Everything that happened after this second trip to Seattle was just rushed and I hated how Joey was so quick to forgive Paige for her screw-up.

Weird inconsistencies and word choice. I’ll go with the plot inconsistencies first.

In Chapter One Paige lets us know that Justin (Allison’s husband) taught her how to play Phase 10 and let her win. Later (I forgot to mark the chapter), Paige lets us know that she started playing Phase 10 at age 5. So, since Allison is 12 years old, we can assume Justin was her high school friend/boyfriend. But then we find out later that Allison had dated the same boy all through high school and obviously it didn’t work out. It made it sound like she met Justin after she broke up with her high school boyfriend. Which story doesn’t add up then?

When Paige flies back from Seattle (the first time), Joey picks her up from the airport. This is a surprise to Paige. They spend most of the day together and Paige even convinces him to graffiti something with the spray paint she conveniently slipped into her purse. Here’s the problem with that. Paige anticipated Allison picking her up (and there’s no way she’d risk having Allison see a can of spray paint on her). Paige tells us she moved the spray paint from her carry-on to her purse. She would have had to do this after she got her luggage and while worrying that Aliison might see her. So why would she do this at all? If she thought Allison was picking up her, why did Paige think the spray paint would be needed?

At one point Paige passes out and sees Dr. Abebe (in Texas). Later, when she’s back in the hospital to check on her stomach issues, she recognizes Dr. Abebe as her dad’s doctor. This makes no sense as Paige is still in Texas and Dr. Abebe has no reason to fly to Seattle to check on Paige’s dad.

There were also a few things that a quick Google search would have cleared up. Like not taking spray paint on an airplane (but I guess Paige could have lied about it). Paige’s dad says his colon surgery removed about 15 feet of it. The colon itself is the large intestine which is only about five feet. (I’m not saying he didn’t have 15 feet of something removed, but it wasn’t just his colon).

Toward the end of the book we find out Paige bought spray paint in a moment of weakness. According to Texas state law you have to be 18 to buy spray paint. Sure, the city could be an exception, but again, we don’t know that.

I honestly think rearranging a few things would have made the story make more sense.

First, we needed more about Paige from the start. We needed a teen with a bad attitude and anger about her circumstance. Then it would have been easier to see her grow and change. Second, early on Paige should have stolen a can of spray paint from the build-up site. This would have showed us her impulsive nature and bad decision making. She can keep it hidden. Depending on the story Allison could find it or not.

After dad goes in for surgery the team almost loses him. This shocks Paige into finally talking to someone about her own stomach issues. When Paige is diagnosed she can flip out, worried that she might end up nearly dying like her dad. This is when she can go on her spray painting binge (and it also makes it more relatable because it’s something that’s happening directly to her, not to someone in her family). She can still ruin things with Joey and whatever to let them reconcile later.

Paige goes to Seattle to see her dad’s specialist. This gets her to reconcile with her family. Paige opts to finish the summer in Texas and finally makes good decisions. Her parents decide that she doesn’t have to go to boarding school. Joey forgives her. The end.

Toward the end of the story we get the first use of strong language. Which was disappointing. The story had been “clean” up to that point and then it all came at once. It was all mild sh*t and d*amn I think. But it was weird to not drop any of that until the end.

Something else I didn’t touch on was a lot of words that were used incorrectly and I had to look up to make sure there weren’t unusual/rare definitions I wasn’t familiar with. There usually wasn’t. These weird word choices pulled me from the story and out of the word being created.

Overall I felt the story could have been tightened up. But it was a relatively easy read. It touched on chronic illness, which isn’t strongly represented, but it had flaws, leaving me unsure if I could recommend it or not.

I enjoyed this book as a fan of YA. It delves into topics not usually covered— chronic illness— although it did not fully uncover the day to day impacts of living with chronic illness, which is likely due to the target age and other topics, like romance and behavioral challenges. I fell into the story easily and was reminded of my own high school days. I wish there was a little more character development between Paige and her friends (Callie and Jen) as well as her brothers, but other than that, it was a good YA read!

This YA gives you all the feels - sixteen year old Paige is the queen of self-sabotage. After getting in trouble, she has to spend the summer away from home in TX at her sisters house. I loved her struggle with figuring out who she was and watching her learn that the choices you make each day matter but it’s ultimately up to you. Had such a crush on Joey and (of course) her dad’s health struggles really got me 😭

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5 (and an A+ for the gorgeous cover!!)

Loved it! Characters are great, and the story (and characters) are really easy to fall into. The cover art is beautiful.

A Feeling Like Home is the story of Paige, who has a tendency to act out when things get too difficult to handle. Her father's illness, a recent break-up, and the fear that she may also be sick become too much for her, and her parents send her to spend the summer in Texas with her sister. Will the change of scenery, a home building project, and a potential love interest be enough to turn things around?

A Feeling Like Home is a thoughtful story with a lot of heart behind it. The author mentions in the afterward drawing inspiration from her own struggles with chronic illness, and it is well represented in the book. I thought this book did a good job balancing the heavier subject matter with lighter moments, especially with the growing bond between Paige and her sister/sister's family and the romance aspect of the book. The story is written in a true to the character's age manner, which I found refreshing. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to fellow YA fans.

Thanks to Netgalley and Sword and Silk Books for this ARC; this is my honest and voluntary review.

A Feeling Like Home has a great premise and I think with some more editing it could be a more enjoyable read. I did struggle with the structuring of some sentences, in particular the dialogue between Paige and Joey where it felt a little too contrived.
Having said that, I think it’s a really important story especially as Crohn’s isn’t something I’ve ever read about in YA books.