How to Find Your Way Home by Katy Regan is a dual timeline family drama that explores how situations can impact individuals through the stories of two siblings. Following their parents' divorce daughter Emily and her brother Stephen find themselves on two different paths. After ten years of separation, including a time when Stephen is unsheltered, they are reunited. This story explores their trials and joys in an ultimately heartwarming, if somewhat unrealistic, way.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

This was a book that I din't expect to move me as much as it did.

The exploration of sibling relationships is slower paced but it will hit you hard. It's about home and family and makes you rethink what both of those mean, and examines homelessness in a compelling way. I didn't see the end coming but it was perfection.

Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for the copy to review.

HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY HOME tells the story of Stevie and his little sister Emily, who were inseparable as children, living among the marshes and nature of Canvey Island.

When Stevie is sixteen, and Emily twelve, a tragic event affects their family and causes a strain on their relationship.

This story pulled at my heartstrings as themes of family and the dysfunction that tears it apart, homelessness, mental health and secrets.

*many thanks to Berkley/Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

This was such a beautiful book. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and I love how the birds and nature were tied into the story. Very well written. Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for an ARC.

How to Find Your Way Home by Katy Regan is a beautiful story of the love between a brother and sister, the journey toward reconciliation and forgiveness and the past trauma that occurred to tear them apart. Emily sees her brother and does everything she can to help them reconnect. Stephen has been homeless for years and this opportunity to reconnect is more than just seeing his sister - or having a safe space to stay. It is chance for hope, healing and belonging. Very powerful and uplifting story! Highly recommend!

Thank you to NetGalley, Berkley Publishing Group, and author Katy Regan for this digital review copy for me to read and enjoy. As always, my reviews are voluntary and my opinions are my own.

A warm, life-affirming novel about what happens when a sister discovers that the brother she hasn't seen in more than a decade is homeless, and in reconnecting with him learns the true meaning of belonging, from the author of Little Big Love.

When they were children, Emily and her brother Stephen were inseparable. Running wild through the marshes of Canvey Island, it was Stephen who taught her to look for the incandescent flash of a bird's wings, who instilled within her a love and respect for nature's wonders. But one June day, their lives came crashing down around them and fate forced them apart.

Fifteen years later, Emily should be happy. She has a sun-filled garden flat, a lovely boyfriend, and a job that is supposed to let her make a difference. But instead she's lost, always on the lookout for her brother's face, and worn down, spending her days working at the local housing offices having to turn away more applicants than she can help.

And then one day, her brother walks through the door.

Stephen has been living in and out of shelters for the last decade and the baggage between them is heavy. But Emily is overjoyed to see her brother again and invites him to come live with her. In an attempt to rebuild their relationship, they embark on a birding adventure together. Amid the soft calls of the marsh birds, they must confront the secrets of all that stands between them--even as they begin to realize that home may just be found within.

I really enjoyed this very heartwarming book about family and the things we do to and want to do to protect them.
I loved the relationship building in the book and the insight we get in to Stephen and Emily’s life growing up.
This book really filled my heart with all kinds emotions. I highly recommend grabbing this one.

This book left me emotional and wanting more! I enjoyed the dual timelines to really gain even more perspective on their relationship. The writing was excellent.

What could have been better?
The main character Emily and her savior self was super annoying, but that may have been the point? I just wish she had been called out more and had more development in regards to looking at her values and her need to help others. I just wanted deeper discussion

Also it switches from first to 3rd person for perspective, which I found weird.

What I enjoyed?
This book was such an emotional read in many ways.

I think it illustrates how people in society so easily dehumanize those who are homeless, how people immediately distance themselves, how people who are homeless are constantly blamed (when many are one paycheck away from not being able to pay rent) and how hard it is to get assistance.

I liked the commentary on how our choices, especially in partners, affect our children, how we need to protect them and how things spiral.

I liked the past perspectives of the siblings.

I liked the commentary of prison and the lack of resources we have for people, how we expect things just to go back to normal for them and how dangerous that is.

This book definitely pulled on my heart strings and made me think of my own biases 😭

I liked this one!

A huge thank you to Netgalley and Berkley Pub for my gifted copy of How to Find Your Way Home.
I won this ARC copy through a Giveaway bundled with two other Berkley titles. If you are someone who never enters giveaways thinking you'll never win- do it!

What I Liked-

*The Cover- This cover is beautiful and fits the book so well.

*The Sibling Relationship- I loved the relationship between Emily and Stephen. The bond they had growing up as children. Them coming back together as adults after all that time apart.

*The Way The Book Makes You Think- In How to Find Your Way Home Stephen is homeless. It really made me examine how I view the homeless and realize that everyone has a story.

*The Twist- The twist at the end of this book was very surprising.

Why This Book Lost Stars-

* I wasn't always fully engaged. I'm not saying in any way that I was bored. I wasn't. The characters by themselves were lacking. I was invested in the relationships but not in the characters individually.

Overall- Middle of the road. I'm glad I read this book.

I love sibling stories and this one of siblings reconnecting after a horrible incident in their childhood gave me all the warm-hug feelings. Siblings Stephen and Emily were the best of friends, doing everything together, including watching the birds. Stephen has a passion for birds, especially the Swifts, who migrate back to their English village the same week every year. Emily and Stephen would spend many hours in the marshes watching the birds, sometimes even with their dad. When the mum and dad get a divorce and their mum marries their dad’s best friend, the family dynamics are never the same.

Emily, now an adult, and working for a housing agency that helps homeless people, hopes every day to see her brother walk through their front doors. You see, Stephen has been homeless ever since he was released from prison several years ago. Emily hasn’t seen him since she was in college and doesn’t like to think about the day that Stephen was sent to prison. Instead, so hopes that someday, she will be able to be the heroic sister that gets him back on his feet.

Stephen hasn’t been able to get a footing on life since his four years in prison. Drugs and alcohol wreaked havoc on his life and he’s been living life on the streets ever since. When he realizes he can’t take another day of it and there is more to life than street life, he takes a chance on walking into the local housing agency for some help.

The event that led to Stephen going to prison is alluded to throughout the story, but you don’t get a full grasp of the event until nearly the end of the novel. What led up to that event and the final incident have affected their whole family ever since. Forgiveness is a large theme in this story and one that isn’t so easily given.

“Stephen has spent so long yearning for his mum, for her love and forgiveness, that now, even if she were to forgive him, he was starting to wonder if he could forgive her.”

Katy Regan, HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY HOME
As a bird lover, I enjoyed the explanations of the various birds and Stephen and Emily’s Bird Bucket List. I actually wasn’t sure what a Swift was so I had to look them up. They remind me of a barn swallow here in Iowa. But, his passion for birds and his deep love for his sister warmed me to Stephen and I made me root for him in the story. Emily’s grandiose living surprised me and made me a bit curious about her, but when the story comes together in the end, it all makes sense.

A lot of the story is told in flashbacks to Stephen and Emily’s childhood intermixed with the present day. There is a lot of pain and hurt in this family and it manifests itself in adulthood in many ways. Emily can’t seem to stay with a guy for more than a few months. Stephen can’t stop living on the streets. Their dad has moved on with a new family and the mum is stuck in a neverending cycle and can’t find a way out. When one final secret comes out, there is the fear that everything that the story has built up to will be for naught. But, I appreciated how Regan brought the story to a conclusion. I wasn’t sure I could handle any more disappointment at the end. So, even though the ending isn’t sad, it’s left open and hopeful of a future with no more secrets and lots of healing.

Fans of family dramas, stories with long-held secrets, and characters to root for will enjoy Regan’s newest fiction novel set in her home, the United Kingdom.

I had an opportunity to read an advance copy of this book through Book Browse’s First Look program.
I enjoyed this book tremendously for its somewhat less typical portrayal of a brother/sister relationship (a nice change from the usual sisters, female friends, mother/daughter or romantic pairings). Steve’s protectiveness of his sister seemed a bit over the top in some cases, but I liked both him and Emily enough for it to work. I thought the portrayal of both the homeless and those working in public housing was empathetic and honest about the brokenness the system.
The “twist” at the end was a bit of a surprise to me - though I thought E’s response could have used a bit more fleshing out - and I liked that the relationship with Alicia was left open ended instead of tied up with a bow.
The descriptions of the birds and marshes were a treat - one of my favorite parts of the book. I now want to go see the swifts and citrus finch for myself.

Special thanks to Berkeley Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC.

I thought this book was beautiful and a good book club read. Its about a sister who has not seen her brother in many years and every day she searches for him in a crowd. One day, he walks into the office she works at in London, homeless.

Emily and Steven are their names. Emily takes him home but the unsettling reason they have not spoken in 15 years hangs heavy and needs to be talked about because Steven was Emily's idol and as they were kids running through marsh lands where there are plenty of birds, Steven is homeless yes and don't judge him quickly because he grows on you in this book. He is a lover of birds, as is Emily and he watches them, draws them and sells them. As the book goes con you see how precious he is. What threw me a bit was the story was told in first person and third person narratives but you quickly get the idea.

This is a beautiful uplifting hard to read story for a depressive like me because its about home, and that doesn't always mean a roof over your head. This story was beautiful I do admit, but sometimes to a person like me it leaves me feeling good, than bad because I wish my family was very different.

4 stars for the knowledge on birds and just a heart warming read. I cried ugly tears but again, I wish for family to end up happy and that doesn't happen.

This book is great! Would definitely recommend. Thanks so much to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

How to Find Your Way Home, author Katy Regan's sixth novel, is a beautifully crafted and deeply moving examination of a family torn apart by betrayals, lies, and alliances, and the impact they have upon the individual members' lives.

In a third-person narrative, Regan details events beginning in 1987 when newborn Emily Adele Nelson was introduced to her older brother, Stephen. Those chapters alternate with a first-person account from Emily, commencing in March 2018, as well as another third-person narrative focused on Stephen that correlates with what Emily is experiencing. The siblings grew up exploring the English marshes and the birds that inhabited them. Stephen was a typical energetic boy, but also sensitive and thoughtful. And totally enamored with all kinds of birds. Tagging after and wanting to emulate him, Emily shared his devotion and, with their father, birdwatching and studying about birds were integral to their lives.

But Regan establishes at the outset that Emily, living in London, is preparing to celebrate her thirty-first birthday, a day that will bring her "another year further from the day in '99 Stephen was taken from me." She searches the internet in vain for him or a mention of him, a clue to his whereabouts. She is in the latest in a long string of short-lived relationships and, by all outward appearances, seems to be a happy woman with friends and a stable career. But she reveals that she "can't do life, you see, everything feels wrong; I can't make plans or commit to anything, I can't love or be loved. Not while there's this piece of me missing, this giant hole in my heart."

Stephen has spent the past fifteen years living on and off the streets, his latest homeless stint having spanned six weeks. Now thirty-five years old, he has served time in prison and battled substance abuse, but is currently sober. He has learned how to navigate an unwelcoming world and survive harsh conditions, always taking solace from the birds he still loves. He sells a few sketches of them to earn money. Two things have kept him alive: hope and his beloved birds. "I had my birds. They've saved me," Stephen says. He has been estranged from their mother for a long time, and her life took an unhappy turn at some point. She has been caring for their profoundly disabled stepfather, Mitch, for years, even though Emily has consistently urged her to place Mitch in a care facility. Emily dares not mention Stephen to their mother, although Regan does not initially reveal what caused the rift between them. Their father has remarried and is preoccupied with his stepchildren, his relationships with both Emily and Stephen strained.

Stephen arrives in Emily's head each morning before she leaves for work, her thoughts "laced with anxiety: Where was he today? How was he? What was he doing right now? Occasionally I'd just be treated to a memory, a lovely one," often associated with excursions to the marshes to see their cherished birds. Emily works as a housing officer at a social services agency tasked with placing suitable applicants in public housing accommodations. Of course, there is a housing shortage -- 1.15 million names are on the waiting list -- and stringent requirements that too many applicants cannot meet. She notes that "life begins with a roof over your hear, doesn't it? Without that, nothing can take off." Ironically, she has a lovely apartment filled with things she loves, yet "it doesn't feel like I live here. Sometimes, when I open the front door, I feel like a visitor." Every day, she hopes that Stephen, her homeless brother, will be among the countless people who come to the agency seeking assistance.

And then one day, she becomes aware of a familiar voice. It jolts her back to a day when she was about ten years old and Stephen was fourteen or fifteen. In her memory, Mitch is "bellowing" at Stephen as Emily tries to show their mother a shoe box inside of which is a tiny injured bird. Stephen is trying to explain that he wanted to save the bird, repeating, "You don't understand . . ." exactly as he is currently expressing his frustration at not being eligible for housing to Emily's colleague in the next room. Emily realizes that she is not dreaming. She is really hearing her brother's voice for the first time in years. But he leaves the agency before Emily can get to him. At least she knows he is alive and begins searching the area for him.

Regan instantly draws readers into the psyches of Emily, Stephen, and their parents, establishing their fraught relationships with each other and current circumstances. Cleverly, she does not reveal at the outset what caused the family to fracture or how a sweet young boy like Stephen has become a homeless thirty-five-year-old man with a criminal record.

Regan illustrates with tenderness and compassion that finding Stephen is just the beginning of a new journey for the family. When Emily locates him, he initially denies that he has a sister. However, after thinking about it, he reaches out to her and accepts her invitation to stay with him. She is determined to help Stephen get his life back on track, and he is delighted to be reunited with her, but interacting with her and her friends proves challenging for a man who hasn't enjoyed "normal" social interactions for nearly two decades. And he wants Emily to inform their mother that he is staying with her because he wants to be reunited his Mum, as well. Stephen has missed their mother -- perhaps most of all -- but Emily admits that while Stephen stays with her, "Every day I resolved to tell Mum that Stephen was here, and every day I failed." That failure initiates a series of events that cause all four family members to reevaluate their choices and feelings.

Regan makes expert use of the alternating chapters, gradually disclosing the betrayal that set in motion the disintegration of their family. Stephen and Emily were youngsters unequipped to deal with their parents' issues. Worse, Mitch was very different from their father -- a decorated veteran who bullied Stephen, mocking his love of birds, verbally abusing him about his refusal to consume meat, and complaining that he brought "revolting half-dead creatures into the house." Mitch threatened to kill the birds Stephen valiantly sought to save, and little Emily witnessed their horrifying interactions while their mother wrung her hands helplessly. Mitch was never smart enough to understand what Stephen knew from a very early age. That "birdwatching was all about being still and it was where life was for him, where the thrills were, if you were patient enough to wait for them."

Emily and Stephen work to mend their relationship so that they can move forward, but they must first reconcile the past. Their recollections about a traumatic event and its repercussions are different, but getting to the truth is essential to their ability to forge a new, lasting alliance. Regan skillfully depicts their exchanges through believable inner struggles and resonant dialogue. They embark on the adventure they promised themselves as children they would one day enjoy together -- experiencing the events on the Top Five list Stephen compiled so many years ago that includes spotting two rare birds in twenty-four hours and watching the swifts' migration from the Spurn Peninsula. They argue about how to navigate to the various locations, vehicle maintenance, and other matters in ways that readers with siblings will find completely relatable. And in the process they work through what tore them apart.

But can they reconcile the past? And when the full truth is at last revealed, will their bond remain unbreakable? Will the revelation of the truth facilitate understanding and forgiveness by their mother? Will Stephen at last find a permanent home where he can be content? Can Emily finally feel whole and at ease in her own life?

Regan answers each of those questions in a dramatic, but emotionally satisfying manner. In the process, she examines the ways that childhood trauma impacts her characters and shapes the course of their lives. She also explores how mistaken beliefs, faulty memory, a mother's failure to protect her children, and an older sibling's determination to shield his sister from pain cause fissures in a once close-knit family. Ultimately, Regan demonstrates that forgiveness is possible and can facilitate the restoration of familial bonds if the family members are willing to acknowledge their own role in the disintegration of their relationships and accept each others' truths. Indeed, sometimes those truths were apparent all along, but never voiced or validated.

How to Find Your Way Home is a must-read selection for readers who enjoy stories about families and, more particularly, siblings who overcome turmoil in their relationships and deal with its impact upon their lives. Regan's compelling characters and insightful story are both memorable, impactful, and uplifting. And affirm it is possible to feel as if everything you've ever lost is coming back to you -- all of it coming home.

I’m lucky enough to live in one of the most vibrant cities in Florida—St. Petersburg, which has a thriving downtown area on Tampa Bay and miles of beaches on the Gulf of Mexico. Among the sidewalk cafes, the outdoor music venues, the public parks, the bike paths and the sandy shores is a common problem to all areas—unhoused people living on the streets. We have thousands of them in Pinellas County; some who are local to the poorer side of the city, some who were drawn to Florida for the milder climate. Our social services aren’t enough to help them. When they panhandle outside of fancy restaurants or at intersections, they’re a constant reminder of the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. And they create a personal dilemma for everyone who sees them. Is giving money really helpful, or will they spend it on booze and alcohol? Is this person truly without a home, or do they make more money panhandling than waiting tables? If I put something in his cup, will he harass me for more?

For the rest of the review, click on the link.

A deep familial saga, a sister and brother- mistakes from years ago, and the aftermath. Her brother is homeless and finally walks back into her life 10 years later. I was heartbroken so many times from this novel.

This is the story of a family's unraveling and the bonds within that family that defy severance despite painful reckonings. It's about a big brother who never stopped protecting his little sister, despite his years in prison and then on the street. Integral to the story is Stephen's love of birds, of birdwatching, and the lessons imparted by the wondrous creatures. Chapters alternate between Emily and Stephen's points of view, and we get flashback chapters titled according to birds that have had significance to the pair of siblings at various times in their childhood. This book is for those who enjoy novels that delve into sibling relationships and family dynamics with a side of birdwatching in the English countryside.

[Thanks to Berkley Publishing Group and NetGalley for an opportunity to read an advanced reader copy of this book.]

Heartwarming and emotional, this book totally surprised since I didn't read the synopsis and I thought that it would be a contemporary fiction with romance as secondary, judging by the cover.

But this one is a good surprise that made me think about life and ny connections with the people I love most.

I'm not typically what you'd call a lover of "literary fiction," but I simply adored this book. The connection of birdwatching to family and a sense of "home" was so clever and moving.