First, thank you to Berkley Publishing and NetGalley for a copy of this one!

I had been so excited for this book. I am SUCH a fan of family dramas, so deliver them to me in any shape or form and I am GAME! When I saw this gorgeous book and the synopsis I knew I needed it in my life!

This book, however, ultimately ended up being a DNF for me. It was not engaging and seemed to take forever (if it did) to get going. I understand that there had to be some air of suspense regarding why the brother and sister had a split in their relationship, but in the meantime, I wanted something engaging or to entertain me and hook me, and this didn’t have that.

I know that birds were also included in the synopsis, but I didn’t know how LITERALLY that took it. It was SUCH a big part of the book to a point where I felt it was distracting. I just don’t see readers caring about birds that much - there could have been other ways to go about it.

While this wasn’t a book for me, I could definitely see it being for someone else, so I’d be curious to see others thoughts.

Again, big thanks to the publisher and NetGalley!

What a wonderful read was this book, It tugs at your heart and just stays there, While you read this book you will feel sadness, heartbreak, anger, but also happiness, wonder and love.
At its core this is a love story between a brother and sister, a love so strong that the brother does the unthinkable to protect his sister.
A story of a dysfunctional family and the way that mistakes from the past influence and leads the way to the lives lived by the characters in the present.
The emotions felt raw and real, and the situations presented in the book cut so deep i your soul that they stay with you for long after you finish reading the last page.
The only problem I encountered in the book was the use of an Italian word that is being explained as if it was a Spanish one, this mistake doesn't affect the content of the story or plot but it prevented me (my native language is Spanish) to fully enjoyed the book.

Happy book birthday to this powerful novel! It would be an excellent book club pick- there is so much to talk about: a complicated family, an act of love so big it will break your heart, a once happy kid turned troubled soul by forces beyond his control, the easy way that bad choices compound and leave you unable to get back on solid footing, the impossible task of going from homeless to housed, the solace of nature and redemptive power of forgiveness. I don’t want to share too much but I personally connected to this novel in a number of ways. The easiest to discuss would be nature as refuge and bird watching in particular.

There are two downsides that I will share, in the hopes that they will help the right reader find this book. First, this novel is slower paced. Secrets are revealed very slowly, which I didn’t mind at all but I know some people will struggle with that. Two, although it still had a satisfying ending, the conclusion of the novel felt somewhat abrupt with a little bit of open-endedness.

Katy Regan does a beautiful job of portraying a difficult situation in her novel How to Find Your Way Home. The story focuses on Emily, who has dedicated most of her adult life to finding her brother Steven, who is homeless after going to prison in his late teens.
The story flips between Emily and Steven’s point of views, and it also has a dual time line where readers can see current events along with flashbacks to their past leading up to when Steven is sent to prison. The author weaves the timelines and point of views together really well to create a compassionate portrayal of how people experience homelessness – readers see it first hand through Steven, and how people react to it through Emily and side characters.
I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that I work in a housing program. I work closely with clients who are at risk, experiencing, or have experienced homelessness in the past. I could see a lot of similarities in some of my clients in Steven, as well as similarities with how family, friends, and the community react to someone in his position. Not everyone’s experience is going to be the same, so this can be a very difficult topic to capture on paper, but the author does a great job doing so in my opinion.
This is an emotional read but the author focuses more on hope while telling it which makes it easier for readers to enjoy it. As the plot unfolds it definitely develops into a story that is about much more thank homelessness, it’s a story about trauma, sibling love, as well as healing and nature. This story is important, what it focuses on is important, and I think that readers should definitely give it a try to form their own opinions on it.

I do wish the story focused more on Steven. I wish we learned more about him, I wish we saw more of his relationship with his family beyond his sister's hero-complex to save him. BUT beyond that I don't really have anything to dislike about this book!

As children, Emily and Stephen ran through the marshes of Canvey Island, where Stephen shared his love of birds and nature with Emily. Now, Emily works at a local housing office and discovers that her brother, whom she hasn't seen in over a decade, is homeless. She invites Stephen to live with her, and they embark on a rocky path to rebuilding their relationship.

This beautiful novel about belonging, forgiveness, and the bond and love between siblings warmed my heart. Although my feelings about Emily and Stephen wavered throughout the story, it enhanced the theme that appearances can be deceiving. I really felt for Stephen as he struggled to find a way back to having a home and a sense of belonging while wondering what actions led to him becoming homeless. This is slowly revealed through glimpses into Emily and Stephen’s childhood. I loved the descriptions of Canvey Island, where the siblings bonded over bird watching and found peace in nature amidst an unstable home life. The moment of truth broke my heart but also made me think about how far people will go for those they love and how one moment can change your life forever.

Two siblings thick as thieves.
A life-changing event that destroys their youth.
A complex family relationship.

Emotional.
Powerful.
Forgiving.

Life is not as simple as a roof over your head.
An expressive family story that takes flight into your heart.

Thank you Berkley Publishing for the advance reader copy.

London siblings Emily and Stephen reconnect after nearly 20 years apart. Emily has made a life as a council housing officer while Stephen has spent much of his time on the streets.

The book is told in dual time lines and two points of view. We see Emily and Stephen take tentative steps towards reconciliation as well as pieces of what happened all those years before. Bird watching and being in nature play a big part in the novel. This is a story of strained family relationships and forgiveness. It touches on homelessness including the myriad ways someone might find themselves in that position. The ending wrapped too quickly and easily for me but overall I liked the book.

Thank you to the publisher for my e-copy of this book.

I thought Emily’s intent to find her long lost brother and help him get his life back together was commendable. That was such a big undertaking, especially when her well intentions could backfire. Steven, he seemed such a lovable character when he was a boy, but through the story it didn’t seem he ever grew out of being a boy. Then I thought the story pace was that of a glacier, at 63% I still didn’t know why he went to prison. That was kind of frustrating. I understand the need for the back story but I think the author drew it out way too long. I might be in the minority here, but I just couldn’t make myself finish this book. It was excruciatingly slow.

It was not for me. The publishers synopsis is below. All I will say is that the main character, Emily, seemed lovely, but her brother Stephen was a bit insufferable. Emily really carried Stephens burden. If this book was about mental illlness, I could get behind it. But it was not. Stephen was not a favorite and his homelessness or reasons for it should not be his younger sibling’s issue. But in this book it was

Growing up, Emily and Stephen were as close as siblings come. Emily always looked up to her older brother, knowing that he was there to protect her no matter what. He also instilled in her a love for nature- something that they both would, in varying degrees, carry with them into adulthood.

But as the years went by, things changed. First their parents got divorced. Then their mother got remarried to a man who kept the entire family on edge. As a result, Stephen and his stepfather were constantly at odds. Then day their relationship hits a climax that changes things forever.

In present day, Emily and Stephen are estranged, their lives taking very different paths. Where Emily has a steady job and a nice apartment, Stephen has struggled with addiction and homelessness. Suddenly, their lives intersect again in the most unexpected of ways. Emily is thrilled, but Stephen’s ghosts still plague him. Can these two siblings ever be free as the birds they once watched together?

How to Find Your Way Home is a sad book about how changes in life’s trajectory can set one on an unexpected course. It also explores many relationships-brother and sister, parent and child, and even, man and nature. Each relationship is touched upon with different levels of care and detail, some more nuanced than others.

In the end, How to Find Your Way Home has a hard time finding its voice in spots, but pulls things together for the most part, in the homestretch.

A lovely novel about family, lies, and reconciliation. Emily's been looking for her brother Stephen, who she knows is unhoused for years. They were close as children but then their stepfather was injured, Stephen went to prison, and they lost contact. Now she's found him and brought him to her home. This moves back and forth in time between both of them and in time between their childhood, when Stephen who loves birds, was Emily's hero, and the present when they are struggling with each other and themselves. It is however, birds that bind them in more ways than one. I liked this for so many reasons, not the least of which was the sensitivity with which Stephen is portrayed - I'd not thought about some of the issues he faced while homeless. Yes it's about a dysfunctional family but it's also about the bond between siblings, Regan's a great storyteller- this kept me turning the pages. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This will pull at the heartstrings.

"How to Find Your Way Home" by Katy Regan is Literary Fiction that will pull at your heartstrings!

When Stephen Nelson is four-years-old he becomes a big brother to his "absolutely perfect" sister, Emily Adele Nelson. When he holds her for the first time, the day she's born, he knows it is his job to love, protect, and keep her safe.

During their childhood Emily and Stephen are inseparable. Living by the marshes on Canvey Island, nature and bird watching are passions Stephen shares with Emily when she is old enough. He is the one who teaches her about the treasure and beauty of the marsh.

When Emily is twelve and Stephen is sixteen, tragic events impact their family that separates these siblings until Emily is thirty-one and Stephen is thirty-five.

Will Emily and Stephen be able to work through those lost years and rebuild their relationship? And, what sequence of events led to ripping this family apart?

I love family stories that pull at your heartstrings and make you pay attention. This is that story told in two timelines. The 'earlier timeline', their growing up years, is told through a third-person narrative. The 'current timeline', their re-connection in 2018, is told with a combination of a first-person POV from Emily, and a third-person narrative for Stephen.

I love how the author covers the topics of family dysfunction, homelessness, damage of secrets, and power of forgiveness and love. She also did an excellent job with character development with a satisfying blend of ones to love and love to hate.

I didn't like how the family dysfunction in both timelines felt drawn out making the story feel slow and repetitive in parts. The ending also felt rushed but I did enjoy how it ended.

I highly recommend!

Thank you to Elisha at Berkley for a widget of this ARC through NetGalley. It has been my pleasure to give my honest and voluntary review. This book is available 2/15/22.

This is a sad but also heartwarming story about family.

It dives into the topic of homelessness and how siblings can come together after years apart and living different lives.

I could sense there was something to the event that pushed Emily and Stephen’s lives in the direction they went.

As someone in the mental health field, I could see that the way Emily approached reconnecting with Stephen wasn’t going to be super effective. And I wish we saw a bit more about the challenges of Stephen becoming stable.

Overall this was an enjoyable read that includes some heavy topics.

A brother and sister reunite after being separated for more than a decade. When the sister tries to help her older brother get back on his feet, their unresolved issues force them to confront one another. Author Katy Regan builds a heartwarming, and occasionally heartbreaking, sibling relationship in her latest novel How to Find Your Way Home.

Emily Nelson does what she can for London’s homeless and housing insecure population. In her civil service job, she listens to stories both real and exaggerated from people who are trying to work their way up the list for government housing. Every day she’s filled with anguish for the people she can’t help. At the top of that list is her brother, Steven. At least, he would be if she knew where he was.

Years ago, Steven committed a horrific act that sent him to prison. After his release, he struggled with drugs and bounced from one location to the next. Emily knows that Steven is homeless, but she has no idea where he is or how he spends her days.

When they were kids on Canvey Island, her big brother was her hero. He shared his love of bird watching and nature with her, and the siblings spent hours following migration patterns. The birds weren’t so important to Emily; for her it was about spending time with Steven.

Then their mother had an affair, divorced their father, and settled in with the new love of her life, and everything changed. Steven struggled to get along with their stepfather, and Emily absorbed the tension in the house along with their mother’s constant disappointment that life hadn’t turned out to be the idyllic situation she’d expected. After Steven’s imprisonment, the family frittered. Emily, despondent, has waited for a chance to help Steven ever since.

In a moment straight from a movie, one day Steven walks into the office seeking help with government housing. Emily is beside herself and takes him home. Never mind that he smokes nineteen to a dozen or that he’s a messy houseguest. She’ll deal with anything to make sure she never loses track of Steven again.

Steven is grateful for his sister’s love and assistance, but he also struggles with it. He knows he’s responsible for the choices he made that contributed to his homelessness, but he’s also aware that the event that sent his life in this direction was out of his control. Emily doesn’t seem to get that or remember it or is doing her best to ignore it; he can’t decide which. As he and his little sister, once the light of his life, start to tiptoe around the horrible events of the day he was arrested, they both learn how to name for themselves and one another the things that matter most.

Author Katy Regan’s skilled eye for detail and description brings to life Canvey Island where Steven discovers his love for birdwatching. Regan creates scenes so rich that readers will feel like they’re standing right next to Steven as he watches the swifts arrive for the summer season in England. Unlike other books that focus on the busy-ness of larger urban areas, Regan’s novel elicits a quiet delight in the charm and beauty of small-town life.

Regan also shows a practiced hand at building her story, balancing past events with the present in an even way. Emily spends a lot of time agonizing over whether she could have done more in the past to help her brother, but she also charges forward with purpose when the opportunity presents itself. She knows her Steven might resent the label of a homeless person, but she also believes that her job has equipped her to support him in all the ways that count.

There’s nothing easy about the way Steve and Emily reunite or the conversations they have once they’re together again. Regan manages to keep surprising readers all the way to an end that is satisfying, inevitable, and yet completely unexpected all at the same time. For anyone wanting a thoughtful novel about family relationships, the tension on the bonds that tie people to one another, and the elasticity that allows those bonds to adjust for life will want to read this book.

The sensitivity and humanity Katy Regan approaches Stevie is just everything. Katy of course extends humanity to the plot and characters of this novel - the realistic situation of a parent disowning a child; a father no longer providing support after granting so much during Stevie's struggle to adapt to life after prison.
Emily's obsession with finding her brother became the basis of her life - working for London's housing department, desperately searching for her brother among the desperate homeless. One day she hears his voice - Emily just misses him but goes out searching later that night to find Stevie drunk, claiming he does not have a sister.
This family is so dysfunctional - laid out a delicate narrative exploring the sibling connection and dependence of Stevie and Emily in their youth, leading up to Stevie's arrest.
We are all one decision away from Stevie's experience - a delicate balance we try to maintain, grant ourselves and children a healthy family and future. Very well done.

I received a gifted galley of HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY HOME by Katy Regan for an honest review. Thank you to Berkley Publishing for the opportunity!

HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY HOME follows brother and sister Stephen and Emily. As kids, Stephen loved his little sister, bringing her along on his bird watching obsessions and protecting her from the rest of the world. In the present, they haven’t seen each other in years. Stephen has wound up homeless on the streets, almost entirely cut off from his family. Emily works in homeless services, trying to house those most in need, but not able to help the one person she wants to help the most.

When Emily overhears a familiar voice from a coworker’s office, she is excited to confirm that her brother has come in for help. She sets out to track him down and reconnect with the brother she loves so much. It is a rocky road, but she is determined to bring her brother back to her.

As someone who works in homeless housing, this book synopsis really called to me. I think that the author did an incredible job of showing how easy it is to fall into homelessness and the struggle that people go through to live their lives when they have nothing. We get both Emily’s and Stephen’s alternating perspectives, both in the present and in the past, as the story of how they came to be where they are now unfolds. The way the family and others treat Stephen felt very realistic. The struggle to provide housing and the huge hurdles of red tape involved definitely were accurate.

I loved the relationship between Stephen and Emily. Stephen was so good to his little sister, keeping her sheltered from some of the struggles in their parents lives. We don’t initially know his full story, but as the story builds we learn more and more that really made me feel for his situation. Emily isn’t perfect when it comes to how she treats her brother, but she has a genuine desire to do right by him.

This was a great read and a very unique story that I really enjoyed!

"...here begins one of the last evenings I remember of my old life. The life I had constructed like the tough, prickled outer shell of a horse chestnut around me, before it was cracked open and the truth of my life was laid bare, as frighteningly untouched and uncharted as that shiny conker hidden inside."

Do we choose our homes? Physically, sure. As adults we can move here or there. Does a chick choose its nest? We are not necessarily bolted to our birthplaces, but they are our first homes, and that initial setting is a very powerful thing, rich with association, memory, and attachment, particularly if we remain there more than just a few years. Many, maybe most people move away, significantly away. We may return annually to see family, or not. Maybe the places to which we relocate become truer homes for us. I shudder, for example, at the thought of ever again living in the neighborhood where I was raised. While I love the city, that particular part of it holds no attraction for me. I got out as fast as I could, and never wanted to be back there again. But for many, like Dorothy Gale, there is a primal bond with that ground. There’s no place like home for Stephen Nelson, as well, as he carries deep ties to the place where he was raised. He has been away from it for a very long time.

Emily Nelson has different rootedness issues. A connection to her brother is where home is for Emily. Stephen was an amazing big brother, about five years older. Delighted to have her there, eager to teach her about what excited him in the world, which was mostly birds, an interest his father shared and nurtured in his children. And she was always thrilled to be with “Deebie.” They found a particular Eden-ic magic in the avian-rich marshlands very near their home on Canvey Island, (Essex’s answer to the Mississippi Delta) even camping out there sometimes. She is concerned about his survival.

Their allegiance gained significance when their mother, unhappy with her exurban experience, ditched their father for what she’d hoped would be a more satisfying life. Sadly, her new mate seemed to have a bug up his bum about Stephen, always criticizing him, never recognizing Stephen’s strengths, and generally being a total horse’s ass of a stepfather. The sibs really needed to stick together when they were with Mum and Mitch. But something happened when they were still kids. Mitch was severely injured, and Stephen was jailed, from his teens into his twenties. Once out, things did not go well. He has been living rough for the last fifteen years.

We meet Emily in the today of the novel, 2018. She is 31, living in London, a housing officer in the council’s homeless department. She has had a series of relationships, (failure to nest?) the latest of which is with an architect, but:

"She realizes that James will not last, no one will until she can resolve the huge hole in her from the loss of Stephen.

They have been out of touch since shortly after his release from prison. She has been desperate to find him for some time. When she hears his voice in her office one day, the chase is on. She invites him to move in with her.

The story moves along two time tracks. First is the contemporary, as Emily searches for Stephen, wanting to reconnect with him, wanting to help him, wanting to get her brother back after a very long absence. This current-day look is split between Emily’s first-person and Stephen’s third-person POVs. The second time track is a slow unraveling of the past, from Emily’s birth to the tragic event that defines the story. What happened in their lives as kids? What forged their bond? What ultimately caused Stephen to be sent to jail? Why has Stephen been homeless for so long? This is told in ten chapters, named for birds, telling stories from their childhood involving specific birds, or breeds, or just using bird imagery. Stork, for example, is about Emily’s arrival. Mother Duck tells of a Make Way for Ducklings event. Cockatoo refers to someone’s hairstyle.

Stephen struggles with hope, whether to keep on or to fly the coop on possibility. Lord knows, he has had plenty of reasons to. His father has been willing to keep lines of communication open, if with less than total warmth. But his mother, unhappily, stuck with caring for the husband whose tetraplegia is the reason Stephen was imprisoned, is not so eager. Stephen has learned to survive on the streets, kept going by his love of birds. He has artistic ability, and picks up some money selling drawings of them.

Regan first volunteered at a soup kitchen for the homeless when she was 17.

"My favorite bit of the shift was to sit down after we’d served breakfast and chat. What surprised me then, besides the sheer resilience these people possessed, was how little there was between my life—a “normal life”—and theirs. A few wrong turns, a relationship breakup, some bad luck was all it seemed to take for you to wind up sleeping on the streets and relying on charity to eat. Most of all, what I learned there (as well as from my research for How to Find Your Way Home) was that the difference between those who managed to dodge homelessness and those who slipped through the net was just that: too-big holes in the net. If you’d burned the bridges of your support network or had been abandoned by the people in it, you were out of luck. When I became a writer, I promised myself I would one day write a book telling the story of a homeless person."" - from the Book Club kit

Bird imagery permeates the novel. In fact, there is enough avian material here to fill a king-size comforter. It is as lovely as one of those too, the feathered supporting cast bolstering the issues among the feather-free characters. A skein of geese, for example, is explained as group members taking turns bearing the brunt of the migratory lead. Swifts faithfully return to the same nesting site every year, maintaining their pair-bond for life. Although birds permeate the novel, the bird-title chapters focus on this imagery most pointedly.

Another motif to keep an eye on is windows. Stephen is an outsider from childhood. Emily feels like one as well. Windows always mark a separation, and what you see through them may not tell a true or a full tale.

"That’s what you’d see, if you looked through the window: four thirty-something friends, “upwardly mobile” themselves I suppose, having dinner, chatting, having fun on a Saturday night, me in the middle in my orange top that says “Happy Days” on it. But I’m not happy."

Sometimes, windows offer frightening views.

"A dark, tall shadow flashed across the kitchen window and I jumped half out of my skin."

Stephen and Emily have some serious issues between them to contend with, in addition to the challenges that both face with the wider universe. Stephen has good reason to be cautious about the world. He may have been sent to prison for a crime as a teen but he seems a pretty decent sort as a served-his-time thirty-something. Emily may have cut herself off from the world of love emotionally, if not physically, but we come to see that this originates in pain. She seems to have a good heart. So, rooting for these two is easy. And there is a very satisfying twist toward the end. HTFYWH was moving enough that my notes include three instances of TEARS!. There is also some exquisite, lyrical writing here.

I suppose there a few loose feathers that might make one sneeze a bit. Stephen seemed to spend an extreme number of years living on the street. Really? No social service types managed to coral him into a rehab program, maybe got him set up with a social worker. Possible? Oh, sure. But, still. Could Emily really have afforded a London flat in a nice neighborhood on a public employee’s income? Also, the wrap-up seemed a bit speedy. Without spoiling anything, situations were presented that seemed lacking in sufficient preparatory support. And yes, there was certainly a large volume of feathery references. Some might find that a downer. I rather liked it. I will spare you the Emily Dickinson quote, but it is certainly an undercurrent here as Stephen’s ability to carry on is bolstered by his love of birds and birding.

Louise Erdrich this ain’t, but it is a lovely, warm-hearted novel. That said, I found myself always very eager to return to my bedtime book home for the week and a half for which I was able to stretch this out. Dorothy Gale was right. There’s no place like it.

"Stephen loved the sounds as much as he loved the space out here: the wind, creeping through the grasses, that reminded Stephen of rain, when it first, softly, begins to fall; the hum of traffic coming from the A130; and the occasional train, slicing through the countryside with its ghostly sigh. Stephen liked these reminders that the town was nearby. It was as if England and all it had to offer was right here, at the edge-lands—a world within a world. And it had been rolled out like a map, for him to run free over."

Review posted – February 4, 2022

Publication date – February 15, 2022


I received an ARE of How To Find Your Way Home from Berkley in return for directions. Thanks, folks. Thanks also to NetGalley for facilitating.

Wonderful, realistic and compassionate story about family, homelessness and the feeling of belonging. This was so good.

Heartbreaking, beautiful story of a sister who is searching for her mentally ill, homeless brother. Terrible things have happened in their pasts. Sometimes you wonder if Stephen isn't the one who is better adjusted than Emily....sometimes you wonder how they are surviving at all. I love a good "finding your way home" story and this one is tenderly written. 4.5 stars.

Emily and her older brother Stephen have been separated for many years. Something catastrophic tore them apart and sent Stephen first to jail, and then to years of abject poverty and homelessness on the streets.

After almost 20 years of not seeing her brother, Emily hopes to find a permanent home for Stephen. But her plans may not be enough, as the conflicts of the past drive Stephen to take to the road again.

Childhood trauma, incomplete memory, homelessness, family dysfunction - all these are themes of this moving novel.