I first discovered Kimberly Warner on Substack, where I devoured the serialized version of Unfixed and couldn’t stop reading. As someone living with an incurable chronic illness and navigating my own DNA surprise, Warner’s journey struck an especially deep chord. The connection felt almost uncanny: she had created a documentary on trigeminal neuralgia—the condition I live with—featuring the husband of a fellow NPE I’d met at a retreat. It felt like the universe conspired to place her story in my path.
Warner’s odyssey is both heartbreaking and profoundly inspiring. She writes with honesty about family secrets, illness, and identity, showing what it means to live in the tension of uncertainty. I especially love how she reclaims the word Unfixed—not as a mark of brokenness, but as a declaration of resilience and even a kind of superpower.
This memoir is a reminder that while life may not offer easy resolutions, it does offer the possibility of courage, transformation, and connection. Warner’s voice is luminous, and I will read anything she writes.

This book is riveting and transformational. It will pull you into its current and then drop you gently into an eddy where you can float in the mastery of storytelling that Kimberly delivers. The serendipity of her words meshing with those of the father she never knew, all while mourning the loss of the only father she did know is breathtaking. I read it when it was serialized and eagerly awaited each Sunday when the next chapter would be available. In book form, I wouldn't have put it down.

Uncanny, indelible, and hauntingly gorgeous. Kimberly Warner’s Unfixed is masterful storytelling, bending time across a strangely seamless arc of accidents and family secrets, debilitating illness, and enduring resilience. With unflinching candor and lyrical prose that echoes long after the page, Warner draws us into a labyrinth of self-discovery, revealing the unexpected beauty and, dare I say, boundless love in the unfixed cracks and hidden corners of our lives. I want to read every word she writes.

Unfixed is a memoir that captures a mirroring inner and outer journey. Kimberly's metaphor-rich exploration of her heart and soul within familial and romantic belonging and love, mental and physical health, and her work in the world, is relatable and yet touches something of the universal. Even though I read it on Substack, I'd say it's a page-turner and un-put-downable. It made me ache, ponder, hope, endure, anticipate, cry, and smile knowingly. It was enlightening and illuminating, but written from a dark night, which means it's equally deep and creatively rich. For anyone searching for purpose, meaning, or grappling with their perceived mental and/or physical limitations, Unfixed may be a doorway back into life's luminosity, wonder and possibility.

Unfixed by Kimberley Warner is a deeply intimate memoir detailing the authors journey coping with a debilitating chronic illness and grappling to terms with letting go of perfection. I was awe struck with how the author navigates her new normal with her illness as well as the unexpected revelations about the family she comes from. A fascinating read which will stay with me for a long time. Thanks NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

An honest and gripping true story spiraling through time with delicious prose and depth of emotion. Warner has an earnest, visceral curiosity that brings author and reader alike through deep family secrets, sudden shocks of undoing, and chronic disease.

This is not a one dimensional narrative, nor a traditional linear A to B storyline. This memoir is multifaceted, multidimensional, and its currents run deep.

At its very core, Unfixed is the story of a father and a daughter reaching out to one another across time through music and verse. Its song leaves a lasting imprint.

I'm in serious awe of this book and this author. Kimberly Warner's journey through an obscure health disorder, and the discovery of a paradigm-shifting secret in her parentage, is a testament to the human ability to adapt, yes, but also a searing tale of personal power told with lyrical grace, bravery, and determination. As an adoptee, I found so many parallels to my own similar later in life discoveries, and I so identify with her wish to bring clarity to the narrative of her family even while she is dealing with a disorienting condition that is both baffling and unsettling. This is a wonderful story, beautifully told.

Kimberly Warner is a young teenager when she loses her father to a horrible car accident, and is consumed by a deep grief. She is further traumatized when her mother reveals that she had a one night stand around the time of Kimberly's conception. Kimberly decides to eventually take a DNA test to clear up the mystery, and finds that indeed Charles Brauer is her biological father- leading her to try to connect with his family.
Adding to her problems, she is plagued with severe vertigo and anxiety, which sends her into a yearslong tailspin..

I discovered Kimberly Warner's work documenting the lives of people who live with chronic illness several years ago, at a time when I myself was in the midst of a severe undiagnosed illness. Her work immediately captivated me. She has a profound and empathetic voice, and she's dedicated to elevating the lives of ALL people, regardless of disability. When I discovered her memoir, I immediately gobbled it up. She has an important story to tell about the challenges of living with illness, and the ways one can thrive regardless of a body that's hurting. I cannot recommend Kimberly's book enough!

Here, Kimberly Warner interweaves personal stories of the loss of the father she grew up with, of the discovery (during her adulthood) of her biological father’s family, and her experience with a vestibular disorder. Having read the description of the book as involving chronic illness, I was puzzled that this aspect of the story took a long time to appear. Warner can write well and has had some interesting and life-shaping experiences, and I would not hesitate to at least try reading more from her in the future if it were forthcoming, but this did feel at times like three books smashed into one—with only the biological-family story, which is really primary throughout the book, carried along as it is by letters from her to her absent biological father— told as thoroughly as one might wish.

A story written by unfixed living, more mysterious and thrilling than mystery thriller fiction. Kimberly Warner’s writing is alive, carried by the strength and weight of emotions, and a deep searching. Unfixed takes the reader on a wild ride — not only through the personal life of this gifted writer, and through surprising twists of an extra-ordinary family constellation — but at heart through the inner landscape of consciousness itself. Unfixed is a poetic, unflinching, intriguing memoir about losing all that once was familiar, finding new ground in the unknown, and regenerating life from the most intimate cellular level. A captivating and enjoyable read.

Kimberly Warner’s memoir, Unfixed, is an intense page turner. Her life changing revelations and how she must learn to pick up the unraveled threads and weave a new tapestry , held me captive throughout the entire book. She has this unique ability to take hold of your hand and pull you in right next to her, at times exposing her very soul. She is a brilliant writer, and I will not hesitate to pick up any book she will write in the future.

The act of reading Unfixed does something very interesting to time itself. A call and response across decades and worlds weaves through the narrative and lingers in the mind in just the way that a dream sometimes does. The revelations, when they come, aren't show-stopping reveals. They're bits of treasure having layers of sand dusted off them under the watchful eye of the author—the archaeologist. There's an undulation, too, which is practically a character in itself threading through the memoir. At times I'd even find myself swaying as I read. Warner has really managed something very special here (aside from achieving time travel) as she takes her reader on multiple journeys, through which we're somehow, unknowingly made to pay attention with as much presence and sincerity and surrender as she does. It's a lesson in humility, and in seeing the world anew. The only way it could have enchanted me more is if it had washed up on a shore inside a glass bottle.

Warner's deeply moving account of her surprise parentage and health challenges would be compelling purely for the events alone, but Unfixed is not another crowded tour through tragedy. This isn't grief-slumming. But with a predisposition towards wisdom and an innate kindness, Warner makes a case for reconciliation with one's grief and circumstances, offering us a vision of how one can be knocked sideways, hold course at an odd angle, and find one's truest self. A beautiful memoir.

I had the pleasure of discovering Warner on Substack when this spellbinding story was being serialised. To read it again in print only strengthens the impact and shores up the belief that her writing transcends the normal run of words on the page. Her story is one of depth and mystery, divine curiosity and unmoored faith in that which binds us; the impending nature of that which we can't control and the unerring search for each other. She lives by her words, to be unfixed in a world continually trying to insist we must do the opposite while being exactly as she is. This is more than a memoir, the story of a search on the wild seas of her life, it is a prayer and a song and pure light. You will love her.

A journey of personal and family discovery that is deeply human and profoundly mysterious. Kimberly's love of life and language shine through every page of a remarkable story of loss, seeking and connection.

A story of exploration, becoming, and acceptance. This book had me gripped instantly. Following Kimberly through her journey of navigating her illness and the discoveries about her family left me enamoured by her courage, curiosity, and commitment to live a life of grace and reverence no matter what befalls us. Also, my god is this book written well, the prose floated off the page and into my heart. An absolute must read.

Unfixed is a marvel of personal revelation, empathy and a real-life story of discovery. What Warner has done is to blend her own unusual illness—a kind of real-life floating—with the discovery of her parentage: Two stories of fracture and healing that don’t depend on resolution. The result is a heartrending memoir that will give you hope and believe not only in storytelling but also in goodness.

"Unfixed is a memoire written with breathtaking insight and love and honesty in the most divine prose imaginable. A story of untethered grief and discovery, leading the reader into a maze of family secrets one never wants to end. An impossible to stop reading, heartbreakingly beautiful, tender ghost-hunt of a story that carries you through every page as if you too were part of the family."

Unfixed is one of those titles I started and couldn't put down. The storyline draws you in, yes. But there is so much more. The cadence is fantastic--lilting and soothing. The lyrical prose makes me certain I want to read everything this author writes. In this memoir, there is loss and discovery, heartache and joy, longing and enduring. And there is a whole world in between, a rich and welcoming liminal space. I can't recommend it highly enough.