HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY HOME

After 19 years apart, a sister and brother find each other once again.

As an adult in her early 30s, Emily Adele Nelson seems to have it all—a gorgeous garden flat in London, a handsome boyfriend of five months, and a well-paying job at the local housing office that allows her to help people, even if it feels like there are even more people she isn't able to help. But everything isn’t as it seems—her flat doesn’t feel like a home, and she's constantly on the lookout for her older brother, Stephen, a one-time prison inmate who is currently—she thinks—homeless. And then one day she hears his voice speaking to another person in her office, but when she rushes to see if it really is him, he’s gone. With the scraps of information he's left behind, she's able to locate him and convince him to come stay with her. Author Regan has split the story into two streams. One progresses from Emily’s birth in 1987 to the culminating event in 1999 that separated her from her brother, and the other progresses forward from March 2018, just before she finds him once again. The story includes chapters told in three points of view: third person, and those of Stephen and Emily. The story is centered around the friendship and love between the siblings as they reconnect and the love of bird-watching that has been Stephen’s savior for the decades he’s been unmoored from what is typically considered a normal life. However, after a lengthy windup to the climax of the story—just what happened on that day so long ago? And what does it mean for the future of these siblings?—the ending somehow feels both rushed and drawn out, with unsatisfying gaps.

An incomplete redemption arc mars an otherwise strong story about how even well-intentioned lies can destroy lives.