The Sign for Home by Blair Fell

The Sign for Home
☆☆☆
.ePUB, 392 pages
Expected Publication: 05 Apr 2022
By: Atria Books, Emily Bestler Books

About The Book:
Arlo Dilly is young, handsome and eager to meet the right girl. He also happens to be DeafBlind, a Jehovah’s Witness, and under the strict guardianship of his controlling uncle. His chances of finding someone to love seem slim to none. And yet, it happened once before: many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met the love of his life—a mysterious girl with onyx eyes and beautifully expressive hands which told him the most amazing stories. But tragedy struck, and their love was lost forever. Or so Arlo thought. After years trying to heal his broken heart, Arlo is assigned a college writing assignment which unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he was supposed to trust have been lying to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again. No longer willing to accept what others tell him, Arlo convinces a small band of misfit friends to set off on a journey to learn the truth. After all, who better to bring on this quest than his gay interpreter and wildly inappropriate Belgian best friend? Despite the many forces working against him, Arlo will stop at nothing to find the girl who got away and experience all of life’s joyful possibilities.

My Review:
Full disclosure, I requested this book because I am deaf and it is rare to find books with deaf characters. I wish I could say I loved this one but I found  it to be only okay. A lot of the issues I had were from the beginning. I found the Jehovah Witness side of it to be a little too preachy and that's the biggest thing that turns me off a book. There were some funny and lighthearted moments and I loved how the characters grew as the story went along. The fact that the author has Arlo's voice using ASL syntax throughout was a nice surprise and I hope people are able to learn from this. I just found Arlo to be way too immature for 23 and this may have been the author's point but it just started to grate on my nerves and I wasn't able to enjoy the book as much as I wanted to.

Disclosure:
With many thanks to NetGalley, Blair Fell and Atria Books, Emily Bestler Books for the giving of the ARC.

#NetGalley

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