The Sign for Home by Blair Fell

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize When Arlo Dilly learns the girl he thought was lost forever might still be out there, he takes it as a sign and embarks on a life-changing journey to find his great love—and his freedom. 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.

This was very sweet and dealt with, surprisingly, a lot of heavy topics. I appreciated the amount of research that the hearing author put into writing a book partially from the perspective of a deafblind person.

I'm not going to lie, I picked this up solely based on the assumptions I made looking at the cover. I thought it was going to be an adorable romance with a deafblind male lead. Yes, all of those things were present, but it was also so much more. There were moments that I cried, moments of intense anxiety, of mystery, and moments where I felt angry.
I loved the point of view shift from Arlo to Cyril. I loved the flashback scenes and being able to read with the asl sentence structure. I loved how vehemently CyriI advocated for Arlo, even to his own detriment. I felt like this book was so crammed full of experiences that the deafblind community goes through that it was almost too long. Almost, but not really. I'm torn because I really wanted and appreciated the variety of instances as there is such a lack of representation in any of the other books I read and media I consume.
I think the details about the day to day moments and the flashback moments were well thought out, but there were aspects of the story I didn't love. I think Brother Birch was a weak (if not completely quintessential) villain. Molly had a redemptive moment, but her reasoning pissed me off. I know people like Brother Birch and Molly exist, I just am sick of them being the bad guy archetype for every story. I also don't think the ending was thought out very well. It felt rushed and was obnoxiously convenient compared to the struggles Arlo went through just to get to New York. I'm glad he got to advocate for himself, but the fact that Shri's plan worked perfectly and they all ended up happy with almost no consequences was frustrating. I think this is a good book, but the ending and overarching conflict could have been given more time and attention.