A memoir of grief and beauty, laced with secrets and brimming with power. Kimberly's writing is masterful. She pulls you in, holds you down, and doesn't let go until the end.

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.

"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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I went into this book blind, very much drawn in by the title as I enjoy memoirs that are about the grey areas in life, rejecting the happily ever after narratives we're so used to. This one absolutely blew me away - a poignant, poetic and emotional journey of self-acceptance and finding family. Highly recommended.

This book is written so beautifully you could mistake it for fiction if it wasn’t for the fact that this is a story that you couldn’t make up. It’s an intense story of loss, unmooring and then refinding that makes me want to give all of the characters a hug. I was completely gripped as soon as I started it and read it in record time. I can’t wait to see what she might write next. Thanks to NetGalley and Alisa Kennedy Jones for the ARC.

Kimberly Warner’s Unfixed is a wonder. Beyond a mesmerizing story, it’s a master class in lyric memoir. While the language is poetic—lilting, transfixing—the syntax is wild. It whips up a tempest that’s unsettling and destabilizing—the perfect match of form to content for this extraordinary memoir.

Within months of each other, two traumatic events befell Warner. Each in its own way ruptured her identity. Together they cleft her life into a stable, orderly before and an upside down, underwater after in which nothing was certain and there was no solid ground under her feet.

In the spring of 2014, she was riding her bicycle when a driver opened the car door as she was approaching. She tumbled over her handlebars and fractured her pelvis. While she was recovering from her injuries, she learned that the man she believed to be her father—a man whose death in a 1993 car accident she was still grieving—was not her biological father. In the ensuing years, she was beset by mysterious, debilitating symptoms that plunged her into unimaginable chaos. Doctor after doctor and treatment after treatment brought no relief. The more she grasped at control, the more it slipped away from her. She was living her life in the upside down.

Unfixed explores Warner’s braided attempts to regain her physical equilibrium and unravel the story of her origins. It traces her hard won understanding that neither of these tasks was entirely achievable—that some things can’t be repaired or restored and that grace comes in surrendering, in acceptance of imperfection and uncertainty. She learns “to live inside the not-knowing,” with “discomfort becoming my new uncomfortable.”

“Our biology,” she writes, “does everything in its power to fix us. But when it fails, the unfixed adapt. The unfixed tell their stories.” To help stitch her identity back together, Warner leaned in to storytelling and a bit of magical realism, going back in time and writing letters at pivotal points in her life to the biological father she never knew, breathing him into being and forging a relationship in the only way she could.

Unfixed is intelligent, visceral, and startlingly original. It will pull you in like an undertow and immerse you so deeply into Warner’s experience you’ll feel you’ve stepped out of your own mind and body and into hers.

Riding the Waves of Identity and Discovery
Some memoirs read like gentle ripples across a pond, but Kimberly Warner’s Unfixed: A Memoir of Family, Mystery, and the Currents That Carry You Home comes in like the tide—steady, emotional, and impossible to ignore. From the first pages, Warner invites readers into a world where questions of belonging and identity flow beneath the surface of everyday life. Her story doesn’t just unfold—it ebbs and swells, carrying readers along as she dives into the deep waters of family secrets and personal transformation. What makes Unfixed so captivating is the balance between its raw honesty and its lyrical, almost meditative storytelling.

A Journey Beneath the Surface
At its core, Unfixed is a story about uncovering truth in the midst of life’s uncertainty. Warner’s world begins to shift after a DNA test reveals long-buried family mysteries, forcing her to reexamine the stories that shaped her. What follows is not just a quest for biological answers but a voyage toward emotional grounding and self-acceptance. As Warner pieces together her past, she also confronts her mother’s mental illness and the impact of growing up in a home where reality often felt fragile. Through it all, she manages to navigate her discoveries with grace, compassion, and a keen sense of wonder at the unpredictable nature of life.

Honest, Heartfelt, and Deeply Human
What sets Warner’s memoir apart is how seamlessly she blends vulnerability with reflection. She writes with the clarity of someone who has learned that healing doesn’t always come in a straight line—and that “being unfixed” can be its own kind of peace. Her prose feels intimate but never indulgent, inviting the reader to share in her emotional landscape rather than just observe it. There’s an authenticity here that’s refreshing; she doesn’t shy away from confusion or pain but finds meaning in them. Readers who enjoy memoirs that balance introspection with narrative movement will find Unfixed both moving and quietly empowering.

Finding Home in the Unknown
By the time the book reaches its conclusion, Warner has done more than trace her family’s past—she’s redefined what it means to belong. Her story reminds us that home isn’t always a place or a person but a sense of understanding that comes from within. Even as she unravels the mysteries of her ancestry, she also comes to embrace the beautiful, chaotic currents that make up her own life. It’s a fitting metaphor for anyone who has ever felt unmoored and yearned to find solid ground.

Final Thoughts
Unfixed is the kind of memoir that lingers long after the final page. With its blend of mystery, heart, and self-discovery, it feels both personal and universal. Warner’s writing invites readers to reflect on their own histories, to see that even in life’s most disorienting moments, there’s beauty in uncertainty. It’s a tender, skillfully written reminder that sometimes the most profound transformations come not from finding all the answers, but from learning to live gracefully among the questions.