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“Those waiting to read one of the best books of 2025 don't have to wait long. Homeseeking, by Karissa Chen, has arrived on the scene early. ... One of the best debut novels of this century.”
Pittsburgh Post-gazette
“As I tearfully turned the last page of Homeseeking, I knew that it had earned a place on my top shelf. For Chen has finally put into words the lifelong grief I have carried as an immigrant — grief for a childhood, a place, a home that no longer exists... [Home] can also live on inside a book. Just as I did, many readers are bound to find their home within the pages of Chen's unforgettable debut.”
Washington post
“[A] sweeping, ambitious novel about the meaning of home and the power of memory.”
People
“Homeseeking is about the love of home and family, even against unimaginable circumstances... [A] sweeping epic.”
Good Housekeeping
“[An] ambitious debut...This is a novel historical mavens will adore, as its storytelling magic and emotional depth flow over a foundation of enlightening, critically important facts.”
Oprah daily
“[A] poignant debut... Through her characters' ranging sensibilities, Chen examines the psychological aftershocks of war...history and fate, displacement and separation. These are grand topics, but through Suchi and Haiwen's quests for belonging amid insurmountable conflict, Homeseeking captures the enduring and unexpected ways these larger forces impact individual lives.”
New York Times Book Review
“This generational, inter-continental love story is a testament to the enduring power of finding your home.”
Harper's Bazaar
“Wonderfully cinematic, gorgeously orchestrated... Like any tried-and-true epic ... the reason Homeseeking is ultimately so successful is because of Chen's talent for seamlessly blending her characters' deeply nuanced personal stories with far-reaching historical events to explore universal themes about the human condition: love and loss, sacrifice and regret, hope and renewal.”
San Francisco Chronicle
“Karissa Chen’s debut novel weaves expertly between present and past, telling the story of childhood sweethearts who meet again late in life and are torn between looking back and moving on. A kaleidoscopic yet intimate view of the Chinese diaspora, Homeseeking explores how identities flex and and transform during war–and which fundamental parts of us remain the same no matter where we find ourselves.”
CELESTE NG
“Homeseeking is intimate in its focus on a single couple but sweeping in its universal truths about how lives are forever changed by war.”
Reader's Digest
“Epic, assured, and beautifully drawn, Homeseeking is a love story that reveals the effects of war and history on the lives of individuals. Karissa Chen has created a world that’s deeply absorbing, following Suchi and Haiwen across decades, borders, and lifetimes.”
Lisa ko
“The epic sweep of Karissa Chen’s debut, Homeseeking, spans borders, oceans, decades, and wars to unfurl the tale of childhood sweethearts whose fates are bound together from their time as neighbors in Japan-occupied Shanghai. Vivid historical detail brings alive the settings, from 1960s Hong Kong to late-2000s Los Angeles—where the characters reconnect. Panoramic in scope, the novel illustrates how lives among the Chinese diaspora are buffeted by history and geopolitics.”
Vogue
“From heart-wrenching regrets to breathtaking redemptions, Chen’s debut novel seamlessly crosses geographical, cultural, and temporal barriers to deliver a love story that touches all extremes of the human condition…. A compelling page-turner, Homeseeking offers a strong sense of longing for characters who wish to return, to change, to ask, ‘Do you ever wonder what our lives would have been like, if only?’”
Booklist
“Chen’s ability to navigate effortlessly across cultures and eras reflects not only the depth of her research, but also her natural gifts as a storyteller…an auspicious debut.”
BookPage
“Homeseeking is a layered, beautifully written, and deeply moving novel. Karissa Chen masterfully blends love, music, history, and heartbreak to create a sweeping tale that spans decades and continents. The novel captures the resilience of the human spirit and the bittersweet reality of the immigrant experience. It’s more than just a love story; it’s a profound reflection on the impact of history, migration, and identity – one that explores the tension between holding on to the past and embracing the future, revealing both the pain and grace of finding where we truly belong.”
Abi Daré
“An absolute stunner of a debut. Chen nimbly tackles too often overlooked history in an exploration of surviving the trauma of war and loss of home. Homeseeking is a novel that asks if those who survive by moving forward and those who sustain by looking back can ever truly meet. At its heart, this is an impressive work of language, place, history, and all the tenuous ties that define who we are. Karissa Chen has created an elegant saga of soul and history, and proven herself a writer to watch.”
Erika Swyler
“Sweeping, epic, yet deeply intimate, Homeseeking traces a pair of first loves and the gossamer thread that binds them across six decades and four nations as the world splits them apart, again and again. A spellbinding meditation on family, immigration, and the many faces of courage in times of hardship, this is a dazzling debut.”
Kirstin Chen
“In this sweeping and heart-rending debut, Chen brings to life more than 60 years of Chinese history through the tale of childhood sweethearts separated by war and reunited decades later in America….Chen scales the heights of her ambition.”
Publishers weekly
“Chen illuminates the parallels and relationships among key moments in China’s recent history. Intertwining the macro and micro, she makes readers care deeply about the impact of history on her characters’ very private lives…. This is historical fiction at its most effective. Romantic lyricism and hard-edged realism merge in this compelling novel.”
Kirkus Reviews
“In Homeseeking, Karissa Chen brings a rare delicacy to the pain of history, exploring what it means for generations to be simultaneously imprisoned by and separated from the past. Her characters linger with desperate vividness in each other’s memories–as they long will in her readers’ imaginations.”
elizabeth Kostova
“A tender and captivating story about fate and loss, hope and love, expertly intertwined with modern Chinese history. Uniquely told through two lovers whose perspectives begin at opposite ends of their timelines, Karissa Chen’s beautiful debut will take your heart on a journey!”
Eve J. Chung
“Karissa Chen is a brilliant and patient storyteller, weaving the entwined histories of two unforgettable characters separated and reunited across time and distance in this tender, riveting novel. Chen’s lush descriptions and rich historical details offer much for readers to see and hear and imagine as we follow Suchi and Haiwen from their Shanghai neighborhood to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Los Angeles. A sweeping, poignant work of history, memory, and survival, Homeseeking is an enduring love story and a debut to treasure.”
Nicole Chung
“Through its glittering and heartrending depictions of war, forced movement, broken love stories, and the tumultuous Chinese-Taiwanese 20th century, this spellbinding debut ingeniously captures the paradox of the immigrant experience: doggedly looking forward while uncontrollably looking back.”
Juliet Grames
“Homeseeking is a perfect love song, beautiful and poignant and tender and sad. A tour de force of storytelling and a book with real faith in the human heart, with all its immense capacity for both love and hatred. Read it. It will make time stand still. Karissa Chen is the writer we’ve been waiting for, and Homeseeking is a must read.”
Matthew Salesses
“A love story in more ways than one, Homeseeking is a beautiful, nuanced look at Chinese history, family, young love, and the wisdom of age. As Suchi and Haiwen do their best to survive their lives, we follow them across the circumstances and choices that continually separate them, and bring them back together — even as their worlds keep changing. By the end I was in tears. Remarkable.”
Vanessa Chan
“Fans of historical fiction will want to pick up this exceptional novel immediately.”
Los Angeles Times
Praise for Homeseeking
A Book of the Month December Pick
A Good Housekeeping Book Club Pick
A Roxane Gay Book Club Pick
An Amazon Editor's Pick
An Apple Books Best of the Month
Recommended by New York Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Pittsburg Post-Gazette, People, Vogue, Oprah Daily, Harper's Bazaar, Today.com, LA Times, Book Riot, LitHub, Bookbub, Debutiful, Kirkus Reviews, Readers Digest, Goodreads, Bookshop, Electric Lit, theSkimm, Chicago Review of Books and more
An epic and intimate tale of one couple across sixty years as world events pull them together and apart, illuminating the Chinese diaspora and exploring what it means to find home far from your homeland.
A single choice can define an entire life.
Haiwen is buying bananas at a 99 Ranch Market in Los Angeles when he looks up and sees Suchi, his Suchi, for the first time in sixty years.
To recently widowed Haiwen it feels like a second chance, but Suchi has only survived by refusing to look back.
Suchi was seven when she first met Haiwen in their Shanghai neighborhood, drawn by the sound of his violin. Their childhood friendship blossomed into soul-deep love, but when Haiwen secretly enlisted in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, she was left with just his violin and a note: Forgive me.
Homeseeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history as war, famine, and opportunity take them separately to the song halls of Hong Kong, the military encampments of Taiwan, the bustling streets of New York, and sunny California, telling Haiwen’s story from the present to the past while tracing Suchi’s from her childhood to the present, meeting in the crucible of their lives. Throughout, Haiwen holds his memories close while Suchi forces herself to look only forward, neither losing sight of the home they hold in their hearts.
At once epic and intimate, Homeseeking is a story of family, sacrifice, and loyalty, and of the power of love to endure beyond distance, beyond time.
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