There are books that feel like stories, and there are books that feel like memories, like they’ve somehow slipped into your bloodstream and lit up all those tender, unspoken places. Michelle Morris’s Comes Around is the latter.
It’s been a full day since I finished it, but Halley McCarthy’s world is still lingering. I can hear the low thrum of motorcycle engines, smell the faint sweetness of old leather and fried food, see the soft, golden light of a Michigan evening as it spills across the porch of a family home that’s seen too many arguments and not enough apologies.
At its heart, Comes Around is a story about family, but not the neat kind we like to post on holiday cards. The McCarthys are complicated, messy, and full of contradictions. They’re the kind of family that can wound you in one breath and shield you like a fortress in the next.
Halley comes back to them because she has nowhere else to go. Her life in San Francisco, the ambitious startup, the high-rise apartment, the picture-perfect fiancé, has crumbled to dust. She returns to her hometown reluctantly, a little ashamed, half-hoping no one remembers her, and half-hoping someone does.
Coming back home as an adult feels almost wild in some way. You feel like you’re taking off layers of yourself, your independence, and your hard-earned confidence, and putting on a skin that doesn’t fit anymore. That’s what Morris does so well. Halley is not just going back to a place. She is returning to a version of herself that she isn’t sure she wants to see again.
Her father, Irish McCarthy, is a man you notice even when he says nothing. A biker who is very strong and loves his kids deeply, even though he doesn’t say it often. This story’s quiet center is his relationship with Halley. The situation isn’t easy. There are too many years and too many unspoken hurts that they haven’t talked about. But there is also a deep well of care there, the kind that doesn’t need to be seen but is felt in small, everyday actions.
I kept thinking about families and how much they ask of us. How they keep our pasts in their hands, even the parts we want them to forget. In ways I didn’t expect, the McCarthys were like my own family. The fights at the kitchen table, the alliances and rivalries between brothers and sisters, and the grudging respect that sometimes turns into love.
But Morris doesn’t just look at family through blood ties. There’s the makeshift family Halley finds in the members of her father’s motorcycle club, in her half-siblings who both resent and adore her, in her stepmother Priss, who’s more complicated than Halley ever gave her credit for.
And then there’s Scarlett, Halley’s little sister, who sees her not as a failure or a stranger but simply as “Halley.” That unconditional kind of love, the kind that doesn’t keep score, is rare. I found myself tearing up at their scenes together.
Of course, not all of the connections in the book are warm. There is a sense of danger underneath, a quiet but growing feeling that Halley’s past isn’t over yet. There is someone watching. Someone is mad. That tension makes the story more interesting, but it never takes away from the quieter, more personal parts that make the book so memorable.
What lingers for me isn’t the suspense. It’s the relationships. The way Halley slowly learns to let people in again. The way she begins to trust, not just her family, but herself. There isn’t a big revelation or a dramatic “fix” here. It’s just the slow, sometimes painful work of fitting in.
I sat in silence for a long time after I closed the book. I thought about the families we are born into and the ones we make for ourselves. About how hard it is to forgive and how much harder it is to say you’re sorry. And about how, if we’re lucky, there are people waiting for us at the end of all our running, not perfect people, not easy people, but people who will hold a place for us no matter how many times we leave.
Comes Around isn’t flashy. It’s not loud. But it’s honest in a way that sneaks up on you. It reminded me that sometimes coming home isn’t about geography at all. Sometimes it’s about the people who remind you that you were never really alone.