A humorous, emotional and entertaining read with wonderful characters. It felt nostalgic and depicts a real sense of friendships and relationships, in the past and present.

Crowds gathered to watch the crazy man high up on Brooklyn Bridge. The police were called and people were terrified that he was going to jump. Luckily, Joey Ambrosio just wanted to scatter his father's ashes, but the police still worried that he was mad.

People on Shepherd Avenue also thought that sixty-year old Joey was nuts when he bought his childhood home for too big a price, left his door unlocked and took the bars off the windows in a poor and crime-ridden neighbourhood. However, after a troubled and peripatetic adolescence and an estrangement from his daughter, Joey feels the urge to return to the home where he lived with his uncle and grand-mother.

In this moving story, he finds old childhood friends, falls in love with a beautiful laundress and slowly starts to rebuild his life...

I enjoyed this very New York story by Charlie Carillo, but I wasn't sure about the author's attitude to age differences in romances.

I received this free ebook from Net Galley in return for an honest review.

When I left Joey Ambrosio a couple of days ago after reading Shepherd Avenue, he was ten years old and now when we meet again, Joe is 60 years old. As the title reflects, he has indeed returned to the house on Shepherd Avenue where he spent that summer 50 years ago, living with his grandparents. Joey grew up that summer experiencing loss and loneliness and even though he developed friendships and a wonderful relationship with his grandfather, I wouldn't have thought that this was the happiest time in his life, yet as an adult Joe tells us "it's where I was the happiest." After that summer, he lived a vagabond life with his father, moving from place to place around the world, never feeling a sense of belonging. While he has had success as an author and illustrator of children's books, his personal life has been less so . Never married, the father of daughter with whom he has very little contact or connection with, something has been missing in Joe's life.

He buys the house on Shepherd Avenue in a neighborhood that isn't quite the same. He tries to recapture the past, meeting up with people from that summer - Uncle Vic, Johnny Gallo, Nat the bottle man and Mel his best friend. We also meet some new endearing characters as well - Billy the cop, Eddie Everything and the lovely Rose. It's the age old question - can we ever go home again? Joe defies the odds with optimism and heart as he finds a way forward for himself and some of his closest friends and family. Maybe a little smaltzy, somewhat predictable, but it's beautifully nostalgic and I loved it. Once in a while I just need a good story that's doesn't tell of horrific events in the world or in people's lives and doesn't have some big message, other than being just a good story that touches on friendship, family, hope and love. I loved learning that the house on Sherpherd Avenue was inspired by the house that the author's grandparents lived in. (From an article by Charlie Carrillo in Reader's Entertainment.)

I received an advanced copy of this book from Kensington Publishing/Lyrical Press through NetGalley. Thanks to them and apologies for not reviewing before publication date of 6/6/17.

Great exploration of the old question. Can you truly go home again. Maybe doing that helped this character find his true self.

This was a great story. Humorous, sad, entertaining and very enjoyable to read.

Joey Ambrosio is a children's book writer and illustrator. He has had a very successful career and is well known to many. He becomes even more well known when he climbs to the top of Brooklyn Bridge to spread his father's ashes.

This starts what could be called "Joey's midlife crises". One of the major things he does is buy his childhood home that is located in a very seedy part of Brooklyn and have the bars on the windows removed. Not a really smart thing to do, Joey is white, probably the only one in the neighborhood.

The story describes Joey's life both past and present and I enjoyed reading and living in Joey's world.

Huge thanks to Lyrical Press and Net Galley for the approval and providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

"Return to Shepherd Street" takes us into the life of sixty-year-old Joe Ambrosio. Joe is a successful children's-book author who thinks he is at the end of his writing career. He's convinced himself that returning to his childhood home in Brooklyn's East New York is the next goal in his life. He purchases the house which is in a rough neighborhood, and proceeds to renovate it back to the way he remembers it. Along the way, he looks up old friends and attempts to regain the happiness found there as a child. Most of the people with whom he reconnects don't understand why he would want to move back to Shepherd Street. Everybody else was happy to move away.

Charlie Carillo draws the reader into his story with vivid descriptions of people and scenes. He develops the characters from the protagonist to secondary characters with such depth that the reader feels their emotions and establishes a connection. The story moves along at a good clip, never dragging. "Return to Shepherd Street" was a very entertaining read from the very first page.

I received a complimentary copy of this book in return for an honest review.