After the untimely death of his boyfriend, eighteen-year-old August accidentally finds his way into the Underworld. Hoping for a chance to see his first love again, he instead meets Cary, the ferryman of souls. As August spends more time in this unfamiliar world, he begins to question whether he is right in holding on to the past or whether he should be opening himself up to something new.
”That’s what it’s like living with grief. Loneliness, even while you’re surrounded by people.”
One of these days Julian Winters is going to have to pick up my therapy tab if he keeps releasing books that make me question how I live my own life.
Find My Way Down to You ticked all my boxes. You have a pinch of fantasy, you have romance, and you have grief portrayed really well with a strong focus on healing.
The funny thing about grief is that no two experiences are ever the same. One could, for example, not relate to books like You’ve Reached Sam that had everyone in a chokehold back in the day, yet absolutely devour this tale of grief. This was the case for me with Find My Way Down To You. I admit I rarely pick up books that focus on grief and loss (you have to be in the right headspace for it), but this novel dealt so well with it and most of that may come down to the fact that while this is a story about grief, its main focus is on moving on and finding new ways to get back to actually living your life instead of being in the passenger seat waiting for someone else to take the wheel to get you back on track.
Don’t get me wrong, there is sadness here, it is a book about loss, after all. Auggie has been living in this kind of eternal limbo where he can’t and doesn’t seem to want to move on, but there are also so many moments of hope and progress that truly make this book stand out.
What I love most is how Auggie showcases some of the worst side effects of grief, the way you can lose yourself because you lost someone that in a lot of ways has affected how you see the world and interact with it. This, of course, drastically changes when he meets Cary, the ferrier of souls and gets introduced to death in an altogether new manner.
As always, Winters shines in portraying characters that are essentially good guys, but also flawed. Cary is your brooding boy that is secretly a marshmallow that always puts others and their feelings first. I love how he constantly tried to lift up Auggie.
Auggie, meanwhile, lives his life in pursuit of making other people happy…even when that ends up hurting him or making him lose his own way. The two of them worked together so well because at the core they care about the mark they leave on the (under)world, leaving it kinder than it was before. Their interactions were sweet and their conversations often felt like a warm hug. My only gripe would be that I wish there would have been a few more moments focusing on their relationship and the trouble that comes with falling for a guy whose literal job is carrying souls into the underworld. But since the focus here really was on grief and living again, I understand that this wasn’t supposed to be a super in-depth romance with all the expected beats.
The best part of this story is of course the gradual progress of healing. From the very difficult beginnings where you meet Auggie and realize just how much he has given up on his own life and future after losing his boyfriend London while everyone including his roommate has moved on to grander things, to the small, gradual steps he takes to participate in life again. It serves as a powerful reminder that no matter what losses we face, there is always something worth living for—we just have to find what that is for us.
Heartbreaking and hopeful in equal measure, Find My Way Down to You is a life-affirming story that puts a new spin on grief turning your world upside down, perfect for fans of You’ve Reached Sam and At the End of the River Styx.
Find My Way Down to You is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of August 4th 2026.
Will you be picking up Find My Way Down to You? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis
You’ve Reached Sam meets Hadestown in this enchanting, intoxicating romance across the mortal world and the underworld.
Eighteen-year-old August is trying to navigate life after the sudden death of his boyfriend left him devastated, aimless, and feeling guilty. Years after the tragic accident, August mistakenly stumbles into a world beyond his own—the Underworld. Unlike his own gray existence, the underworld is a lavish extravagant place, full of mystery and a flurry of charismatic gods, all curious about August’s arrival in their world. Realizing right away the opportunity in front of him, August goes searching for his lost love, guided by Cary, the smoldering, broody ferrier of souls. But the more time August spends down below, the more his intentions begin to blur. Is he visiting this realm to reunite with his soulmate? Or is he desperately, inexplicably, intoxicatingly drawn to Cary? With his own world in pieces and a dangerously seductive realm promising him a new existence at a heavy cost, August must choose: a life with grief or a love that might destroy him.
