Delicate, unpretentious and highly enjoyable

Tyler writes skilfully, with a detached air and a precise eye for detail

She writes with virtuosity, confidence and perfect insight and compassion

Anne Tyler is brilliant

Beautiful, lyrical and vivid ... Shelley Read's beautifully drawn characters are brought to life against the backdrop of the Colorado mountains. Full of wisdom and strength ... this is a powerful love story with an unforgettable heroine at its heart

A beautiful, compassion-filled debut - a hymn to the cycles of the natural world and testament to the resilience of the human spirit

A compelling tale of love and a heroine fighting back. She had me racing to bed so I could read another chapter

To be so immersed in a setting is a privilege. A mesmerising coming-of-age story. Simply stunning

A lush, beautiful, strong book. It took me on a transformative life journey. I could not put it down

Completely spell-binding, vivid and luminous

A young woman broken by circumstances who must find a way to forgive before she can love. Torie Nash is a character for the ages as she navigates loss and despair on the road to redemption. Stunning.

The outer landscape both delicately and unflinchingly traces the inner landscapes of Read's characters. This is a story full of heartbreak, yet also hope

A powerful love story with an unforgettable heroine

Echoes of WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING. Luminous

An extraordinary story of fate, determination and love. Gorgeous, and beautifully written, your heart will break for all Victoria has to lose and mend with all that she has to find. Tender and heart-breaking.

Go As A River swept me away. It is gorgeously written. Longing, passion and heartbreak are all set down with such a beauty and restraint that I had to set the book down, amazed. Every page was a joy to read. Magnificent

Suffused with wisdom and compassion, this shattering testimony to one woman's life must be savoured, treasured and shared

The way in which the rivers flow, the land gives and takes back, and how these things shape Victoria's life and livelihood are beautiful. It is such a redemptive story, despite the heartache. We should all care for our peach trees with this much tenderness

Tragedy, heartbreaking decisions and strength is found in this mesmerising coming-of-age story. The harsh but magical environment of Iola serves as her guide and you can almost taste the sweet peaches. Simply stunning

Heart-wrenching and mesmerising ... Combining unforgettable characters and a breath-taking natural setting, it is a sweeping story of survival and becoming

Close to Home does for Belfast what Shuggie Bain did for Glasgow. Its portrayal of a particular kind of masculinity - self-destructive and romantic by turns - is unsparing, funny and desperately sad. Keep an eye on Michael Magee; he's the real deal.

How beautifully Magee has brought his characters to life, and how intricately he has created their world

Magee is his own man in his restrained approach . . . I took Sean to my heart and the last line of the book left me with a satsifying shiver

The best debut I've read in years - a tender examination of class, masculinity and place

Amazingly assured first novel. Magee is too good a writer... Gentle as well as brutal

As beautiful as it is brilliant. Reading Close to Home is like crossing a frontier into a new and thrilling territory

Close To Home announces an exciting new voice - at once open and wary, tender and unyielding - and sharply alive to the pains and discoveries and mysteries of youth

Ringing out clear and true as a bell, it gleams with tenderness and perception. There are few narrators so unassuming and unaffected, yet so full of sharp intelligence

Precise, compulsive, companionable and genuinely moving. Michael Magee writes a world we see far too little of in contemporary literature. We need books like this

A beautiful and devastating debut novel about political memory, violence, masculinity, and the impossibility of escaping your origins.

A sharp and humane novel about a young man, and a city, caught in the painful throes of reimagining themselves. It rings with authenticity, and the wisdom of hard-won observation and experience - a hymn to the ways in which art can be a lifeline and an escape. Michael Magee's debut is an important addition to the burgeoning new canon of Belfast literature

Compulsively readable - you will need to know how this ends!

Sharp, immediate, beautiful writing. A vivid portrait of modern Belfast and of how our circumstances shape our lives. Every character is drawn with nuance and complexity, with great precision and attention to detail. I really loved this book

Artfully crafted, compassionate, precise and unafraid. I loved this book

Close to Home tracks brilliantly written characters across a vividly drawn Belfast

One of the year’s most distinctive and immersive debuts . . . Drawing on his own experiences, Michael Magee refreshes the post-Troubles novel to wrestle with his community’s painful heritage of violence and poverty. It sounds bleak, but Sean’s voice fizzes with life

It's hard to find fault with a debut novel that unfold its storylines and characters with such care, handling themes of class, masculinity, addiction and trauma with both tenderness and a matter-of-factness

Michael Magees Close to Home is yet another brilliant novel to emerge from Northern Ireland, making sense of the impact of the long conflict and the transition to troubled peace; Magee powerfully delineates the psychology of those crushed by betrayal

An emotionally satisfying book with wise and moving moments

A humorous take on Hollywood romcoms

Sexy, funny, thought-provoking and everything I hoped it would be. Her best novel since American Wife.

Romantic Comedy combines humour with poignancy and a lot of heart.

Sittenfeld's novel continues her wider project of exploring the possibility for a kind of redemptive idealism within our flawed world

Sittenfeld has penned another exquisitely written novel

A fizzy love letter to the prototypical romcom

So much of Sittenfeld's work exists in the dissection and comprehension of female desire

Flirting with the tropes of its namesake genre, this playful novel follows Sally, a writer on an "S.N.L."-like show called "Night Owls," who falls in love with one of its guest hosts. Their relationship develops via e-mail in the post-grocery-wiping, pre-vaccine days of covid-19. When Sally decides to visit her beloved in L.A., their time together in his Topanga mansion requires her to navigate incredulity, insecurity, and an offer that she feels is an "affront to my independence." The novel is preoccupied with the instinctual nature of self-sabotage, and with the fulfillment that can come from defying ingrained impulses

Insightful romcom sparkles with real wit and wisdom

Whip smart and really funny

Scores big on giving readers an insight into the machinations of a TV writers-room

Full of dazzling banter and sizzling chemistry

If you ever wanted a backstage pass to Saturday Night Live, this book is for you

Excellent

Both a brilliant portrait of the comedy world and a witty grown-up love story. Lives up to its name